All Chapters of The Tyrant alpha: Chapter 411 - Chapter 420

She understands what that means. Even Quarry Pack males—with their pulley machines that they work at for hours and make nothing, their constant sparring, and their hoisting weights for no reason, over and over while they admire each other—even they haven’t ventured so far from their roots that they don’t bond with their fated female. Why does she say I can go? She knows I can’t.“You come with me.” I reach out my hand again. “We’ll go to our den now.” I try to make my voice ring with authority like Max does when us younger males get out of line, but I only manage to snarl and scare her more.I hate her fear stench. It accuses me, and I did nothing to her that I didn’t have to do.“N-no.” She whips her head back and forth. Her breath comes harder. She’s almost wheezing, her lungs working like she’s run a mile. “D-don’t c-come any closer. Don’t t-touch me.”I take one step closer. That’s all. I’m still six feet away, at least, but I might as well have lunged for her.She shifts.And it’

“Is this going to be a long one?” Abertha waits for a response, but my throat is swollen shut, and so is my wolf’s. “Okay, I’ll assume that’s a ‘yes.’ I’m just going to have a seat on this handy fold-em-up stool then.” There’s a scuffling sound and a long sigh. “Take your time, Annie-girl,” she says and then mutters, “Goodness gracious, my dogs were barking.”The first jab of shame pierces my panic. What a sad female you are. I don’t want such a pathetic coward for a mate.I don’t want to be cringing in a bramble yet again with no choice but to wait it out and feel lower than dirt afterward. I don’t want to have to scrub one more humiliation out of my brain.I am so tired of being sad and broken. I can’t take myself another second.Fueled by nothing but self-disgust, I force my wolf to crawl forward, inch by inch back out the tunnel she made on her way in, and she doesn’t want to leave, but my will is stronger than hers. I drive her out of the dark thicket into the glaring late aftern

I was eight. We’d just finished a full-moon feast, and Declan Kelly had ordered the unmated females down to the lodge’s basement. Aunt Nola left the bag I’d made her on the table. I’d made it from an old denim shirt and cross-stitched it with the treasures she always brought me back from her rambles—walnuts, blackberries, nettles, pretty stones.She loved her bag—it was her favorite thing—so I decided to take it to her. To make her feel better.When Declan bellowed for the lone females, her face went ghost white, and Ma smothered a cry with her fist in her mouth. Half of the great room went silent. The other half—the males—stomped their boots and howled.While Ma was whisper-hissing with the other dams, I slipped away, down the stairs. I’d been in the basement many times before to help Aunt Nola clean. There were no windows, only fluorescent lights with the shadows of dead flies smudged against the plastic.I tripped into the room. The lone females were clustered together, their fear

I want my mother. I want her back.“Can’t what?” Abertha asks, so very gently.“I can’t have a pup.” And I can’t make the decision not to. “But I—” I can’t say it. Fate will surely strike me down if I do. What’s done cannot be undone.“There are ways,” she says, pushing up from the table and padding to the kitchen. She takes a mason jar from an overhead cabinet and spoons loose leaves into a metal ball strainer. My nose twitches. The blend smells medicinal.I watch her like a mouse watches an eagle. She shuffles back to the table, downs the dregs of her tea, and then drops the strainer in and pours a fresh cup of hot water.Is that poison?“I can’t…can’t do that to a pup.”Abertha’s face hardens. She holds the strainer by its thin chain and dips it into the water. “We’re not talking about a pup.”“We aren’t?”“Not at this point.” She lets out a long, tired breath. “What do they even teach you at that academy?”I shrug. “Literature. Geology. Calculus.”“What is that?”“I don’t know. It

“Could you not smell a trap? Is your snout stuck as far up your ass as your head? Eh?” I tie off the bandage and pat Max’s haunch. He grumbles and immediately starts gnawing at the shirt I used to staunch the bleeding. I whack his nose. He waits until I walk off a few paces before he starts back at it.I get in Alroy’s pasty face until it blanches so white, his freckles look like they’re floating.“I’m sorry, Alpha,” he whimpers, baring his neck and backing away.“For the hundredth time, I’m not the alpha.”All the males in the clearing, wolf and man, give me that look. I bare my fangs, and their gazes slide away and their heads tilt.“I’m not the goddamn alpha.” I repeat it loud enough to shake the remaining birds from their perches in the high branches. Signaling to Killian Kelly exactly where we are. Now I’m being a dumbass, too.If I were the alpha, I wouldn’t be here. Alroy would have felt obliged to run his fool plan past me. I wouldn’t have heard it from Max too late to stop th