Housebound with the Blackridge Heirs novel Chapter 35

**Change Begins With You — Jayden Collins**

**Chapter 35**

**Maya**

“Kill her.”

The words hung in the air, sharp and chilling. For a moment, I thought my ears had betrayed me. It wasn’t until I caught sight of the second man advancing toward me, his eyes glinting with a cold, predatory malice, that the reality of the situation crashed down upon me like a tidal wave.

Death.

“What—” The syllable barely escaped my lips before Leo sprang into action.

In an instant, he was positioned in front of me, his body taut, a low, primal growl emanating from deep within his chest.

I had thought the death sentence itself was terrifying, and the man who had delivered it was equally horrifying. But Leo’s growl? That was something entirely different. It was raw and fierce, a sound that resonated with an ancient power.

The man halted mid-stride, momentarily taken aback, but he did not lower his guard. My heart raced, pounding in my ears like a war drum. Everything around me felt amplified, too loud, too chaotic.

The grand hallway, once seeming to emanate strength and history, now felt like a suffocating cage, closing in around me.

Tylon moved next, his posture calm yet poised for action.

“She’s under my protection,” he stated with an unwavering resolve, his voice slicing through the tension like a finely honed blade. “And she’s Caden’s mate. I doubt your most trusted enforcer would appreciate his father taking the life of his mate, Alpha Philip.”

Mate? Enforcer? What in the world was he talking about?!

Alpha Philip’s eyes narrowed, sharp and accusatory.

“Liar!” His voice thundered, reverberating off the stone walls. “She’s merely a human girl. How could my son possibly be mated to her?”

There it was again… Mated.

Like some wild beasts. Had I unwittingly stepped into a realm of madness?

I struggled to catch my breath. The term mate echoed in my mind, foreign and unsettling, as if it belonged to a language I had yet to learn.

It clearly held significance for these individuals. The way Tylon had said it suggested that it was my lifeline, my bargaining chip. Conversely, the way Philip spat it out made it sound like a curse, sending a chill racing down my spine. It was evident he wanted nothing to do with it.

Leo’s hand remained steady on my arm, guiding me protectively behind him. His warmth should have comforted me, yet the tremors coursing through my body refused to subside.

“She is his mate,” Leo insisted quietly, his voice low but firm. “And if you kill her, you kill Caden.”

What?!

“Human mates aren’t impossible, even for alphas.”

My head spun as I processed this. Did they genuinely believe they weren’t human? Did they think of themselves as animals? Wolves, perhaps?

“Besides,” Leo continued, a dangerous edge to his tone that I had never heard before, “you’ll have to kill us first.”

The man in the suit—Philip’s right-hand man, I surmised—stepped closer once more. And then, from deep within Leo, came another growl. This one was not merely a warning; it was primal and filled with fury.

Had he practiced that growl to make it sound so… authentic?

I was spiraling into panic, reevaluating my entire existence in a matter of moments. There was no way I could remain among these deranged individuals.

But if I fled Blackridge, I would have to return to…

No. I couldn’t do that. It would mean certain death either way.

Whether I accepted it or not, I was ensnared in Blackridge. Trapped among these people I had begun to view as friends.

Did Elise know about all this? She had seemed genuinely upset when Jamille started tossing around those bizarre terms. And the first day, when the receptionist had let something slip. It had always been lurking beneath the surface, hadn’t it?

Was the entire school and the surrounding lands complicit in this bizarre reality? Had they engineered these wolves to grow to such monstrous sizes?

I felt the beginnings of hyperventilation creeping in, but I was too consumed by fear to recognize it.

Leo tightened his grip on my arm, casting one last fierce look at the man before turning his attention back to me.

I froze, my heart stumbling as I gazed up at him.

His eyes, once a warm hazel I had come to trust, now glowed an alarming amber… no, gold. They were sharp and fierce, like sunlight cutting through flames.

“Leo,” I whispered, taking a hesitant step back. “What… what’s happening to your eyes?”

He remained silent, his chest rising and falling, teeth bared in a way that no human should ever appear.

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