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Home / Werewolf / Shattered By The Alpha / Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

All Chapters of Shattered By The Alpha : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

66 Chapters

CHAPTER 1

"You were an accident, Zara. The sooner you accept that, the easier your life gets."My father said that to me on my twelfth birthday. He was standing in the kitchen, coffee in hand, not even looking at me. I had just walked in wearing the dress Dara helped me pick out the night before. I thought maybe — just maybe — he would notice.He noticed I was in his way.I stepped aside. He walked out. And I stood there in that yellow dress in the kitchen of the Beta's house and decided, right then, that I was done waiting to be seen by someone who had already made up his mind about me before I could even talk.That was five years ago.Now I am seventeen and I still live in this house, but I have learned to move through it like air — present, necessary for survival, completely unnoticed.My name is Zara Cole. My father is the Beta of Ironveil Pack. My brother Bren is going to take that title when he graduates. I am the girl whose mother died bringing her into the world, and in a pack that feed

CHAPTER 2

"You're blocking the hallway again," Nia says. "Is that, like, your thing? Taking up space where nobody wants you?"I count four tiles between my left foot and the lockers. I have seventeen seconds before the first bell. Bren is twenty feet ahead of me, deep in conversation with Theo and their group. He heard what she just said — every wolf in this hallway heard what she just said — and he hasn't turned around.He won't.I have stopped being surprised by that. What surprises me is how much it still hurts — just a small, sharp thing, like a paper cut in the same place every single day."I'm walking to class," I say, keeping my voice flat."Slowly." Nia smiles. "Very, very slowly. It's honestly impressive how little urgency you have about your own life."Jade is on my left. Petra is already moving behind me and I clock the shift in her weight half a second before she tries to step on the back of my shoe.I move my foot.She stumbles.It is small, fast, and looks accidental. Nia's eyes n

CHAPTER 3

My father is home when I get back. I know before I open the door — his car is in the driveway and the kitchen light is on, which means he is eating early and wants the house quiet.I come in through the side door."Zara."I stop. He is standing at the counter, still in his Beta uniform, a folder open in front of him. He does not look up."Yes, sir.""I heard there was a demonstration in intermediate training today." His voice is even. He has the ability to deliver bad news and good news in exactly the same tone, which means you never know which one you are getting until you are already inside it."Yes.""And you participated.""Commander Holt asked me to."A pause. He turns a page in the folder. "In front of the Alpha King's evaluator."My stomach tightens. "Yes."He finally looks up. My father has a face built for authority — square jaw, dark eyes, grey beginning to thread through his close-cut hair. He looks like a man who has never been uncertain about anything. I used to think tha

CHAPTER 4

The bruise on my forearm is purple and deep and runs from my wrist to the inside of my elbow. Nia didn't do this one. She has graduated past doing things herself. This was Jade, a hallway corner, and a very specific angle that left no visual evidence except to me.I don't report it. There is no point.What I do is put on a long-sleeved base layer under my training shirt, cover it with my standard hoodie, and go to five a.m. training like every other morning.I am at the east wall when Mira arrives beside me. She has figured out my arrival routine and times hers to match, which nobody else has ever done. She doesn't announce herself. She just shows up."How's the arm?" she asks quietly.I look at her. "How do you know about the arm?""I saw Jade's positioning in the B-corridor yesterday and when you came out of the corner you were favouring your left side." She doesn't say it like an accusation. Just information. "I wasn't fast enough to get there before it happened. Next time I will b

CHAPTER 5

I am at the east gate at six fifty-eight.The morning is cold, fog sitting low over the training grounds, the kind of pale grey morning that makes everything look like it hasn't decided to start yet. I have my running shoes on and my arms wrapped in two layers and my hair pulled back. I told myself on the way here that if this turns out to be something I didn't expect — something that feels wrong — I walk away. I have always known how to walk away.Kade is already there.He is in plain gear again, nothing with rank on it, and he has his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the tree line. He looks like a man who is comfortable with silence, which in my experience is either a very good sign or the sign of someone who does not feel the need to fill space because they already control it."You came," he says."I was curious," I say. "I'm here for twelve minutes and if you say something I don't like, I'm gone in less."He nods. No pushback. "Fair."We start walking into the trail. Not runni

CHAPTER 6

Mira finds me before first period.She is waiting at the side entrance of the main building, back against the wall, arms crossed, and the expression on her face is the one I have learned in the short time I have known her to mean: I have information and you are not going to like it."Walk with me," she says.We take the long corridor that loops behind the science block. Fewer people. Better acoustics for private conversations, which is something I have known for three years and Mira figured out in her first week."Nia went to your father this morning," she says. "Before training. She was at the Beta house."I keep walking. My pace does not change. Inside my chest, something tightens like a wire being wound. "When?""Early. Petra's older sister lives two streets over. She saw Nia's car." Mira glances at me. "She told him you were drawing inappropriate attention from the Alpha King's evaluator."I stop."She framed it that way specifically," Mira says. "Not that you were performing well

CHAPTER 7

Holt refused.I learn this in pieces — first from Mira, then from the set of Holt's jaw at morning training, and then from the three words I overhear standing in the east corridor outside the administration block where I have absolutely no reason to be and where I am very carefully pretending to read a notice board."This evaluation process," Holt says from inside the room, his voice carrying the particular quiet of a man who does not need to raise it, "operates under the authority of the Alpha King. Not the pack Beta."My father's voice, lower, controlled: "She is my daughter and a member of this pack, and as Beta—""As Beta, you have jurisdiction over pack internal operations. The King's evaluation is not a pack internal operation." A pause. The kind of pause that has furniture in it. "I am not removing her." Silence.Then my father says it. Five words, in a voice I have never heard from him before — not cold, not commanding. Something stripped down to its core, something that sound

CHAPTER 8

Three days after Nia's visit to my father, Mira sits across from me at the east courtyard table with her phone face-down between us and a look on her face that means she has done something she probably should have asked me about first."I did some digging," she says."I can see that.""On Nia's father." She turns the phone over and slides it toward me. "Councilman Strand has sat on the pack's internal affairs committee for nine years. He chairs the sub-committee that handles formal complaints." She pauses to let that land. "Formal complaints from pack members. About other pack members."I look at the screen. It's a compiled list — dates, complaint reference numbers, disposition codes. I have spent enough time in this pack to know what disposed — no action means on a complaint file, which is what every single line on this list reads."How many?" I ask."Seventeen complaints in four years. Twelve of them filed by students or parents about incidents involving Nia." She takes the phone ba

CHAPTER 9

Kade partners me with Bren on Thursday.I don't react when he calls it. I don't look at Bren and I don't look at Kade. I walk to my mark and I wait and I breathe and I tell Raya: steady.She says: I know.The advanced session has six people, which means three pairs, and the pairing is not accidental — nothing Kade Voss does in a training context is accidental, I have learned this quickly. He pairs Mira with Colt, who is technically her closest match in size and speed. He takes Felix himself. And he puts me and Bren together in the center of the field where everyone can see.Bren and I have not trained directly against each other since we were children. Before the distance settled between us like sediment at the bottom of still water. Before he started standing on the other side of every room I walked into.He does not look at me when I take my place across from him. He rolls his right shoulder — a habit, a tell, he always does it before a drill he's uncertain about. I have watched him

CHAPTER 10

The storage box has been in my closet for two years.It belongs to Dara — or it did, before she left. She packed in a hurry the morning she got the call from her family and I helped her carry things to her car, and afterward I found this box in the back of my closet that she must have missed. I told myself I would contact her about it. I told myself that every week for the first six months, and then I stopped telling myself things about it and just left it there, pushed to the back behind my winter gear, behind the things I do not need and do not look at.I don't know why I open it tonight.Maybe it is my father's voice on repeat in my head — she is not the asset you think she is — and the particular way it has been sitting in my chest like a stone I cannot put down. Maybe it is Bren's face on the training field. Maybe it is something Raya has been nudging at all week that I have been refusing to follow.The box is not large. It has some of Dara's things — a scarf, a small leather not

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