Leo pushed Andrea off him and he slumped down onto the floor, his eyes wide open at the night sky and his limbs as still as the air.
He didn't blink. His chest didn't rise and fall in breath. There was no beating of a heart inside his r
I woke in the soft sheets of my bed, slowly opening my eyes to see Max and Milly sat at my feet."Hey," Milly said softly, reaching for my hand.
"You can't be here," I said at long last."You have every right to be hesitant," he replied, his voice getting hoarser. "But I won't hurt you. I can't hurt you. I'm dying."
A few hours later, Leo and I walked hand in hand through the hospital until we reached the room labelled 'Luca Romano'.He grinned widely as he saw us through the window and started wiggling his legs like an excited child.
The Fifth Book in the Alpha Loren Series coming to GoodNovel now!The Rise of the AlphaThere are few things you can do as Alpha of the Stella pack without attracting unwanted attention. Going off the rails months before inheriting the Alphaship isn't one of them.The fate of the Stella pack rested on Cato's shoulders. That's an enormous weight for a sixteen-year-old, and as his seventeenth birthday neared, it grew unbearable. So he turns to drugs and crime, leaving the pack vulnerable to opportunistic enemies.But with trouble bubbling on the horizon and everything at stake, will Cato rise to defeat it? Or will the great Stella pack finally meet its end?
PrologueDear reader,Life is a road.Whether we travel it skipping and singing or dragging our feet, we all have a journey to make. Us ordinary people navigate our own way through the maze of junctions and turnings to where we want to be. Some of us get lost along the way, some find other destinations before the right one, but it’s all part of the adventure we call life.Cato Loren’s road was a little different.On the day he was born, it was paved from beginning to end in a straight, untwisting, unwavering line. No exits, no slip lanes, no laybys. Each sign pointed to one destination: becoming Alpha.This doesn’t sound like the makings for a particularly interesting story. A child is born and seventeen years later he becomes an Alpha. That's it, right?If only it could have been that simple…
December 19th - six months before Cato becomes AlphaLeo's point of viewIt was past midnight, and the forest was deadly dark. Thick clouds covered the moon, but I had the gravelly snarls of my men and the wretched stench of rogues to follow. As rain fell, I pulled my hood over my head, but the water soaked through, oozing into my clothes and sticking to my skin.“Alpha,” Blair said as I emerged from the forest.A circle of my men in wolf form surrounded six strangers. Their hair was matted, their clothes ripped, and each one shook as my men snarled and growled.“They were found crossing the Northern border,” Blair said, standing next to me and folding his arms, “Rogues for sure.”Terror gripped their faces as rain streamed down their foreheads, dripping from their noses and running over their lips.What a miserable way to die.“Bring one to me.”Blair stepped th
June 20th - six months before Cato becomes AlphaElla’s point of view“Stefano, Zacharias!” I shouted across the room, “No fighting in the house!”My two youngest sons, nine and ten years old, were rolling on the carpet, grabbing each other’s shirts. They were dangerously close to the TV, which after an incident involving a baseball bat and an apple, was already the second one we’d had this year.Meanwhile, my youngest child, Ana, screamed her lungs out. She was two years old, the heart of the tantrum phase, and five minutes ago, I dared to suggest bath time.“Mathias, where’s Cato?” I asked over the noise as my second eldest son appeared, grimacing at the chaos.He shrugged and plugged his ears.“Can you shut them up?” he said, “I’m trying to study.”“I’m trying, Mathias,” I said, lifting Ana
June 20thElla’s point of viewWhen we got to the station, I marched straight to the woman at the front desk.“Hi, I’m here to collect my son. His name is-”“Cato Loren, yes I know ma’am. You were here last week. But I’m afraid it won’t be as easy this time.”“What do you mean?”“The sheriff will explain. If you could take a seat, he’ll be there soon,” she said, gesturing to the uncomfortable plastic seats in the hall.I sat for five minutes with Ana on my knee and Madeleine by my side before the sheriff came out.“You must be Ella Loren. This way.”“Best behaviour, okay girls?” I whispered to my daughters as we followed him.“You should leave the little ones with my colleague,” he said with a grave look on his face.I eyed the colleague. She ha