My Alphas' Dark Desires novel Chapter 61

Chapter 61: We Wait

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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 simulation 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 place.

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 blade 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 simulations 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 blast? 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 shaky laugh, brushing hair from my face. "Forgive me. A lot happened in the span of a few minutes. I was about to die in a simulation, which, by the way, is not supposed to be possible. So yeah—pardon the questions."

Xander’s shoulders lowered, and the playfulness 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 simulation. 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."

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