Chapter 61: We Wait_My Alphas' Dark Desires

<h4>Chapter 61: We Wait</h4>

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 Chapter 61

 ~Valerie’s POV~

 Warm air brushed across my face, scented with crushed grass and wild earth. My eyes fluttered open slowly, blinking against the brightness of the sun filtering through a thick canopy of leaves above me.

 I sat up with a gasp, my palms digging into soft ground—real ground. This wasn’t the synthetic terrain of the simtion dome.

 This was real. Tangible. I could smell the dew on the grass and feel the faint breeze tickling the hair at my temples.

 My heart thudded erratically. This wasn’t part of any program.

 I looked around quickly, searching for something—anything—that would tell me where I was.

 A tall ring of grass circled the edge of the clearing, and beyond that, I could see dense trees, towering and familiar in the air.

 A glint of silver flickered just beyond the edge of the clearing, catching the light.

 I knew this ce.

 It wasn’t far from the city border. The old evacuation training fields—abandoned for years.

 And the silver, my heart jumped.

 "Xander?" I called out, scrambling to my feet.

 He turned halfway and halted. His silver hair shimmered in the light, his expression unreadable. His outfit was scratched, his de sheathed. But his eyes—they were sharp, calm... and tired.

 Relief surged through me like a second heartbeat.

 I ran to him without thinking.

 "Xander!" I stopped a few steps short, breathless. "You’re alright!"

 He didn’t say anything at first. His gaze dropped to his hand, where he held a small, cracked gem—its once vibrant blue glow now dulled and flickering.

 "Xander," I repeated, stepping closer. "I thought—what happened? What went wrong?"

 He finally met my gaze, and when he spoke, he kept his voice low. "The simtions changed. Your environment glitched, and the attackers weren’t part of the original program."

 I frowned. "So it was hacked?"

 He didn’t answer that.

 "Then how did you find me? How did you even know I needed help? That exact moment—how did you get there?"

 "I don’t know," he murmured, his brows furrowing as he turned the gem in his fingers. "I just... felt something. I acted."

 My mouth went dry. "And the st? The rune trap—how did we escape that? You saved me... But how did we get here?"

 There were so many questions that needed to be asked about Xander and everything that went wrong, but now I couldn’t afford to spook the only help I had outside in this unknown danger zone.

 Xander tilted his head slightly, looking almost amused despite the tension in his shoulders. "You ask a lot of questions, Nightshade."

 I huffed a shakyugh, brushing hair from my face. "Forgive me. A lot happened in the span of a few minutes. I was about to die in a simtion, which, by the way, is not supposed to be possible. So yeah—pardon the questions."

 Xander’s shoulders lowered, and the yfulness vanished.

 "That’s not what matters right now," he said quietly. "What matters is why someone tried to kill you under the disguise of a simtion. Someone embedded a fatal rune into the system. That wasn’t a glitch. That was a death trap. It transported you to where they wanted you to be. I was lucky I acted fast and went in too when I did."

 I inhaled sharply, his words hitting me like a weight to the chest.

 "Someone wanted me gone," I said, the realization washing over me fully. "They tried to erase me."

 Xander nodded. "And they nearly seeded."

 I looked down at the gem in his hand again. "Is that how we got out?"

 He gave a slow nod. "It cracked after the st. Must’ve absorbed the final impact. I didn’t think it would even activate. It’s meant to transport two persons to any ce of your choice. And it ran its course."

 Xander looked down again, his thumb brushing the dull surface of the gem. "I shouldn’t have done it. But I couldn’t leave you."

 My throat closed up, but I didn’t let myself get swept up in emotion. Not yet.

 "Then whoever did this... they must feel threatened by my presence enough to tailor a simtion designed to kill me, with runes ancient enough to bypass a hundred safetyyers."

 Xander’s eyes darkened. "Which means we’re not dealing with just a saboteur."

 My pulse quickened. "We need to get back. Tell Xade, I, the council—everyone."

 Xander shook his head. "No. Not yet."

 I stared at him. "What? Why not?"

 "Because if you show up now, they’ll know you survived. And if they know that..." He looked back toward the tree line, the forest looming beyond. "They’ll try again. Harder. Faster. Next time, they might not use a simtion."

 I clenched my fists. "Then what do we do?"

 Xander’s gaze settled on me. "We stay hidden for now. We find out who did this. We strike before they get another chance. Or just wait it out like normal individuals."

 I nodded slowly, heart thudding. The forest stretched endlessly behind us, quiet, waiting.

 And somewhere out there... someone was already nning my funeral.

 But I wasn’t dead.

 Not yet.

 And I wasn’t going down without tearing the truth out of their bones.

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 ~Xade’s POV~

 I stood on the west balcony of thepound, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the now fully locked-down training dome in the distance. The sky above it shimmered faintly with a containment field, sealed tight after Valerie vanished.

 My chest still burned.

 "She’s gone."

 Those were the words I’d spoken. But they hadn’t left me—not really. They echoed in every breath, every second since. I saw the moment on rey—Valerie, caught in the trap. Xander is reaching for her. The runes exploding like they’d beenced with pure void energy.

 And then... nothing.

 No trace.

 A part of me knew she was alive. A part of me felt it. But feeling it didn’t make it better. Didn’t make it easier.

 Because if she were alive, that meant someone had taken her, and I did not know if that was worse or better at this point.

 Still, I couldn’t say anything about it to anyone else apart from us heirs.

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Chapter 61: We Wait