All Chapters of GIVEN TO THE WRONG ALPHA: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The line is dead. I drop the sat phone, and the High Priestess catches it before it hits dirt. “Cut off,” she says. “Signal jammed.” “Gerald,” Draven snarls. “Even dead, he’s got contingencies.” “No,” I say, hand on my stomach. Three heartbeats, fast and wrong and loud in my ears. “It’s not him.” The new howl comes again, from the dead marsh. Low, wet, like something dragging itself out of mud. The ferals hear it too. They don’t kneel this time. They back away, faces tight with fear. “Hollow Queen,” the eyeless one whispers. “You woke it.” “Woke what,” Draven says, stepping in front of me. “Her other child,” it says. “The one the witch kept, the one Gerald couldn’t kill.” My blood turns to ice. “The witch had two daughters, I killed one at the Summit.” “The firstborn,” the eyeless one says. “She was never human, never wolf, she was Hollow blood pure, before the wolves, before the curse, Gerald locked her in the marsh, feeding her ferals to keep her asleep.” The human lieute

The baby kicks. Not like before. This is command, not movement. My whole body locks, spine arching off the bed. “Wren,” Draven grabs me. “Breathe.” I can’t. The heartbeat in my womb isn’t a baby’s anymore. It’s drums, war drums, and every beat pulls at the air. Rowan steps back, both infants cradled in her bone arms. “King, wakes,” she says. “Too, soon.” Caiden stumbles to the door. “Get the Priestess, get everyone.” “No,” I gasp. The pain stops as fast as it came. The heartbeat slows, normal again. Sweat soaks the sheets. “It’s, it’s quiet.” Draven doesn’t let go. “What did it do.” I touch my stomach. “It listened, then it chose, not to.” The two babies Rowan holds are silent, eyes open. Gold. Like Draven’s. Like mine. Not black, not silver. Normal. “Names,” I say. “They need names, before someone else names them.” Rowan tilts her head. “You, give.” Draven looks at Caiden. Caiden nods, once. “This one,” I touch the smaller bundle, a girl, “Lyana, for the mother I lost.”

“Seven,” Draven says. His voice doesn’t shake. “Where.” Cael blinks. “Don’t, know, yet, waking, slow.” Rowan sets Lyana and Geralt in their cribs, gentle. “I, feel, them, like, sisters, but, wrong, twisted.” The High Priestess spreads the scroll on the floor. Ink, old, Gerald’s handwriting. “Phase 2: The Seven Thorns, implanted in human wombs across continents, dormant until Hollow King blood hits atmosphere, your birth triggered them.” My birth. Caiden stumbles in, holding his side. “So we killed one war to start another, great.” “No,” I say. “We end it, before it starts.” Ambassador Reed’s radio crackles from downstairs. “Duskbane Keep, we have seven thermal spikes, global, matching Hollow DNA, orders?” Draven takes Cael from me. “Tell the President, the King handles his Thorns, not her.” “Can he,” Reed asks. “He’s hours old.” Cael looks at the radio. “Yes.” One word. The radio dies. Reed runs up the stairs, pale. “All comms, dead, he, did he just—” “He’s King,” I say.

The scent gets stronger by morning. Not in the marsh. In the nursery. Draven wakes first, claws already out. “Something was here.” I check the cribs. Cael sleeps. Lyana sleeps. Geralt sleeps. Love, who refused to leave them, sleeps on the floor. All breathing. All safe. But there’s mud on the windowsill. Not marsh mud. Clay. Red clay. Rowan sniffs it, recoils. “Old, older, than, Father, older, than, witch.” Caiden kicks the door open, rifle up. “Perimeter’s clean, no tracks, no heat sigs, whatever it is doesn’t show up.” Mercy limps in, Thorn One, healed but scarred. “Thorns, feel, it, too, like, ice, in, bones, not, enemy, not, friend.” Cael opens his eyes. “Watchers.” One word. The temperature drops ten degrees. Ambassador Reed calls, voice tight. “We have a problem, satellites over Duskbane went blind at 0300, full blackout, six minutes, came back with new topography.” “New,” Draven repeats. “There's a structure in the dead marsh now,” Reed says. “Wasn’t there yesterda

Moira steps through the doorway. Ash falls from her skin.The bone knife doesn’t shake. Her hand is steady. Too steady.“Debt?” Draven snarls. He moves in front of me, in front of Clay. King voice rolls out. “You’re dead.”Moira laughs. The sound is wet. Wrong. “Death is a doorway, Alpha. I walked through it.”Caiden lunges from the cribs, claws out. Moira doesn’t look at him. She flicks her wrist.Caiden hits the wall. Hard. He doesn’t get up.“Rejected Mate,” Moira says. “Still useless.”Rage burns up my throat. Clay is warm in my arms. Sleeping. Unaware. I shift her weight, step around Draven. “You want her. Come through me.”Moira’s burned lips peel back. “Oh, I don’t want her, daughter.”Daughter.The word is ice.“You called me that at the Summit,” I say. “You’re not my mother.”“No.” Moira smiles wider. Skin cracks. “But I made her.”The room drops ten degrees.Draven goes still. “Explain.”“Your Fated Mate,” Moira says, looking at Draven. “Born of my blood. My sister’s womb. I