Chapter 8
Five years passed, but the time felt like nothing more than a fleeting shadow. Five years of running from the ghosts of my past, with Alpha Aurelian by my side, my true Alpha, the only constant in a life that was still trying to piece itself back together. I thought we had escaped the ruin I had once caused. We had built a life–a family–on the ashes of what was left of me. Our two pups, full of wild, innocent joy, were the first real happiness I had known in years.
But when we returned to the packlands, there was no victory in the air, no triumph in our homecoming. I had been so focused on rebuilding my life that I failed to see the decay that still clung to the old world, the old pack.
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The air was thick with a familiar weight as I followed my parents to the healer’s den. I expected routine check–ups, a simple return to normalcy. What I didn’t expect was the scene that awaited us.
Alpha Lorcan, once a towering figure, now stood before us, his body withered and crumpled. His strength had bled out of him, his voice no longer booming with authority but rasping through a throat that could barely hold the fury it once commanded. His presence was barely more than a wisp of the former Alpha.
He stood face–to–face with Marigold, but she too was unrecognizable. Gone was the seductive enchantress who had lured him into her grasp. Her once–glorious hair was stringy, her skin drawn tight over bones. There was no fire in her eyes, no allure in her gaze. They were two broken shells, forever
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bound by the same ruinous choices they had made.
“Look at what you’ve done to me!” Lorcan’s words barely carried, but the venom in them could still sting. “You’ve cursed me, Marigold. You’ve poisoned me.”
The whispers around them were venomous. Packmates who had once stood at his side now spoke of his fall, of the disease that Marigold had given him.
“She destroyed him,” one murmured. “He never even saw it coming.”
My parents said nothing, but I could feel their gaze on me–my mother’s tight grip on my arm, as if she were holding me back from something I had no desire to see. Without a word, they guided me away, and I didn’t look back. There was nothing to feel–no pity, no
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justice, only the hollow weight of what could have been.
Months later, a chilling message spread through the pack like wildfire: Alpha Lorcan was dead. It wasn’t a quick death. The slow collapse of his reign had been a suffocating process, but it was finally over. His wealth, his power, everything had crumbled after the scandal. Marigold, desperate to salvage whatever remnants of her dignity and power she could cling to, declared herself Luna. But there was no strength left in her, no one left to follow her. The pack was fracturing, its wolves dispersing in search of something stronger, something real.
Lorcan had never truly ruled. It had always been me holding his pieces together, patching up the cracks in his kingdom. Without me, it all fell apart.
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Then, the final blow.
In his desperation, Alpha Lorcan had sold off everything–his land, his house, his possessions–just to scrape by. But there was no escape from the poison that ran through his veins.
It wasn’t just his enemies who had destroyed him; it was the betrayal of his own blood.
Lorcan’s brother, whose debts had spiraled out of control, saw the opportunity to drag him further down. In a final act of spite, he forged Lorcan’s signature on a life debt so monstrous that it could never be repaid. That was the start of his undoing.
But it didn’t end there.
In his final moments, Lorcan learned that his
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brbrother had also secreted a blood contract- a a contract that boundhddrorcan to suffer ever af after his death. He wouddidoiot escape the coconsequences of his brotbther’s debts. His lif life, already a shadow, hadabereen sold away, ledeaving him with nothing butuh the broken reremnants of a man he no longer recognized
Marigold, ever the forgotten onene, was ababandoned in the end. She wasaśntiveven woworthy of betrayal in her brother–er–la–law’s eyegeseLeft to rot in the ashes of dforcacan’s failaiters she fought to cling to the rerenanants powerch that had never truly been herers/Alone weakaanand unloved, she was nothing g
For themetnoboth, the end was inevitable.@hener was no rededemption. No escape. Only thenhe slow, painfufulunraveling of lives built orolieses They were motothing more than ghosts noww -faded echoesesf of a time that had slippeded through my fingegers, leaving only the e
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wreckage behind.
The deaths of Alpha Lorcan caused chaos within the pack, leaving it leaderless. However, with the public revelation of Aurelian’s Alpha status, he became the best candidate to take over the pack.
I have long since let go of the past and now live a happy life with my Alpha Aurelian and our two children.
Book 2: My Alpha Bail Out His beloved, Leaving Me in Custody
As I sat in the police station with Yvonne Harper, my boyfriend’s childhood sweetheart, waiting for bail arrangements to be made, the decision loomed.
One of us could go home tonight.
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My mate, Alpha Jackson, chose to take her.
“Nicole, just wait for me one more night. I’ll come back for you tomorrow,” he said.
He was worried about her fragile health, but he didn’t care about my fear of the dark.
Later, I called him. My voice was steady, though my heart ached.
“Jackson, I began, “for the past few years, I’ve been waiting for you.”
“But I won’t wait forever.”
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