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Chapter 119: The First Shoe Drops
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Mated in the Shadow of Betrayal Chapter 120: The Next Shoes Drop
(Piper POV)“W-what am I doing in the picture?”“Leaving, so that Mommy, Daddy, and I can be a family again.”I looked at Axel as he said the words, and his face was full of youthful innocence and sincerity.My heart stopped.And then… as I processed what he had just said… my heart broke into several pieces.“Y-you want me to leave?”Looking back on it, I know that it was silly of me to have felt hurt and offended. I mean, the pup had known me for all of ten minutes. But I did feel hurt and offended. And sad too.This was a pup who was incredibly important to Leo… my future husband… and he wanted me to leave.Because I was standing in the way of his mommy and daddy being together.I did not want to be that person. As much as I loved Leo, I did not want to be the one that stood in between a family.“We don’t even know if he is telling the truth,” Penelope linked me.“Pups normally don’t lie,” I responded.“Usually they don’t. But maybe he is. He is Ingrid’s spawn after all. Or m
Mated in the Shadow of Betrayal Chapter 121: Panic Room
(Piper POV)The packhouse alarms were blaring and we had been told to head to our panic rooms.Thankfully, Leo warned me about these security features on my first day here, so I knew what the alarms meant and what I was supposed to do. It was a blessing that I paid attention and remembered his warnings; I don’t think either of us actually expected that anything would happen. Especially not so soon. I mean, this was Bloodstone Pack. Who would attack them? This pack attacked other packs; not the other way around. Even rogues knew better than to attack here; doing so was a guaranteed death sentence.And yet, it was already clear that this was no ordinary attack.The alarms meant that enemies had breached the border and were infiltrating the pack. Meanwhile, the directive to head to the panic rooms meant that enemy forces were closing in on the packhouse itself.I did not know how much Axel knew about the security features —at his young age, I would hope he knew very little— but I c
Mated in the Shadow of Betrayal Chapter 122: Panic Room, part 2
(Piper POV) Ingrid stood up, took a few steps forward, and slapped me.Her slap was hard. So hard, in fact, that I knew that my face would likely bruise. “YOU SL&T!!!” she screamed. “What the f&&k are you doing with my pup?!?!?! It isn’t enough that you are trying to steal Leo from me, now you are trying to steal my son too?!?!?!?!?”I looked at her, feeling both confused and a little pissed off.“I don’t know what you are talking about.”“Like hell you don’t,” she growled.I narrowed my eyes at her. Thanks to being best friends with Xander growing up and having to deal with his …ways… with she-wolves, I had plenty of experience dealing with jealous females. I knew most of the games that they would sometimes play. Ingrid’s current game was an obvious and overused one. She was pretending to be upset about something, hoping to use her own bad behavior to trigger me to do or say something even worse back. Then, she would go back to Leo and play the victim.I refused to play he
Mated in the Shadow of Betrayal Chapter 123: Panic Room, part 3
(Piper POV)“Back off, Ingrid,” I warned as I stood up. “This is not about you.”“Oh, it is about me, Blondie. And I’m about to prove it to you.”I had no idea what she meant, and at that point, I didn’t want to know. I needed to de-escalate the situation and fast.“You need to stop being so boring. You are only 20 years old,” Penelope complained. “Let your hair down and let me kick some brunette a&&.”Honestly, I wanted to. Believe me, I did.But — again— I had been around she-wolves like Ingrid in the past. Playing their games had never worked out well for me. Xander and I rarely fought, but when we did, it was always because of one of his “girlfriends” (term used loosely). Even when Xander believed that I had not been the aggressor —which he didn’t always believe— he typically blamed me for things getting out of hand:“You should have been the bigger wolf.”“You knew she was just jealous. Why not just walk away?”“I am disappointed in you. You should have been more respo
Mated in the Shadow of Betrayal Chapter 124: Xander's Truth
(Xander POV)As I stood on the border of Bloodstone Pack, waiting to give the “go” signal to the second group of fighters, I felt ready, nervous, and introspective.I knew that our odds of success on this mission were low, and that many of our fighters would die. It was a harsh reality for me to accept. The gravity of the situation weighed heavily on me, knowing that many wolves that I had known and respected for years may not be coming home…. and knowing that I may not come home myself.The weight was so heavy that I had been unable to sleep the night before the attack. My heart, my stomach, and every part of my body burned and hurt painfully. On a positive note, experiencing the stress before the attack caused me to gain a new appreciation for my father. Despite challenging him for years on why he had become so reluctant to engage in war, I now understood.War was not easy. Only a fool would think it was.Even so, I was determined to see this through. The risks and the stress
Mated in the Shadow of Betrayal Chapter 125: Xander's Answers
(Xander POV)There are a lot of things to tell you, and a lot of things I am sure that you want to know, so I will just dive right on in.How long have I known that Leo and Piper were fated mates?Since shortly after my father agreed to the arranged marriage between Leo and Piper.How did I find out?After I failed to convince my father to back out of the arranged marriage bullsh&t, I visited a seer. I needed to know what Leo’s interest was in Piper, and why he was going to such great lengths to get her, and my trusted investigators were coming up empty.Did my father know?He knew that I was going to see a seer, but I never told him what the seer told me. He had been adamantly opposed to me going. He warned me that it was dangerous to know the future, especially without any context for it. He also warned me that the quality of the information yielded from a seer not only depended on the seer, but also on the quality of the questions themselves. It was not something a novice shoul
Mated in the Shadow of Betrayal Chapter 126: The Attack Plan
(Xander POV)It was now 11 am on Friday morning.The first two waves of the attack had been successful. In minutes, I would give the green light for the third and final phase.This was the phase that I was most looking forward to, because it was the phase in which I would personally go into the packhouse and rescue Piper. Goddess, how I missed her. It had only been two weeks, and yet it felt like a lifetime.According to my senior warriors —and according to my own observations— we currently had 164 seriously injured warriors on our side, whereas Bloodstone had 42. Neither side had suffered any casualties yet.Normally, a count of 164-42 would represent a devastating loss, even without any known casualties. However, these numbers were actually far better than we had expected going in.You see, we never intended to truly win the attack. We merely needed to create enough of a distraction so that we could get our special forces, including myself, into the packhouse.The general frame
Mated in the Shadow of Betrayal Chapter 127: Xander's Man Crush
(Xander POV)Spoiler alert: the final wave of the attack did not go as planned. Or at least not the way that I planned.Before I explain what happened, I need to back up a little bit and explain some more about how Ellis factored into all of this. Fully understanding Ellis’s motives and his role will become important later.Admittedly, looking back on it, it is a little tough for even me to understand what I was thinking back then. Was it my desperation that caused me to trust Ellis so much? Was it my immaturity? Was it my love for Piper?I don’t know. But I suppose the best place to start is this simple cliché:“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”I think this saying comes the closest to explaining why —despite knowing Ellis for such a short period of time— he and I became very close very quickly. Indeed, from our initial conversations, it became obvious that Ellis hated Leo Bloodstone even more than I did. And because of his hatred, rules did not matter to him. Nor did et
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