Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 217

Richard

The moment Amelia’s voice came through the comm line, I could breathe again. I hadn’t realized l’d been holding my breath until the sound of her, shaky, raw, and ative, cut through the static and eased the burn in my chest. Simon looked up from his tablet and shifted slightly, his shoulders unlocking like a man who’d just discovered the wall he’d braced for wasn’t going to fall on him.

“Her vitals are stabilizing,” he said, loud enough for the entire field unit to hear. “But that pulse she released didn’t just knock out the surrounding sleepers. It destabilized resonance lines across half the city.”

My jaw tightened. “What does that mean for her?”

Simon hesitated, fingers hovering while the screen dimmed. “She pushed too far. Her nervous system isn’t responding the same way. It’s hybrid now, fully integrated to her body. She burned through the conditioning, and she altered something in herself doing it.”

I didn’t want to hear a list of complications or probabilities. She was alive, still moving, still fighting, and that was the only fact I cared about.

My wolf surged behind my ribs, restless and pacing. The danger hadn’t passed. I held my ground because charging forward wouldn’t help her and would only unravel what we’d secured.

The east post lit up. Nathan’s voice cut in over the comm. “Movement, east ridge. Multiple drones approaching. They’re unmarked, but we’ve got visual.”

He paused, voice low. “It’s David.”

We moved before he finished speaking. The wolves behind us werestill disoriented, catching their breath and rising slowly. We didn’t toco back for them or wait.

The clearing opened in front of us, wide and glaring under the midday sun. The trees gave way to hard-packed earth, and drones floated in the sky above us, red sensors blinking in steady rhythm. These weren’t passive surveillance units. They were streaming footage in every direction.

David stood at the center of the clearing, and for a single breath, no one moved. We had known he was working with the vampires. We had seen the signs, the whispers, the betrayals he tried to frame as strategy. But standing here now, flanked by drones and pulsing with rage, he didn’t just look complicit, he looked like the architect.

The leader of it all. Every false smile and reasonable compromise that had once cloaked him in charisma had been burned away, leaving only something hard and furious underneath.

He wasn’t cloaked in reason anymore. He wasn’t trying to win anyone back. His expression was stripped of calculation. The charm that had made him dangerous was gone, and in its place was something worse, pure, unfiltered rage from a man who believed the world owed him survival.

His suit was torn open, the fabric shredded and soaked in blood across his chest. One arm hung limp at his side, the unnatural angle signaling a break or a full dislocation. His face was swollen, one eye nearly sealed shut, and his lower lip split open, but he still squared his shoulders and lifted his chin like he was demanding obedience and fear.

He pointed, not at me, but past me, toward the tunnel entrance.

“You let her do this,” he shouted. “You let that creature unravel everything we built.”

Simon stepped in beside me. “He’s live-streaming. The feed is open.”Let everyone watch.

David’s voice sharpened. “She’s carrying the blood of a traitor. You’ve all been deceived. She didn’t just break the network, she corrupted it.

Everything we created, everything we fought to protect, is already gone.”

He pressed two fingers to his temple, and a metallic flicker flashed beneath his skin.

Simon muttered, “Bell Nine. The trigger is embedded inside of him.

He’s been pulling the trigger. They’ll think he’s still trying to resist the vampires, like he’s making a last stand. But he’s been using them all along, and now he’s making himself look like a martyr while he does it.”

My stomach dropped. I’d seen what that signal could do. I’d seen it collapse minds, override instincts, and erase resistance before its victims even realized something was wrong. And now he was broadcasting it again with full visibility. For the first time I realized, we could really lose.Then I saw her .

Amelia

The light hit harder than I expected. I squinted and climbed up from the tunnel mouth, boots catching slightly in the dirt. My limbs trembled, the aftershocks still skimming through my muscles, but I didn’t slow down. The clearing was just ahead.

David’s eyes found me the second I emerged, and his voice sliced across the field. “There you are. You really think your blood makes you immune? You think this mutation gives you the right to win?”

I kept walking. I didn’t give him the answer he wanted.

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