The Alpha’s Secret Obsession Now novel Chapter 35

Morgan’s POV

The landing outside Ricky’s apartment smells like espresso beans, and I stand on it at six in the morning with everything I own in one bag and a face that feels like cracked porcelain.

The door opens before I can knock.

Ricky takes one look at me—the dirt on my boots, the leaves still caught in my hair, the careful emptiness I’ve arranged over the chaos underneath—and steps aside without a single word.

‘She’s good,’ my wolf observes quietly. ‘She knows when words would annoy you.’

Ricky moves through her tiny kitchen like she has made tea at crisis-hour before.

That is who Ricky is—the kind of woman who understands that comfort requires temperature before it requires explanation.

Her apartment sprawls above the café in cheerful chaos: mismatched furniture that looks inherited rather than purchased, bookshelves overflowing with paperbacks and ceramic mugs, a blanket draped over the couch in colors that have no business existing together.

The windows rattle faintly as delivery trucks rumble past on the street below, and the whole space feels like a hug someone forgot to take back.

It is the warmest room I have stood in for months.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Ricky says over her shoulder, pulling mugs from a cabinet. “You look like you ran here.”

“I might have climbed out a window,” I admit, lowering myself into a kitchen chair that creaks a greeting.

“And then there was running through a forest, so your assessment is fairly accurate.”

Ricky turns with a raised eyebrow but doesn’t push.

She sets a mug in front of me—chamomile, because she remembers that caffeine makes me jittery—and settles into the opposite chair with her own cup cradled between her palms.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she says. “Or never, if that’s what you need instead. I’m not going anywhere.”

The kindness in her voice threatens to undo every layer of control I’ve built since dropping from that window ledge.

My throat tightens, and I have to look away for a moment, focusing on the steam curling up from my tea.

‘Tell her what she needs to know,’ my wolf advises. ‘Enough truth to keep her safe, not so much that it puts her in danger.’

I wrap my hands around the mug and begin to talk.

The words come out in pieces at first, halting and awkward, but Ricky’s steady presence draws them from me like a healer drawing poison from a wound.

I tell her about being kept against my will by a powerful family.

I tell her about living in their house under their control, about the woman in that household who means me serious harm.

“This woman,” I say carefully, watching Ricky’s face for signs of disbelief, “she knows about you now. She’s resourceful, and she’s already demonstrated that violence is well within her range of acceptable responses.”

Ricky’s expression cycles through alarm and anger before settling into a particular stillness that looks nothing like the cheerful café owner I’ve known for years.

“There’s more,” I continue, my voice dropping. “I’m pregnant, and the pregnancy is part of why I’m in danger. I can’t go to the police because the people involved operate entirely outside the reach of anything official.”

‘She’s calculating,’ my wolf observes with interest. ‘Look at her eyes—she’s already thinking three moves ahead.’

Ricky sets down her mug with a deliberate click against the wooden table.

“This woman who wants to hurt you,” she says slowly. “How far would she go to find you?”

“Far enough that anywhere obvious becomes a death sentence.” I meet her eyes without flinching.

Ricky absorbs this with a single nod. “And what’s your plan? Where will you go?”

‘Proximity to a pregnant werewolf carries risks for humans that we don’t fully understand yet. The baby’s energy, the hormonal shifts, the way our biology might affect someone without the capacity to process it…’

I ignore her, because I am sitting in the warmest room I have been in for months and my friend is offering me safety without conditions and I am not going to refuse it.

My hands rest on the table between us, and I think about the folder inside my bag with its faded medical ink and its proof of eleven years of wrongful punishment.

I think about the child growing beneath my skin and the two brothers who don’t know it exists.

“Morgan,” Ricky says softly, and the gentleness in her voice makes my chest ache.

“You’ve been carrying all of this alone for so long that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to have someone else hold part of the weight. Let me help you carry it.”

‘She means it,’ my wolf acknowledges reluctantly. ‘Whatever else she might be hiding, she genuinely means this.’

I lift my eyes to meet Ricky’s steady gaze.

The silence between us stretches thin as spider silk, filled with everything I haven’t said and everything I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to explain.

But somewhere beneath the fear and the exhaustion and the constant low hum of danger that has become the background music of my existence, I feel something I haven’t felt since before Sarah destroyed my world.

I feel hope.

“Okay,” I say finally, and the word tastes like trust and terror in equal measure. “Show me where we’re going.”

Ricky smiles—a small, fierce thing that transforms her whole face—and rises from the table with purpose already sharpening her movements.

“Pack your tea,” she says. “We leave in twenty minutes, and I need to make some calls that I’d rather you didn’t overhear.”

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