Library

Search

Home / Werewolf / Her Second Chance Alpha / Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

All Chapters of Her Second Chance Alpha: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

69 Chapters

Chapter 21

ETHANThe second Freya stopped moving through the trees, my wolf felt it.I couldn't have explained the feeling to someone who'd never experienced it. It was like a wire pulled tight inside my chest, from a direction that didn't come from my head but from somewhere completely different. Before I knew it I was already moving without even making a decision. I was already at the trees when I heard the second wolf hit her.I rushed through the clearing fast and I didn't slow down.The two rogues scattered quickly when they saw me, but not fast enough. I took down the closest one before he made it three steps and the second one I caught at the edge of the tree line. I didn't kill them even though I wanted to. I made them understand very clearly that leaving was the only option they were going to get, and they took it immediately.Lena was already gone. I heard her crashing through the brush to the north and I marked the direction, filing it away for later. She wasn't my priority right now.

Chapter 22

FREYAThere was a spot by the river that my father used to take me to when I was little. It was nothing special, just a flat rock that stuck out over the water and a cluster of old oak trees that blocked the wind. He used to say it was the one place where the river was loud enough to drown everything else out. I hadn't been there in years. But when I left Ethan's house that morning, that was exactly where my feet decided to go.I parked at the end of the old logging road and walked the rest of the way through the trees. The morning air was cold and it smelled like dirt, wet bark, and something green. My ribs still ached where the rogue's claws had caught me, but I didn't really feel it. I was too busy feeling everything else.When I got to the flat rock, I sat down. And then, because no one was around and the river was loud enough and my father had always said that was the whole point, I screamed.I screamed about Brian and Lena, and about years of being the quiet, grateful girl who

Chapter 23

ETHANThe way she said my name made my stomach drop. Not because she was angry, though that would have come eventually. Not because she looked hurt, though it was already happening. It was the way she looked at me like she was bracing for something. Like she'd been let down enough times in her life that her body had learned to get ready for it automatically.I hated that look. I'd hated it every single time I'd seen it and this time it was pointed at me."Ethan." She didn't move. "What was Brian talking about?"I took a breath. "It's complicated.""Try me."I ran a hand through my hair. "Our fathers knew each other," I said. "Better than either pack ever made public. They used to meet out here—on the neutral land between both packs—about twice a year for almost a decade. I was twelve the first time my father took me to one of those meetings. Your father was there. You weren't."She was watching me without blinking. "Keep going.""The mines sit between Northern and Norwood Pack territ

Chapter 24

FREYAI was up before Ethan finished pulling on his boots.We didn't say much on the drive there. There wasn't really anything to say. Corin’s report came through in fragments: there was fire at the east entrance, workers were still inside the facility, and at least one structural collapse near the main shaft. Every piece of information was worse than the last and I sat in the passenger seat with my hands on my thighs, counting my breaths because that was the only useful thing I could do in a moving car.We smelled the smoke before we even saw it.When we pulled up to the site it was already bad. The east side of the main building was open to the sky, one wall was just gone, and thick plumes of smoke were pouring out of the pipes. There were workers clustered at the far end of the yard, some of them shifted partly and pacing, while others were just standing very still in shock.I was out of the car before it fully stopped.Ethan was already organizing his soldiers, directing them to

Chapter 25

ETHANThe archive break-in was clean. Too clean.Whoever had done it had known the layout, the guard rotation, and exactly which cabinet to go to. They'd taken physical copies of mating records going back forty years and pulled three important files from the digital system without triggering the main alert until they were already gone. That last part—the delayed alert—was what told me everything I needed to know. Only someone with internal access could have set that up.We had a traitor.Freya didn't flinch when I told her. She sat opposite me in the archive building's front office with coffee going cold in her hands and said, "Okay. Then we’ll find them." Just like that, like it was the obvious next step."You don't have to be part of this," I said.She looked at me over the cup. "My father's mating agreements are in those records. Whatever they were looking for is connected to everything. So yes, I do."We spent the next four days cross-referencing access logins, pulling security f

Chapter 26

FREYAThe comments online were bad. Really, really bad.I made the mistake of scrolling through them at seven in the morning while still in bed, wrapped in Ethan's sheets that still smelled like him, and I had to put my phone face down after about three minutes because my hands started shaking.Weak. Traitor. Gold-digger. Whore.Someone had made a whole thread comparing me to Lena, calling us both the same kind of woman. I placed my back against the headboard and stared at the ceiling for a long time.Brian's statement had done its job. It hadn't just questioned my claim to the territory. It had gone after me as a person, and people had picked it up and run with it just like that. Every online forum, werewolf news page, and comment section was full of people who had never met me in their lives deciding exactly what kind of woman I was.I knew I wasn't supposed to let it get to me. I knew that.But it did.Annie called at eight. I didn't pick up. She texted immediately after: "Freya. I

Chapter 27

ETHANShe went quiet.Immediately I could tell this was the kind of silence where she was thinking something through and would tell me in a minute. This was the other kind where she was closing something off inside herself and she thought I couldn't see it.I could see it. I'd been watching her long enough to know the difference.She sat on the edge of the bed with her back straight, hands in her lap, and face completely still, and I knew her mind was somewhere far away from the room even though she was right here in front of me. The video had done that to her because it confirmed every fear she'd been keeping under control since Brian's statement dropped."Freya.""I'm fine.""You said that this morning too.""And I was fine this morning.""You were hiding under a blanket."She looked at me then, and for just a second I could see all of it right there on her face. The exhaustion. The hurt. The anger she hadn't let herself feel yet. She blinked and it went away, locked back behind th

Chapter 28

FREYAMy heart was beating so fast that I could hear it.I was standing in the middle of the Norwood Pack’s hall, which I had not been inside in over two years, and every single person in the room was looking at me like I'd just walked in on fire. The ceiling was high, the lights were bright, and the council table was in a horseshoe shape in front of me with twelve faces behind it, and not one of them looked pleased.Brian was at the far end, standing rather than sitting. He'd gotten there fast. Either someone had called him or he'd been somewhere close. He was in a dark jacket with his arms folded and his face completely unreadable.Lena was two steps behind him, which told me everything I needed to know about how things had changed since I left.I squared my shoulders and spoke before anyone could ask what I was doing there."I'm issuing a formal challenge for my family's territory," I said. " As is my right under the law."The room went completely silent.I mean completely. Someone

Chapter 29

ETHANThree days wasn't long but we used every hour of them.I started training Freya the morning after she issued the challenge, out in the open field behind the Northern Pack house where the trees were close and the ground was soft enough for a fall. She showed up at six in the morning in workout gear with her hair pulled back and the look on her face that meant she'd already been awake for a while thinking about it."You know I'm not going to go easy on you," I told her."Good," she said. "Don't."She wasn't wrong that she wasn't physically Brian's match, but she was faster than she thought she was, and she was smart in a way that mattered more than muscle most of the time. I spent the first day working on defense, how to detect a shift before it happened, how to use momentum instead of strength, and how to stay calm when something big was coming at you.She was a good student. She listened, she adjusted, and when she made a mistake it never happened again.By the second day, she

Chapter 30

FREYAThe world tilted sideways.That was the only way I could describe it. One second I was on one knee, fighting to stay upright, and the next the ground felt like it was moving under me. The dust from that bag was still hanging in the air, pale and thin, and every breath I pulled in made it worse. My wolf was completely silent inside me. That never happened. Not once in my entire life had she gone that quiet, and the absence of her felt like a hole had been punched straight through my chest.I blinked hard and looked up.Brian's wolf had stopped moving. He was standing a few feet away, his big dark form still, and even through the fog that was filling my head I could see he looked confused, almost panicked. That told me one thing very clearly: he hadn't known about this.Lena had done this on her own.I found her in the crowd near the low wall where the bag had come from. She was standing with her arms folded and a small smile on her face, like she thought she'd already won.Somet

PREV

NEXT

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP

DMCA.com Protection Status