Three Lives, One Alpha, No Bride Chapter 09

Three Lives, One Alpha, No Bride Chapter 09

The Council moved quickly.

With Blackthorne Pack, Recorder Hale, and Rowan’s own hidden papers all telling the same story, Rowan was stripped of his position and sent north under labor sentence for eight years. His parents received five years in detention for aiding coercion, unlawful confinement, and attempting to falsify the claim. The Alpha house was sealed, their holdings were seized, and Silver Ridge was placed under temporary Council oversight.

By nightfall, everything Rowan had tried to protect was gone.

On the day he was taken north, Ivy and I went to watch.

He barely looked like himself. The arrogance was gone. So was the polish. When he passed us, he lifted his head and asked only one question.

“Why?”

Ivy turned away.

I answered for both of us.

“Because if we hadn’t stopped you, you would have destroyed us.”

He looked as if he wanted to say more, but one of the guards shoved him forward and that was the end of

As he disappeared down the road, Ivy touched my arm.

I followed her gaze.

Across the square stood Mara.

Her clothes were worn, her shoulders bent, her face half hidden. She looked like someone who had lost

everything and only now understood what she had traded herself for.

I felt no pity.

Once the truth came out, it became clear she had known exactly what Rowan meant to do. She knew he planned to put a Hart daughter in the Luna’s place while keeping her hidden under his protection, and she went along with it anyway. In the end, Rowan fell, Silver Ridge cast her aside, and the Harts cut her loose. With Frost Hollow gone, she had nowhere left to go.

“Come on,” I said.

Ivy nodded, and we left without looking back.

A month later, Blackthorne Pack came for us properly.

The rival claim they had recorded first was meant to shield us. This time, they came to ask in earnest.

Even then, Ivy and I were uneasy. Protection was not the same thing as trust. But the twins met us themselves, and whatever awkwardness there was, they made no effort to hide their patience.

The elder took my hand carefully. “You don’t have to know me yet,” he said. “I can wait.”

His brother looked at Ivy and said, just as earnestly, “So can I.”

Then the elder added, “I noticed Clara when she was eight.”

His brother brightened at once. “That’s nothing. I liked Ivy when she was six.”

Ivy turned to me with open triumph.

“There,” she said. “I win.”

I stared at her. “We’re still doing this?”

“Of course,” she said. “We’ve been competing for lifetimes. It would be strange to stop now.”

That pulled a laugh out of me before I could stop it.

For the first time in a very long while, it came easily.

The past was still there. Some things always would be. But it no longer weighed the same.

After three ruined lives, Ivy and I were no longer fighting over the same wolf.

At last, we were walking toward lives that belonged to us.