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Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Alpha's Christmas Sin: Kabanata 51 - Kabanata 60

85 Kabanata

CHAPTER Fifty One — Seven Days

Damian’s POVThe first message arrived before dawn. A formal pack communication delivered through the old channels the wolf world used when something required acknowledgment rather than conversation.A single line from the Alpha of North Ridge. Luca brought it to me while I stood at the study window, watching the manor grounds emerge in the early gray light. He placed the message on the desk, which I took and read twice. “How many wolves have acknowledged it?”“That’s the only formal communication so far, but pack network traffic has been running at three times its normal volume since midnight.” He placed his tablet beside the message. “I’ve been monitoring.”I glanced at the screen. Wolf pack communications weren’t public and not digital in the ordinary sense. The network had existed in various forms long before the internet. The traffic volume alone told the story. Something significant had happened and the wolf world was talking about it.“Stone Valley?” I asked with a confused l

CHAPTER FIFTY TWO — What You Train For

Ava's POVSera did not go easy on me. She never did. But today was different. Today she pushed with the specific focused intensity of someone who had received information she was not going to share directly but that was visible in every drill she ran and every correction she made and every time she reset and came at me again without giving me the full breath I was hoping for.She knew about the anchor threat.She had not said so. But Sera communicated through what she chose to train rather than through what she said and today she was training me specifically for one scenario. Protecting myself when Damian was not there to anchor the power.We had been working for an hour before I said it out loud. "You know..."She attacked mid sentence. I moved without thinking, the wolf already responding before my brain caught up with what my body was doing."Know what?" "About the anchor. About what they need to do before they can attempt the ritual."She came at me again. Faster this time. I def

Chapter Fifty Three— The Shape of the Enemy

Ava's POVI woke up with my heart already racing. It kept ringing in my mind. One word. One name.Selene.Not Marcus. Not Vincenzo. Not Adrian. Just…Her.Six years.The number pressed hard in my chest as I stared at the dark ceiling. Six years of planning. Six years of building something no one saw coming.Already laying foundations while other survivors were still digging graves. That wasn't instinct. That was war.I pushed the covers off. The air was cold on my skin. Damian's arm was still around me. He didn't move. Not even a shift in breathing. That should have worried me more than it did.I lifted his arm carefully, slid out, and didn't look back.---The hallway was dark. The stairs creaked twice on the way down. I knew which ones, stepped over them without thinking.The moment my bare feet hit the first floor, the territory snapped into place, an awareness sharp and immediate, like a muscle I'd learned to flex without realizing it.I made coffee because i had to keep my mind bu

Chapter Fifty four— Magazine Street

Ava's POVThe city was still mostly asleep.That specific quality of five in the morning where the streets belonged to nobody in particular; the delivery trucks, the early joggers, the people whose lives ran on schedules the rest of the city did not share. The SUV moved through it quickly. I tracked every intersection, every alley, every parked car with the territorial awareness that had become my baseline.Nothing wrong yet. But somewhere in my mind i knew the ‘yet’ had weight.I noticed Leo drove the way Luca drove. Efficiently, taking the route that got us there fastest without appearing to be in a hurry. Damian sat beside me in the back. His hand was in mine on the seat between us. For the anchor.The bond was humming raw, the way it had been since I read Jamie's text and understood what it meant. Every instinct pointed in the same direction. Toward Magazine Street.I replayed what Leo said. Twelve minutes, he had said. Maybe less if she has people already staged.I had been count

Chapter Fifty five— What Selene Knows

Ava's POVJamie took one look at the manor in the morning light. "It's bigger every time I see it." she said, even though she had only been here once before and under circumstances that hadn’t left much room for observation.Luca met us at the door. He looked at Jamie with the same assessment he applied to every new presence in the manor's security perimeter. Jamie met him without flinching, direct and steady in a way that said she wasn’t intimidated. After approximately four seconds of mutual assessment, they arrived at an unspoken agreement.Then Luca stepped aside."Priya says hello," Jamie said as she passed him.A flicker of recignition crossed his face."Of course she does."Theo appeared from somewhere in the manor, looking like he had been awake for a while. He looked at the group coming through the door, then landed on Jamie specifically. Open and curious."You must be Jamie," "And you must be Theo," she parroted. "Ava mentioned you."He glanced at me with open delight. "I t

Chapter Fifty six— The Bond That Holds

Damian's POVThe plan was made. Orders had been given. Positions had been assigned. The pack would move before nightfall. By the time the sun set over the mountain, every variable we could control would already be in place.It should have been enough to settle the house. But it wasn't.I stood at the study window, watching the grounds below without really seeing them. Two vehicles moving south. A warehouse that wouldn't be used. A mountain that would and a woman who had just chosen to walk toward a fight she didn't yet understand.The door opened behind me. Quiet. I didn't turn. I didn't need to. The bond had already shifted because it was Ava. Her presence filled the room in a way that had nothing to do with space. The territory responded to her even here. Faint, but unmistakable.“You sent for sera” she said.“Yeah.”“She's already organizing the field teams.”That didn't surprise me.“What about you?” I asked.I paused for a beat “I'm ready.” Then I turned.She stood near the doo

CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN — Before the Mountain

Ava’s POVThe manor felt different when everyone was getting ready for something. The kind of focus that sinks into the walls and floors into the air itself. Every person moving around already knew what tonight would ask of them. And they'd already decided to give it.Luca was in the study running ops, juggling a dozen things without breaking a sweat.Sera was on the training field pushing Theo through one last sequence. She's a believer in preparation. Like, really believes.Leo sat at the kitchen table with papers spread everywhere, phone in hand. Guy came from the wrong side of all this, and now he's making himself useful on the right one.And Jamie?Jamie was in the library.I found her in the armchair by the window, drinking tea, reading one of Damian's books. The worn kind. The kind someone's read more than once. She looked… settled. Or at least she was trying to.She looked up when I came in. Looked at me once. Then again, slower.“Oh,” she said dramatically.“Don’t,” I retorte

CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT — Selene

Ava's POVShe came at midnight.She didn’t come from the direction any of us had expected. Not from the city side where the road wound up toward the mountain through the tree line. Selene entered the clearing from the north, the bayou side. The direction of her property, which meant she had not driven to the mountain. She walked the whole way. That told me enough. She had walked because a wolf running through claimed territory would have lit her up like a signal fire.I felt her before I saw her. That wrongness threading through the territory, controlled and deliberate like she knew how to move through places that didn't belong to her.She thought that would hide her. But she was mistaken.I didn't move, neither did I touch the altar. I let her step into the clearing thinking she still had the advantage.‘She's here,’ I told Damian through the bond.‘I sensed it’Selene stepped out of the tree line with four wolves behind her.She stopped and looked at me. I saw something flicker in

CHAPTER FIFTY NINE — The Fight

Damian's POVI've been in fights that lasted seconds and felt like years.This wasn't one of those.This was the other kind. The kind where everything happens at once, your wolf processes it faster than your mind can keep up, and afterward the memory refuses to arrange itself into anything clean or linear.Selene’s wolves moved first. Four of them burst into the clearing in full wolf form. They stayed low to the ground, dark fur blending with the shadows, mouths open, teeth bared. Their eyes were fixed on me. That made sense. Even with whatever she had done to our bond, the basic rule still applied. If you want to destabilize a mated pair, you attack the anchor. You force them to split their focus. You create room to move.Smart strategy. But not smart enough.I met them in the half-form. Bone and muscle and instinct sharpening without losing thought. I was human enough to think, and wolf enough to snap them into two. That state takes time to earn. Most wolves never get there. The on

Chapter Sixty — What the Bond Carried Back

Ava's POVThe drive back was quiet. It wasn’t the comfortable kind. It was the kind that sits between two people who both know something changed, but neither has named it yet.The bond was different. It was not broken, neither was it weaker. It wasn’t just… the same. Something had settled into it; fine, suspended, impossible to separate out like silt after water moves through. I felt it like a bruise before it surfaces as I sat beside Damian.Luca drove. Sera rode up shotgun, quiet and still. The pack had dispersed. Marcus's wolves had vanished back into the outer territory like they'd never been there.Selene was somewhere ahead in the dark, moving north. Her plan had met something it wasn't built for. She'd regroup. That I was sure about. Tonight hadn't taken that from her but I knew it had cost her something. I could feel that as clearly as the bond beside me.***When we hot to the manor, Leo was standing at the door. His eyes went to Damian first, then me, then the space between

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