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Chapter 32
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Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 33
I don’t help Owen find out “if it still works” that night, but a nagging voice in my head tells me that if I don’t, Amber will.I’m not sure if I believe him when he says they don’t go all the way. His logic makes sense; birth control isn’t a guarantee with werewolves. Plus, as king, he definitely wouldn’t want to endanger the future claims of our heirs.And if he did, he got the former queen pregnant…As Henry VIII is, I have to get pregnant before she does.So, I send Owen a message the next morning stating that if he can walk from his bed to mine, we can find out “if it still works.”During the day, the only thing I’m focused on, though, is actual work. While Owen might believe he’s going to dive back into running both packs, there are too many things I’ve started that I need to finish. Namely, an integrated council between the packs. I know that people in Toronto, maybe even people in the Greater London pack won’t like it, but keeping the two packs operating separately won’t work
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 34
Werewolves only change at the full moon. Only with the ceremony.But this one changes in my sitting room.There aren’t any real weapons around me; I grab a fork from the breakfast table. The werewolf’s jaws snap at my face as I dodge backward. He manages to grab me, opens his mouth to roar, and I jam the fork into his mouth, into his soft palate.And then he bites down and my arm comes away.I stagger backward, speechless with disbelief for just a second because it’s disconcerting to see your hand detached from your body. But then the pain hits me and I’m not speechless anymore. Somehow, I managed to scream out, guards. Then, I can’t stop screaming it, higher and shriller as I topple the table between us to buy myself time. My blood sprays in an arc across the carpet; that’s not something I can buy time for. I’m already dizzy, but I can’t turn my back on him. I have to focus. I have to focus.It’s not even a nanosecond, but it feels like a lifetime before the thralls enter. The firs
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 35
I don’t let myself malinger. As soon as I can convince the doctors to get the IVs out of me and the pain meds lowered enough to be that I can walk without swaying, I’m back in my office.Li Xiao doesn’t like my office. I can tell on the first day because she paces until it freaks me out.“I know this is a weird thing to say since I did just have my hand bitten off by a werewolf, but maybe you could dial the hypervigilance back a notch,” I say, frowning down at my handwriting. It’s horrible. The guy took off my right hand, also my dominant hand. I should have thought of that before firing on with the fork. Now, I have to try to learn how to write legibly with the left.There’s a knock on the door; it’s Hannah, we can both tell from the pattern. I nod, and Li Xiao unlocks the door, hand on the taser at her hip just in case.“What are you doing?” Hannah asks, nodding toward the paper on the desk.“Practicing.” I push the scribbles away and drop the pen.“You could always just type,” sh
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 36
The throne room doors open and suddenly, all I see are images from the night my family and I had been forced, terrified, into vans and brought before the king.I look over at Owen. His utterance is cold, just like it had been that night. For the first time since then, I’m afraid of him.My lungs heave for breath, and I can’t stop swallowing. I’m trembling. I’m going to cry.A hand touches my shoulder, squeezes reassuringly. The contact is so brief that by the time I look up at Xiao, it’s already over. She hasn’t stopped scanning the crowd.How did she know I needed that assistance? That I wouldn’t object to it? This isn’t the first time she’s been eerily tuned into me.I’m unnerved and comforted all at once.The room is arranged differently than it had been that awful night. There are more seats. Enough for at least a hundred people. They’re in a semicircle but parted by a single aisle; the thralls escort the sometimes-resistant werewolves down the outside and fill them into the midd
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 37
Tara comes to see me while I’m still changing out of my gown. She bursts into my dressing room and virtually pushes Hannah down to get to me.I hold my injured arm out of the way, so she won’t accidentally bang into it when she collides with me and dresses me in a strong hug.“What happened to you?” she cries against my hair.How does she not know? It’s the whole reason she was—and Clare still is—under lock and key. “Nothing told you what was going on?”Tara steps back, shaking her head, eyes fixed on where my hand should be. “They said the king ordered a further examination of our husbands’ plot. What happened to your hand?”“An assassin bit it off,” I say, more concerned with what was going on while I regained. Especially since Tara goes pale, clearly receiving this information for the very first time. “You had no idea I was attacked?”“No! And I don’t understand…how did an assassin bite your hand off?” She still can’t take her eyes off my bandaged stump. “How could anyone possibly—
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 38
I’m on the sofa in my office, my laptop on my chest, chin tucked down very attractively, I’m sure when Owen enters. He murmurs a dismissal to the guard at the door; Xiao hit her limit of work hours a while ago.“What are you doing?” he asks softly.“Watching a body terminology expert on YouTube.” I close the lid and precariously move the laptop to the floor. I can’t wait until my other arm isn’t so sore that I can’t use it to carry things. “Trying to learn how to catch liars.”Owen is shirtless, wearing gray sweatpants, of all things. I assume that means he’s fresh out of bed with his mistress. Or, he didn’t get any and now he thinks those stupid gray sweatpants that are ridiculously positive of the bulge region are going to tempt me.That’s not out of the question, as furious with him as I am.He comes to the sofa and lifts my feet, putting them in his lap when he sits. “Do you think human psychology works on werewolves?”I raise an eyebrow. “I didn’t say I was going to use it on
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 39
I laugh in Owen’s face.“I’m not joking.” He laughs, but not in disbelief. He’s overjoyed.“Right.” I’m not falling for it. “You can’t possibly tell that from some pussy juice.”He arches an eyebrow. “I’m more than willing to check again.”I smack his shoulder. “Be serious!”“I am being serious. Ella, I know you inside and out, physically. You smell different, you taste different,” he holds up his hands to demonstrate his helplessness. “I wouldn’t joke about something I want so badly.”That’s a good point. Owen does want an heir. It doesn’t seem like something he would joke about.But I can’t get my head around it. Not just the part where he can tell from the way I taste, but the fact that he noticed before I did. That he noticed something the thralls didn’t even notice.“They did surgery on me, though. They must have tested me.”“It would have been too soon to tell,” he reminds me. “You were fired on the morning after the last time we had sex.”He’s right. That would have been way to
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 40
Despite Owen’s insistence to the contrary, I want to see Clare.I have to see her.Owen tells me firmly that he’s going with me, if only on the car ride. His presence is oddly touching, though I know it has more to do with protecting his pregnant mate than emotionally budgeting me.The pack’s dungeons are located at the ceremonial grounds, beneath the council building. We pull up to the front doors and Owen takes my hand. “You’re sure you don’t need me.”“I just need to see my sister alone,” I tell him. Again.It’s not like she’d be thrilled to see him, anyway. He’s the one who threw her in the dungeon.The royal flags on the front of the car are enough to gain me immediate entrance to the building, and the first security thrall I meet inside takes me down to Clare’s cell, no questions asked. I wonder if that’s Owen’s doing, too.The penitentiary is exactly what the word invokes. Deep below the earth, with cold stone walls slick with mold and damp, it’s probably the same foundation bu
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Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 66
We plan furiously, and fast. Xiao secures a location, a tiny cabin that’s way off the grid in Manitoba. We’ll be isolated from the world, but most importantly, from the pack; they don’t know that our thralls have hideouts all over Canada.Even though she only has to make a few calls, we decide not to let anyone know that we’re leaving. Yet again, we’re bugging out. We’re leaving our kingdom because our subjects want us dead.It’s almost midnight when Owen and I go to my bedroom, and I start hauling out all my luggage.“You don’t have to pack tonight,” he says gently.I don’t look at him. “I don’t have to. But I’m going to.”“You’ll tire yourself out. We’ll have a long drive tomorrow.”I shake my head. “Then I can sleep on the drive.”Owen comes to my side and puts his hand on my arm. “Ella… don’t do this to yourself.”“Don’t do what?” I snap. “Take anything with me to fucking Manitoba? Just resign myself to dying in the wilderness, ripped apart by polar bears?”He doesn’t get angry a
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 65
Do the thralls want to exterminate werewolves? “That doesn’t make any sense. They need us—”“Needed us,” Tara stresses in the past tense. “They have all the arcane knowledge they need now, except for one thing.”“Dominion over life and death.” Owen stands and paces the length of the room.The earlier sense of proactive hope sucks from the room.“They forced you two to breed,” Hannah says. “Dominion over life.”“There’s more.” Tara steers us back toward her research. “After the gods fall and the earth is submerged in water, life begins again. Two humans survive Ragnarök: Lifthrasir and Lif.”“How do they survive the end of the world,” I ask, silently tacking on and who would want to?“They hide. They run away to the woods and hide until everything is over,” Tara says with a shrug. “And when they come out, they repopulate the world.”“That would be dominion over death, wouldn’t it?” Owen suggests. “Rebuilding anew on top of that destruction?”“Are the thralls acting out Ragnarök, then?
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 64
Two days later, we had a secret meeting in the conference room at Aconitum Hall. Just Owen, me, Hannah, Ryan, and of course, Xiao, who stands by, guarding the door.Hannah has us all set up, with whiteboards and different colored markers— “to stay organized!”—as well as notebooks, pens, highlighters, and all types of stuff we don’t need.“You just wanted to take a trip to the office supply store,” I accused her.“I can neither confirm nor deny,” she answers, contentedly stroking a pack of gel pens.“While the abundance of stationary is impressive,” Owen begins, “Let’s start with what we know so far.”The whiteboard reads and writes “weeks” in the upper left corner.All of us, even Xiao, make alarmed noises at the chaotic shape of the letters.“How about someone with better handwriting?” Ryan suggests, tacking on a hasty, Nono offense, Your Majesty.”“He doesn’t get to take offense here,” I remind Ryan. “Remember, this is informal.”“Well, who has better handwriting?” Owen demands, an
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 63
Somehow, in all the ugliness of pack politics and multiple attempts on my life, I forgot about prenatal care.I’m just not sure how to get it, at first. Thralls are in charge of all of our medical care, and I don’t know how much we want them to know. But Owen and I decided that we couldn’t take a chance with the baby’s life.As we wait in the exam room, looking at all the posters of werewolf fetal development and the plastic anatomical model of the baby’s head in the birth canal—no thank you—I find the situation becoming more real by the second.“Did you ever think you’d have kids?” I ask Owen, who’s looking over a pamphlet about the first trimester.He lifts his eyebrows and folds the pamphlet before neatly tucking it into his inside jacket pocket. “I assumed I would. In a hypothetical, detached kind of way. There’s so much pressure to find a mate and breed right away. That’s never appealed to me.”“It’s not so appealing to me, but here I am. In a paper gown.” I laugh nervously. “H
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 62
Tara is dressed all in black, seated on the sofa in the parlor adjoining her room and Clare’s. That door is closed, draped with black bunting.I sit in the chair perpendicular to the sofa and silently will my sister to look at me, to speak to me beyond the mumbled, “Your Majesty,” I got when she curtseyed formally at my entrance, or the offer of a beverage, which I refused.“How are you?” I ask finally.“It’s very lonely here,” she says flatly. “It was different, with Clare. More like when we lived at home before we were mated. We didn’t see each other much when you were away.”“Because you were newlyweds?”She nods.“I understand that,” I try, hating myself for even attempting to link my experience with hers. “Getting caught up in your mate’s life and drifting away from your own.”“It’s a bit different for you. You’re also caught up in being queen.” She finally makes eye contact with me. “Do you think that maybe you got too caught up in it? And that’s why…”She doesn’t finish her sen
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 61
We summoned council members to Aconitum Hall. The Council Chambers are at the ceremonial site, and the ceremonial site is where all the thralls are.It astonishes me that for centuries, no one—except Owen’s uncle, apparently—had cause to suspect the thralls as a source of potential treachery. It astonishes me more that now, with proof, convincing some members of the council is still nearly impossible.“We’ve overlooked a major threat,” I try to explain to the ten men seated around the large table in the conference room. There are only ten of them because we executed the others, which makes addressing this group that much more tricky. I don’t want them to think that they have to outwardly agree with me or I’ll cut their heads off, but that’s probably what’s going to happen. “Thralls are a part of our lives every day. They’re in our homes. They’re in our school, our businesses. And they’re content to do all of that and allow us to live in luxury and ease because they can harness our m
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 60
“Black moonstone.”Xiao drops the pendant, now enclosed in a plastic baggie, onto the table between Owen and me.He leans forward in his chair and reaches for the baggie, but I’m not taking any chances. I smack his hand away with an annoyed, “Don’t touch it!”I’m still shaking, Even though we’re on the plane and safely away from Wyrding House, I’m still terrified that yet another shoe is going to suddenly drop.I made Xiao threaten the thrall pilots and leave a member of her trusted team in the cockpit as a reminder.I am not going to die today.Xiao gestures to the unremarkable-looking cabochon in the pendant. “The assassin who took your hand had some in a bracelet. I think it’s fair to assume that this is what they’re using to change.”I shake my head. “Moonstone is a pretty common gem, isn’t it? I’ve never heard of it… this.”“Maybe that’s why we never heard of it,” Owen muses. “If we knew, perhaps we wouldn’t need the thralls and their rituals.”“There’s thrall magic involved here
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 59
We haven’t been at Wyrding House long enough to completely unpack; Harriet offers to help but I don’t like people going through my stuff. Plus, Owen and I barely bought anything with us in the first place.“I feel bad for Xiao,” I say, taking one of my shirts from the wardrobe and folding it over my arm. It ends up in a sloppy bundle, but it gets the job done enough that I can stuff it into my bag. “She just got here and now we’re turning right back around.”“I’m sure she prefers having you in a more secure location,” is all Owen says, moving far faster than I am.“Do you think they’re going to be breaking down the door any second?” I ask, trying to keep my tone light.“I think the longer we stay here, the more likely that becomes a possibility.” He zips his small, wheeled carry-on. “We have a pissed-off magician who could sell us out to the highest bidder and a house teeming with traitorous thralls.”“Only the below-stairs servants,” I say, mimicking Harriet’s pompous delivery.He
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 58
se are rough estimates.” Jonah looks between us. “Anything substantial happened to the two of you thirty and six years ago.”My stomach flips over.Five years ago, I invoked the Right of Accord and left my pack.Twenty-five-ish years before that, Owen had done the same thing.I expect to see those facts register on his face, but they don’t. My thoughts are such a jumble, that the only way I can express what’s going through my mind is to whisper, “The Right of Accord.”He blanches.Intrigued by the change in tone, Jonah sits up, giving us an interesting incline of his head. “All right, you two. Spill the beans.”Owen casts a questioning glance at me, but I can only shrug. I have no idea what the rules are about disclosing this information to a human magician. I wouldn’t tell a random human on the street about it, but he knows about werewolves already. Not telling him won’t keep our existence a secret.Owen comes to the same conclusion. “The Right of Accord is a rarely invoked law among
