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Chapter 39
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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
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 41
The full moon has arrived. She brings death with her.The ceremonial floors are somber; the pack hasn’t seen an execution in centuries, let alone one of this scale. Every adult pack member is in attendance, gathered on stands erected around the open curve of the ceremonial building. Owen struck down the condition that every member attend. He felt there was no reason for children to view the carnage of the proceedings.The mates of the condemned are squeezed into a separate set of risers, a box constructed below the observation balcony. They have to watch. They need to see what their mates’ treachery has wrought. And they’ve been positioned where the rest of the pack can see their anguish. Where everyone will watch them attending to their mates die.I spared our parents. They won’t have to watch Clare die.Owen, Tara, and I are the only ones who look down from the mezzanine, though Tara’s chair is behind and slightly to the right of mine. It keeps her from viewing the grounds. She
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 42
My sister is dead.I take a sip from my mug and gaze across the kitchen.It’s after midnight. The last of the thralls that work down here have left for the night. No one is around.No one except Xiao, stands patiently by the door while I sitter my mug of tea in silence.I’m sure she prefers the silence to the crying I sometimes do.It’s been a week since the full moon. Since I killed my sister.The most difficult part of grieving Clare is the proficiency that she knew someone would kill her. She was willing to sacrifice my life for her mate’s ambition. Or his revenge.Would she have grieved me? Would she have felt this same guilt?Xiao says something that, but it’s into the communication device on her wrist.She keeps her voice low, and I can’t hear what’s going on. It could be that Owen is looking for me; he’s been bossy and clingy since finding out about my pregnancy.Of course, when I wanted him to give a damn about me, he was foreign. Now, when all I need is space, he’s constantly
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 43
Be nice, I implore silently as Owen stares Xiao down across his desk. I sit beside him, close enough that I can feel how tense he is. It makes me want to give him a neck rub in compassion. And sympathy for Owen isn’t my default.“It’s not a common spell.” Xiao is in the middle of explaining “everything” as Owen urged. She’s remarkably cool under pressure; Owen isn’t just the king of the pack, but he holds power over thralls, as well. But she delivers the facts like she’s teaching a class. “Thralls use it sometimes when the spark is going out of a relationship or, in more unscrupulous cases, to trick someone into a relationship with them.”“And you practice this magic on werewolves? Without our approval?” Owen growls.“I’ve never heard of it before, but I’ve trained in defensive magic and combat, not love spells,” she replies.“Why didn’t you comment on this to us before?” I wonder aloud. “Why haven’t any of the thralls mentioned it?”“I can only speak for myself, but I thought you we
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 44
“It’s about breeding.”I blink in horror at the Hierophant’s words. The last thing I want a room of strangers thinking about is that. On the other hand, at least two people in the room saw it in progress at our mating ritual.My face gets hot.We’re in the council chamber, but thankfully, there’s no audience and only two members of the council. They’re both tall, dignified-looking gentlemen with transparent white hair and liver-spot Caucasian skin. The Skin, a subcommittee that handles thrall-werewolf relations, a thing I didn’t realize existed. I just inferred we all got along like one big, happy symbiote.The hierophant being here is surreal. I’ve never met him one-on-one, even now that I’m queen, and I’ve never seen him washing away just regular clothes and not his ceremonial garb. He wears glasses, too, with thick, red rims. They add an extra, wholly superfluous, air of authority to him.“Pardon me?” Owen asks, leaning slightly forward. We’re all seated around a large, round tab
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 45
The pack has a private plane, a sleek, elegant jet that can whisk us to London within the hour. I hardly have time to pack anything. Owen suggests we leave immediately and just buy what we need when we arrive, but the thought of leaving without even a toothbrush makes me panic, so he relents, and we go back to Aconitum Hall so I can put together a bug-out bag.I don’t even have time to brief Hannah or Tara on the situation before we’re off to the airport.“So, tell me where I can sit on this plane that you haven’t fucked your mistress?” I say as we climb the airstairs.Coming up behind me, he makes a noise like he’s thinking hard. “You might be able to swap seats with the flight attendant.”I resist the temptation to shove him down the stairs.“I’m joking,” he says as I reach the top and turn to glare at him. He drops a kiss on my forehead. “I promise.”I’m not sure I believe in him.When we enter, he has to duck down. “I’ve never even been on this jet.”“Haven’t you been king for a
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 46
It’s surreal to be back in London. Though I’ve only been gone a few months, it seems like a foreign place to me, despite having been my home for five years.Of course, the area we’re in isn’t exactly where I used to hang out. I hadn’t exactly been working with 18th-century-palace money.“Is it this abandoned down here all the time?” I ask as we turn down a practically empty street.Owen looks up from his phone, which has been pinging like crazy ever since we landed. “Hmm?”“The area… seems kinda… dead.” This is fitting because the buildings we pass look like mausoleums.“I’m not sure. I’ve never been to the royal residence. I know it’s fairly close to the human royal home, though,” he says. “Where did you stay while you were here?”“Not anywhere you’d be familiar with.” I leave it at that because we pull up to the curb of a not-super-impressive-looking house. It’s a bit dingy, compared to the other facades on the street, but it’s nearly four times as wide as the townhouses around it.
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 47
The moment the dawn sky lightens, my brain stops sleeping.“Do you think my uncle did this to us?”“Jeez!” I press my hand to my chest to stop my heart from leaving my body. “What the fuck, Owen!”“I couldn’t sleep.” He’s lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, barely blinking.“I almost peed the bed!” Talking of which…I set my feet on the floor and headed for the bathroom. When I come back, Owen hasn’t changed position at all.“Are you having some kind of crisis?” I ask, sliding back in beside him.“My uncle didn’t trust thralls,” he murmurs. “Why would he turn to them to do anything against me?”“What if he didn’t mean it as a bad thing?” I suggest, with the caveat, “If he did it at all.”Owen sighs deeply.I scoot up close and throw my arm over his chest. He still hasn’t gotten a haircut, and a curl falls into his eyes. I would move it aside, but I’m lying on my only hand. “Maybe it was an accident.”“I don’t think the populace accidentally put spells on other people,”
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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
