All Chapters of The Alpha's Cursed Bride : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

ORION The northern lords had not sent word ahead because they had not wanted to give him time to prepare. He understood that within two minutes of receiving them in the great hall. Lord Aldric Vane, eldest of the three, head of the Vane Pack, with the particular stillness of a man who had been making calculated moves in wolf politics for forty years, did not sit down when invited. He stood at the center of the hall with his two companions flanking him and looked at the room with the slow assessment of someone taking inventory. Orion stood at the head of it. Caius to his left, two garrison officers behind. The household had assembled along the walls as directed stewards, senior staff, the Covenant witness who was still in residence, and had come because formal assemblies were within her mandate to observe. Vessa was in the hall. She had positioned herself near the middle of the room, close enough to Orion's side of it to read as allied but not close enough to be called presumptu

ORIONThe runner had come from the southern border.Not one of his regular intelligence networks, a contact Caius had built over years of quiet investment in people who occupied overlooked positions in important rooms. A steward in a southern pack house who had access to correspondence he was not supposed to read and had been paid, modestly and reliably, to report anything that connected to the Fenwick name.The report was three pages long. Caius set it on the war room table and stood back and watched him read it.Orion read it twice. Then he set it down and looked at the wall."They know," he said."Everything that was in the challenge letter they sent us was strategic positioning," Caius said. "The fourth paragraph about the human Luna was not about politics. That was intelligence. They know about the curse. Not just that it exists. The specific conditions.""The marriage must produce an heir.""And more than that." Caius paused. "According to this, they know an heir has not yet bee

ORIONShe came to the war room an hour after the training session ended.He had been expecting her. Not because she had said she needed to find him; he had already been walking away when she went back inside but because the morning had the particular shape of a day that was not finished. The training, the intelligence, the name in the report. Things had been converging since the runner arrived and they were not done converging yet.She came in without knocking, which she had never done before. She was still in her training clothes and her hair had come partly loose and she was holding a letter with both hands and she looked at him with an expression he had not seen on her face before.Not the composure. Not the calculation. Something stripped entirely bare."Read it," she said and held the letter out to him.He took it.The handwriting was neat and careful, slightly aged for someone who had learned to write in the formal Thorne household style and still carried it. The salutation was

ORIONThey rode out at dawn on the fifth day.The escort was six wolves the smallest number that was defensible given the faction's timeline, the largest that was practical for the speed the summit required. Caius had left two days prior, south and quiet, carrying Edra's letter and the intelligence report and instructions Orion had spent an evening composing with more care than most of his military correspondence.Vessa had asked if she should accompany them to the summit.He had told her no.He had watched her face when he said it and he had seen the thing she did not say and he had said nothing in response because the time for that particular conversation had not yet arrived and he wanted to arrive at it with more information than he currently had. She was still in the guest quarters. She would stay there until he knew more.The morning was cold and clear. The Keep receded behind them as they rode down the mountain track and he did not look back at it, which was a thing he never did

ORIONThe summit fire was the largest one, the one the allied packs built and maintained together as a neutral point, and it was where the formal arrivals happened, where you rode in, and where the assessment began.He had been to seven territory summits in his eight years as Alpha. He knew the rhythms of them. The formal greeting, the positioning around the fire, and the way the first hour was never about the stated purpose of the summit but about the reading of everyone present. Who had come with strength, who had come with trouble, who was watching what and why.He rode into the valley with Nyra beside him and felt the shift in the assembled alphas the moment they saw her.Not hostility. Not the aggressive challenge response of wolves confronting an intruder. Something more complicated is the particular attention of a group of people encountering something that does not fit the expected pattern and recalibrating in real time. A human woman, riding beside the Fenwick Alpha as though