Semua Bab The Alpha King's Breeder: Bab 851 - Bab 860

ArisPosey disappears in a flurry of gray wool the second my powers fade like tendrils of smoke across the dark mosaic tiles of the grand foyer. Her footsteps echo down a darkened corridor, the only sound for what feels like an eternity–an eternity spent willing myself to stand still and not chase after her. We just returned from Silverhide moments ago. Me, my mate, and my parents and grandfather. Posey’s role is clear as I tuck my hands in my pockets. She’s going to help Ian using her alchemy. My parents, on the other hand, came here because… I don’t feel like myself and they sense that and are concerned… among other things, like the fact I have a mate and she’s… powerful. So powerful. There’s a monster inside of me with a one-track mind, and it’s only thought is her, my mate. My mate and her comfort, her protection. My mate and her body under mine. My mate locked away somewhere only I can find her for the foreseeable future. It’s a grating, unnerving sense of possessiveness that

PoseyBright warm morning sunlight dances through the curtains. The frost of the windows melts in real time as I sit up, my back stiff and aching. I fell asleep in the chair by the fireplace by accident, a book on modern apothecary sprawled across my lap, still open to the page Kenna said would have some more up-to-date applications for relieving the aches and pains associated with using my fingers like tools. Aris is fast asleep in a ray of sunshine, his glass of healing draft spiked water empty and his face, thankfully, looking normal, if not still a little bruised. I rise, my thin nightgown falling down my thighs when my toes touch the floorboards. Aris’s eyes pop open. He sits up, running his hand over his face, and looks right at me. “Good morning.” I set the book on the chair. This moment feels slightly odd, like a recreation of the night I stumbled out of this same bed to find him sprawled in the chair, watching me like a hawk while I unraveled in fear and heartbreak in the

The fawn is all legs in Aris’s arms as he walks her out of my alchemy room, where she’s been bouncing across the floorboards for the last hour, jumping on any flat surface and threatening to lose her life repeatedly around everything hard and sharp. Heat pours from my fingertips. I smooth a length of silver flat, the molten metal reflecting red against the granite, when Aris returns in a huff, sweaty, new bruises on his forearms when he rolls up his sleeves. He tsks, giving me an incredulous look before easing into his resigned seat at my worktable–the only stool strong enough to hold his impressive stature and weight. “You may have been right.”“About what?” I tease, picking up the tools I need to begin etching the strip of silver. “That our darling daughter is a wild animal and would be better suited to a life outside.”“Our daughter?” I laugh, and it’s pitched. “Aris!”“Do that again.” He braces his hands on the granite and eases up, leaning forward. “Do what?”“Smile like that

ArisSapphire Ridge isn’t a beautiful place by any means. Compared to the sub-tropical, evergreen landscape of the capital, the Ridge is, for the most part, buried in several feet of fog on even the sunniest of days. Today is no exception. It’s raining. Pouring, to be completely, brutally honest. The hood of my cloak is sopping wet by the time I reach the gate of the castle, which opens wide with the help of a quartet of guards who either sensed my presence or open the gate for anyone who comes near, the latter being more likely. Sapphire Ridge is secluded, rural, and not friendly to outsiders. Everyone here–all two-hundred pack members or so–are related loosely, I believe. Distance cousins–at bes–are given the preference to marry and reproduce for alchemy power over love or even the mate bond. The castle of Sapphire Ridge is a boxy fortress of moss-eaten gray stone that casts the rest of the village buildings in its shadow. Built into the side of the mountain, its grounds are littl

Ryatt“Dance with me.” “I don’t dance with men who won’t even tell me their last names.”I fidget on the edge of the dreamworld again, the same scene playing through my memories. Ella, so young, so beautiful, in that too-tight red gown against a sea of vibrant color in a ballroom that at the time was considered enemy territory. Now, I’ve been to countless events and weddings there, watched the sun set and rise through the same ceiling height windows, the same creamy golden walls, a thousand times. Some would say, after being together as long as we have, that the memory of that first meeting should feel like a lifetime ago. In reality, it was. We’re so old now. But I dream about it every night, the same memories of our youth, that tumultuous first year. Her in the gown at Isaac’s twenty-first birthday. Her in the pouring rain at that dilapidated cottage in the middle of nowhere after I finally caught up to her in the Roguelands. Her in only moonlight, my face buried between her leg