All Chapters of Mated to the Alpha King: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Three days of questions Winter couldn't answer. Three days of Sophia hovering, eyes bright with desperate hope every time Winter entered a room. three days of witches introducing themselves with names she'd forget immediately, their faces blurring together into a mass of cautious curiosity and poorly hidden suspicion Three days of feeling Ezekiel through the bond like a distant storm on the horizon. Rage that came in waves, then went cold and empty in a way that scared her more than the anger. Winter sat on a flat rock near the underground spring, her bare feet dangling in water so cold it made her bones ache. Alice had told her the spring ran deep, fed by snowmelt from mountains she couldn't even see from down here. The cold helped. Made her focus on something physical instead of the mess inside her head. "You're doing it again." She didn't turn. Knew Levi's voice by now, the way he always sounded vaguely amused even when discussing serious things. He'd been assigned as her tea

Winter's hands clenched. "Sad. Confused. Angry sometimes. Guilty because I'm supposed to be grateful to be here but I just feel....." She stopped, the words damming up in her throat. "Feel what?" "Trapped!" The word burst out. "I went from Griselda's house to Ezekiel's citadel to here and nobody's asking what I want, where I want to be, everyone just keeps moving me around like I'm a piece in their game and I'm so tired of it!" Her voice cracked. "I'm tired of people deciding my life for me!" The shadows in the room shivered. Winter felt it more than saw it. A ripple through the darkness, like dropping a stone in still water. Levi went very still beside her. "Do that again" he breathed. "Do what? I didn't do anything!" "You did. You felt something real, something strong, and the shadows responded." His excitement was palpable. "Don't think about it. Just feel. What do you want right now, more than anything?" The answer came immediately, instinctively, from somewhere too deep a

Winter walked until the voices faded.Past the sleeping chambers, past the practice room where she'd manifested (and nearly lost control of) her shadow magic, past the underground spring where Levi found her every morningShe walked until the lichen grew sparse and the darkness pressed close, until the only sound was her own breathing and the distant drip of water somewhere in the deepp.Nobody stopped her. Maybe they didn't notice her leaving, too busy celebrating her "progress" (their word, not hers)Or maybe they assumed she needed space after the demonstration. Either way, Winter was alone in the tunnels for the first time since she'd been brought here, and the solitude felt like finally surfacing after being held underwater.Her head still ached from the magic. Not a normal headache but something deeper, like she'd strained something inside her skull that wasn't meant to be used. Levi said it would get easier with practice.That using magic was like exercising a new muscle.Winte

She moved closer to the wound and immediately regretted it. The smell hit her first, sharp and wrong. Decay. Infection turning flesh rotten. The edges of the gash were swollen and hot to the touch, oozing yellowish fluid mixed with fresh blood. Something had torn deep, exposing muscle and possibly bone. "gods," Winter breathed. "This is bad. This is really bad." She had no supplies. No medicine, no bandages, no clean water.. Nothing except her bare hands and absolutely no idea what she was doing. But she couldn't just walk away. Winter pulled off the outer layer of her borrowed tunic, leaving her in just the thin undershirt. The tunic was relatively clean. It would have to do. She crawled to the edge of the black pool and dipped the fabric in, soaking it thoroughly. The water was freezing, clear despite its dark appearance. She crawled back to the beast with the dripping tunic clutched in her hands. "This is going to hurt," she warned, though the beast probably already knew. "

TThe bread was stale but Winter pocketed it anyway, along with two strips of dried meat that had been left unattended near the food stores. Stealing felt wrong (Griselda's voice in her head, 'thief, ungrateful wretch'), but the beast needed food and Winter wasn't about to announce to everyone that she'd spent last night nursing a creature that could probably kill half the witches here if it wanted to.She added a waterskin to her haul, filling it from the underground spring when no one was looking. The healing supplies were trickier. There was a designated area where the witches kept their medical stores (herbs, salves, bandages made from soft moss and spider silk), but it was always supervised. An older witch named Maren seemed to live there, grinding powders and mixing tinctures with the focused intensity of someone who'd forgotten what sleep was.Winter watched from a distance, trying to figure out how to get what she needed without being noticed. The wound had looked less angr