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Chapter 45
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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,”
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 48
Our arrival in London hasn’t gone unnoticed. I’m barely done with my oatmeal before my day is planned out for me. The largest chunk of my time today will be taken up by a royal audience to receive members of the pack and introduce them to their new queen.I don’t have Hannah or Tara with me. Technically, Hannah’s job isn’t to be my stylist, but she does help me pick things out. And Tara understands all the flaws I’m self-conscious about because they were put there by our mother. She’s never going to let me go out in something that makes my hips look big or my neck looks short.Instead, I have a thrall who comes and tuts and frowns and tilts her head this way and that before eventually giving up, I guess, and putting me in a mauve silk gown with an empire waist and a gauzy split overlay skirt. She gives me white elbow-length gloves that I have to politely explain will look goofy as heck on someone with no hand. In the end, she works a little magic with a curling iron so my hair falls
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 49
It’s so late it’s beginning to qualify as early when we leave Wyrding House, and we sneak out like grounded teenagers. We’re not dressed with a royal vibe; I’ve got on an impossibly short, super clingy long-sleeve mini-dress in a despicable lime and fluorescent yellow print, and Owen is wearing gray track pants, a plain black tee shirt, and a black denim jacket with a gray hood.“You look like an undercover cop,” I whisper, leaning on him so I don’t fall off my ridiculous Lucite heels. My ponytail is so high and tight that I feel like my scalp is going to pop off, and I’m fairly certain I can feel the night air on my butt cheeks.When I slide into the leather passenger seat of the waiting car, I whoop with shock at the cold.“And you look like you belong on a sleazy reality dating show,” he quips back. “At least one of us will fit in.”Owen pulls away from the curb and doesn’t turn the car’s lights on until we’re a few streets away from the square.“Is this dangerous?” I ask, casting
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 50
Jonah takes us to a back office that leads to another back office that opens up to a storage room with a very scary catwalk staircase up to the moment floor. I’m pretty sure we’re about to be killed when Jonah ushers us up it and through a beaded curtain, into a room lit up with black light.The floor is painted black, with sigils and symbols in glowing phosphorescent colors. There are bean bag chairs scattered around the perimeter of the room and an impressively tall hookah in one corner. Shelves hold jars of herbs and dirt and murky liquids I want nothing to do with.“So, where do we…” I look around. The bean bags are one disgusting option, judging from the very unflattering smears and spatter the black lights are revealing.Jonah’s teeth glow comically blue in the light. “Hey, that’s up to you. Just not on the worktable.”He’s talking about the huge workbench tucked into an L-shaped corner. He opens a laptop and types something in.“No spell books? Dusty scrolls?” Owen quips.“Magi
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 51
We stagger back into Wyrding House just before sun-up and strip out of our “disguises.”“I need to take like four showers and burn this dress,” I say with a grimace, holding the garment up with two fingers. “I cannot believe how foul that room was.”“Blacklight is perhaps not the best choice of illumination there,” Owen agrees. “But you should consider getting some sleep before it rains.”“I just shot up a Red Bull two hours ago,” I reminded him. “I’m up.”He glances toward the bathroom. “What about a soak?”There’s a jacuzzi tub big enough for two in the bathroom, and just the suggestion of it is a siren call to my sore body. “You’ve convinced me.”A little while later, Owen and I are immersed up to our necks in the ridiculously deep tub. We lean against opposite sides, his legs on either side of me, my feet on his shoulders.“Do you think the spell will still work, now that we know it’s there?” I ask, wriggling my wrinkly toes against his cheek playfully.He pushes my foot aside wit
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 52
Blood.It’s blood on my hands, across the front of my gown. I cast my gaze to my sisters, first; Clare and Tara are both wide-eyed, but I see no obvious wounds on them.The acolyte is on the ground, a throwing knife lodged in her spurting throat.“Protect the queen!” someone shouts.It’s Owen.I throw my hand out to grab him. I need an anchor in the chaos. He would never let them hurt me, never let—He grunts in pain and staggers back. More blood splashes across my gown and I scream.Someone grabs me, and I’m torn from Owen’s side. The last thing I hear him say is, “Get the queen to safety!”“What’s going on?” Tara cries as the thrall guard drags us into the empty ballroom.I look back at the crowd as the doors close and fear claws up my throat.“Take them to the residence,” the head guard orders. “I want shutters, spike strips, nobody leaves through the front gate.”I blink at him, thinking he’s talking to me, but he’s speaking into his wire. Someone grabs me by the arm and physicall
Captured by the Alpha King Chapter 53
It takes two hours to round up all of the traitors on the property. There’s still no word from Hannah or Ryan, though that could be because I get a shitty mobile signal in the safe room.Tara’s condition has improved greatly, though the medics continue to monitor her. Owen, however…Once he’s stabilized, I sit by his bedside, just eyeing his labored breathing. They’ve got him on oxygen, too, and they’ve put a sterile barrier over his wound. They sewed up some gory slashes on his face. Now, all anyone can do is sit tight until the surgeon from Greater London can arrive.“Your Majesty,” the medic in charge of his care says softly, breaking my attention away from the rise and fall of Owen’s chest.“Your Majesty,” the thrall says again, “I would be remiss if I didn’t ask again for you to permit a closer surgeon—”“No. I told you, no one from the Toronto pack.” I’m too tired to be regal and furious but I’m tired of being asked the question. “Honestly, you’re all only here because I can’t k
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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
