All Chapters of GIVEN TO THE WRONG ALPHA: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

47 Chapters

Chapter 31: Chainbreaker

The dungeon doesn’t smell like stone and piss.It smells like gold.Because the vines are already here. Under the floor, in the walls, threaded through the blood I spilled on the mountain when I bound Cove and Ash and Creek to me. They hum now, quiet, waiting. First Blood calls to First Blood, and I’ve got four of them in one room.Cove sits against the far wall. He hasn’t spoken in twenty minutes. Eight years old and he’s learned that silence keeps you alive longer than screaming. His cuffs are on, but Wrath didn’t tighten them. They’re a costume. A lie for the cameras that aren’t here.Ash paces. Three steps, turn. Three steps, turn. Flame licks her fingertips then vanishes, over and over. Control. She’s beating it into herself because she saw what happened on the feed. She saw D.C. label her asset and Draven label her threat and me label her daughter. Only one of those keeps her breathing.Creek doesn’t pace. Doesn’t fidget. Both palms flat on the stone, head bowed like he’s prayin

Chapter 32: Gate

The Tree kicks.The mountain answers.Stone screams. Dust rains from the war room ceiling. A crack splits the map table right down the middle of Duskbane.War doesn’t knock. It kicks the door in.So we kick back.The gate doesn’t open. We rip it off.Wrath hits the iron with both shoulders and it shears from the hinges, shrieking. Two hundred fifty Hollow pour through like water through a dam break, and for the first time since I claimed them, they’re not following me.They’re with me.Draven keeps pace at my right. He’s pale under the blood, still healing, but he’s upright. Cove’s work bought him minutes, maybe hours. We’ll take it. His hand brushes mine as we run. The bond isn’t ice anymore. It’s a furnace. Angry. Alive.“North!” Creek shouts. He doesn’t need to point. We all feel it now — the Tree’s pull, the crown’s gravity. Four vessels bound means the last three can’t hide. They’re magnets and we’re the iron. “Two miles. Moving fast. Not on foot.”Flying. The west one.Rowan ski

Chapter 33: Skyfall

The first strike isn’t Sky’s.It’s the sky’s.She doesn’t move a muscle. Doesn’t blink. But the clouds above Duskbane tear open and a column of white light punches the ground where I stood a heartbeat ago.The earth turns to glass. Still smoking.I roll left, come up spitting grit. “No pack,” she says. Voice like thunder through a child’s throat. “You swore it.”“I’m keeping it.” I shake out my hands. No claws. No shift. The wolf is pack, and I promised her one-on-one. “But you don’t get to call down heaven just because I’m standing alone.”Sky tilts her head. Storm-glass eyes measure me. Fourteen, maybe. Old enough to level cities. Young enough to think it’s a game. “Fair.”The next one’s from her hand.She flicks her fingers. A needle of lightning, thin and precise, aimed for my throat.I don’t dodge.I breathe in.Cove’s in my blood. I’m in his. The blood-binding doesn’t need vines today. When I open my mouth, the bolt goes into me, through me, into him. He’s two hundred yards back

Chapter 34: Terms

Alistair’s voice cuts across the glass field.“Wren Duskbane. Draven. We need to talk about your children.”He’s standing on a D.C. tactical truck, megaphone in hand, clean suit, no zip-ties. Two hundred troops in black fan out behind him. Between us and them: twenty yards of lightning glass and five vessels who just watched their sister join the pack.Sky’s rain turns gold where it hits the ground. She steps to my left. “Brother,” she says, looking at the ridge.Vessel six.He’s not a boy.He’s twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. Military haircut. Scarred knuckles. Empty eyes. No storm. No fire. No vines.Nothing.And that’s what makes Wrath growl. “Null.”“Silas,” Alistair corrects, smiling. “Designation: Null. Vessel six.” He gestures like he’s presenting a prize. “He doesn’t command elements, Ms. Duskbane. He commands off.”Silas steps forward.He doesn’t walk. One blink he’s by the truck. Next blink he’s ten feet from us.No one saw him move. Not me. Not Draven. Not Wrath.Cove makes

Chapter 35: Feast

D.C. fires.Moira smiles.Bullets don’t hit her. They don’t need to. They hit the air three feet out and stop. Not deflected. Not burned.Eaten.Lead, copper, gunpowder — all of it goes gray, then dust, then nothing. Two hundred rifles go empty in two seconds and Moira sighs like she just sipped wine.“More,” she says.Alistair stumbles back. “Silas—”Silas moves.He’s fast. Faster than Wrath. Faster than Draven on his best day. He crosses the glass in a blink and his hand goes for Moira’s throat.Null meets Hunger.For a second, nothing happens.Then Silas screams.It’s the first sound he’s made. High. Wrong. Like metal tearing. His hand turns black at the fingertips. Not bruise. Not burn. Empty. The same off he puts in others, Moira’s giving back to him.“Can’t eat nothing,” Moira tells him, almost gentle. “But I can eat you.”She bites.Not his throat. His gift.Silas convulses. The emptiness around him cracks. Gold leaks back into the world — Cove gasps, eyes flaring. Ash’s knuckl

Chapter 36: Pallbearer

They carry him.Four men. D.C. black, no flags, no names. Eyes empty but not Null-empty. Puppet-empty. Strings cut, someone else holding the ends.Between them: a stretcher.On it: a boy. Sixteen. Seventeen. Hard to tell when you’re starved hollow. Skin like wet paper. Veins black underneath, branching up his throat like roots. Tubes in both arms. A bag of clear fluid one puppet holds high.He’s awake.He’s looking at me.“Hold,” I say.The Hollow stop. Two hundred fifty wolves. Ten Thorns. Five vessels. One Alpha who’s still picking glass out of his fur from rolling with Silas. We make a wall between the keep and whatever the hell this is.D.C.’s gone. Barefoot, south road, Wrath’s orders. Alistair’s zip-tied to the gate. Silas is breathing but empty in the war room with Caiden’s knife on his pulse. Moira’s in the corner, collar on, licking Null off her teeth like it’s dessert.This is new.“Rowan,” Draven says. Wolf, because shifting back costs blood and he’s out. “Feed?”“Dead,” Ro

Chapter 37: Price

Quiet doesn’t last on Duskbane.The mountain exhales. Not wind. Relief. Like something ancient just finished a meal and leaned back.Full.For now.I stand on what used to be lightning glass. It’s stone again. Duskbane stone, shot through with gold veins. The crown’s roots run under it. Under me. Under all of us.Seven vessels. One bond. One land.Draven’s hand is in mine. Human. Warm. Solid. The bond isn’t a thread or a furnace anymore. It’s the whole damn sky.Cove’s crying into Ash’s shoulder. She lets him. Fire banked, arms tight. Creek’s on his knees, palms to the dirt, listening to something none of us can hear. Sky stands still, watching her hands like they might start a storm without her. Pride’s asleep against Lyana’s chest, gold eyes shut, dreaming loud enough that the crown hums with it.Eli sits cross-legged in the dust. No tubes. No bag. No black veins. Just a boy. Brown eyes. Shaking. He keeps touching his chest, checking for the hollow.Moira kneels. Collar smoking. Gri

Chapter 38: Aftermath

Duskbane doesn’t sleep.It watches.The mountain’s quiet, but it’s not peace. It’s digestion. The Tree ate seven lives and it’s thinking about the taste.Eli’s in the war room.We put him in Draven’s chair because it’s the only one with a back high enough. He looks smaller in it. Older. Liver spots on his hands, breath rattling, but his eyes are clear. Brown. Human. Mine.“You didn’t have to,” I say again.He snorts. Sounds like dry paper. “Stop saying that, Mother. You sound like them.” He nods at the door, where Alistair’s tied to a support beam. “Like I had a choice.”“You did,” Draven says. He’s human. Naked under a blanket, because shifting back took the last of him. “You chose us.”“Yeah, well.” Eli flexes his fingers. Knuckles crack. “Regret’s for people with time.”Cove’s curled at his feet. Head on Eli’s knee. Like if he lets go, Eli’ll blow away. Ash leans on the table, fire cold. Creek sits in the corner, vines threading through his fingers, trying to give the room life. Sk

Chapter 39: Answering

The south gate closes.Three hours later, the sky answers.No missiles. No jets. No drones.Letters.Thousands of them.Paper. Real paper. Falling like ash over Duskbane. Over the stone that used to be glass. Over the pack. Over the mountain.The first one hits my palm.Folded. Military grade. Addressed by hand.Wren Duskbane.I open it.One sentence.We believe you.Draven catches the next. Then Wrath. Then Rowan. Then the Hollow, the Thorns, the pups.All the same.We believe you.No signature. No seal. Just those three words.“Psych op,” Caiden says, crushing his in his fist. “Make us doubt. Make us—”“Look.” Sky points.East ridge.People.Not soldiers. Not D.C.Civilians.Hundreds. Thousands. Coming up the old logging road. On foot. Cars dead behind them, lined up for miles. They carry kids. Bags. Nothing else.And they’re all holding letters.Rowan’s got his drone up. Screen shakes. “It’s not just here. Seattle. Boise. Portland. Salt Lake. They’re walking. To us.” He looks at me

Chapter 40: Roots

The first family crosses the gate.The Tree answers.Stone cracks. Black earth rolls out from Duskbane like a shadow, swallowing glass, swallowing scrub, swallowing everything D.C. ever called wasteland. Ten miles. Twenty. It doesn’t stop until it hits the old highway.And then it grows.Wheat. Not gold. Green. Young. Alive. It pushes through the soil in real time, a wave of life chasing the refugees’ feet. Springs punch through rock, cold water cutting new rivers across land that hasn’t seen rain in a decade.Creek laughs. Falls to his knees in the dirt and laughs until he cries. “It’s giving,” he chokes out. “It’s actually giving.”Because we didn’t bleed for it.We chose for it.Jonah’s mother is staring. At the wheat. At the water. At Cove, who’s got Jonah on his hip and is pressing a piece of bread into his hands. Bread that didn’t exist five minutes ago.“Eat,” Cove says. Soft. Brother to brother. “You’re safe now.”The woman looks at me. Then at Eli.Eli’s leaning on Draven. Se

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