CHAPTER 4

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• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 50

  The fire didn’t burn us.Not in the way we expected.It peeled. It seared. But not flesh identity.As we passed through the threshold of Valden’s Gate, the air turned thick and golden, like walking through breath made of heat. The ground pulsed beneath each step, sand turning to glass, then back to ash. The walls were molten stone, veined with veins of obsidian that flickered with runes too old to name.Every heartbeat echoed. Every thought felt loud.Rafael kept pace beside me, sweat glistening on his brow. Dahlia walked with one hand on the stone wall, whispering translations under her breath. Seris’s eyes glowed faintly with a red hue, her breath shallow but controlled.This place wasn’t just hot. It was alive.The Chamber of TrialAfter what felt like hours, the tunnel opened into a wide chamber.A circle of flame burned in the center.No fuel. No scent.Just heat. Color. Will.Seven stone seats formed a ring around the flame, but only one was lit by its glow.As we entered, a voi

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER B 49

  The snow thinned as we rode south.What began as frost and stillness soon gave way to red clay earth, then dry wind and sun-cracked stone. The transition from Elarion's chill to Valden's burn was not merely physical. It was elemental.The first gate tested memory.The second would test endurance.Seris said she dreamed of flame trees that bled sand, and skies that whispered names into her bones. Dahlia worked feverishly with her maps, trying to match the stars of the desert to the shifting sigils above the Hollow. She muttered phrases in old tongues, drawing arcane alignments in the dust as if decoding something older than language.And Rafael, ever alert, rode closer to me now than ever before."This time," he said, "I walk through the Gate with you."I didn’t argue. This gate would not be mine alone to face.The Desert of the ForgottenWe reached the outskirts of Valden after seven days of heat, stone, and shadow.The desert was a graveyard of broken monuments half-buried statues wi

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 48

  I emerged from the Gate like a breath rising from cold water.The air hit me like a rebirth sharp, immediate, alive. Snow clung to my cloak. My lungs burned. The frost hadn’t retreated, but it no longer felt foreign. It felt like mine.The others were waiting. Rafael had arrived.He stood beside Dahlia, her eyes wide, her face pale. Seris knelt in the snow with her palms pressed to the earth, whispering something to the ice.Rafael rushed to me. "You were gone for two hours. We couldn’t follow you."I looked at the horizon."I wasn’t just gone. I was elsewhere."The Gate’s EchoBehind me, the Elarion tower pulsed.No longer cracked.Its glass shimmered with gentle light, the fracture sealed not with frost but with choice.The Gate had accepted my answer.And now, its silence was not warning.It was waiting.A new harmony had settled over the landscape, as though even the wind was listening now.ReunionRafael touched my hand, his warmth grounding me. "What did you see?""Versions of m

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 47

  I emerged from the Gate like a breath rising from cold water.The air hit me like a rebirth sharp, immediate, alive. Snow clung to my cloak. My lungs burned. The frost hadn’t retreated, but it no longer felt foreign. It felt like mine.The others were waiting. Rafael had arrived.He stood beside Dahlia, her eyes wide, her face pale. Seris knelt in the snow with her palms pressed to the earth, whispering something to the ice.Rafael rushed to me. "You were gone for two hours. We couldn’t follow you."I looked at the horizon."I wasn’t just gone. I was elsewhere."The Gate’s EchoBehind me, the Elarion tower pulsed.No longer cracked.Its glass shimmered with gentle light, the fracture sealed not with frost but with choice.The Gate had accepted my answer.And now, its silence was not warning.It was waiting.A new harmony had settled over the landscape, as though even the wind was listening now.ReunionRafael touched my hand, his warmth grounding me. "What did you see?""Versions of m

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 46

  I stepped into the Gate.The world vanished in an instant.No sound. No snow. No wind. Only an endless expanse of mirrored frost, stretching outward in every direction. My breath fogged, but I saw no sky. No ceiling. No walls. It was as if I had fallen into the breath between moments, into a silence that remembered everything.Elarion wasn’t a place.It was a memory.And I was inside it.ReflectionsI walked forward though I could not say how far or how long. Every step echoed, not around me, but inside me. It was as though the Gate was not simply showing me something it was reading me.As I moved, the mirrors began to shimmer.Each one showed a different version of my life.In one, I ruled the Crescent Court as queen, my enemies kneeling.In another, I bore a daughter with Rafael, our family whole and unbroken.In a third, I was alone a shadow walking the Hollow, never choosing love, never touching fire.There were more.A hundred versions of me. Some joyful. Some monstrous. Some bro

• Rejected by the lycan king   CHAPTER 45

  The journey north felt different this time.I was not a queen on a warpath or a prophet heeding a vision. I was something smaller, simpler, and yet heavierA woman returning to the part of herself she had buried beneath the snow.We rode fast.Xander led a handful of Hollow blooded scouts while Seris rode beside me, silent but focused. Behind us, the wind carried no sound but the crunch of hooves over frostbitten earth. Even the air felt muted, as though the world was holding its breath.The ice thickened. The trees thinned.And ahead, the sky changed.It turned glassy.And the light bent wrong.Elarion was close.Arrival at the TowerThe black tower emerged from the snow like a blade stabbed into the sky.Dahlia stood near the stone perimeter, her cloak rimmed in frost, her posture alert.When I dismounted, she didn’t speak. She only opened her hand to show me the ring I’d given her, now cracked down the center."It started last night," she said. "The Gate is bleeding memories."Seri