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The Slow Ride
publish date:
2026-08-23 23:43:09
Latest chapter
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid Brody 2
KieranIt started small enough that I almost let it pass without saying anything.She stopped finishing sentences mid-thought, her attention sliding somewhere I couldn't follow. She'd sit across from me at dinner, present in body, gone somewhere else entirely behind her eyes. Three nights running, I woke to find her side of the bed empty and found her instead on the balcony, arms wrapped around herself, staring north in a direction that had nothing to do with the weather.I didn't ask, at first. I told myself she was entitled to whatever she needed to work through alone, that pushing would only prove every fear she'd built about men who wanted to manage her feelings instead of letting her have them.By the fourth night, I stopped telling myself that.I found her on the balcony again, the air cold enough that her breath showed, a blanket around her shoulders she hadn't bothered pulling tight."You're not sleeping," I said, joining her at the rail."I'm fine.""You've said that every n
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid Brody
Leah"Alpha Cain Hargrove is at the gate," he said. "He's requesting an audience. He's not alone."I was on my feet before I fully understood why, some old instinct still wired to answer that name the way I'd answered it for eight years. Kieran was beside me a second later, his hand finding the small of my back, not holding me in place, just letting me know he was there."He brought someone," the guard added, hesitant. "A boy."My chest went tight before he finished the sentence.We walked to the main hall together, Kieran a half step behind me the whole way, close enough to be a presence and careful enough not to be a wall between me and whatever was waiting. When the doors opened, Cain stood just inside them, stiff, out of his element in another Alpha's territory, flanked by two guards who looked more nervous than he did.Brody stood beside him, small hand gripping the hem of his father's coat.He saw me before Cain finished any kind of formal greeting, and every careful thing I'd r
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid Give Up
KieranVelvet found me in the study before I'd found the words to go looking for her myself.She didn't sit. She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed loosely, the posture of someone who'd already decided what she came to say and didn't need the furniture's permission to say it."I spoke with her," Velvet said.I set down the pen I hadn't actually been using for the last hour and gave her my full attention, because whatever this was, she'd earned better than half of it."I know," I said. "Dex mentioned it.""Of course he did." A thin, humorless smile. "I asked her one question. Whether she wanted you. She said yes before she'd finished deciding if she should."I didn't say anything. There wasn't a version of this conversation where staying quiet made me look better, but I didn't have a defense ready either."I've spent my whole life being told exactly what I was for," Velvet said. "A treaty with a womb attached. I accepted that a long time ago, the same way I accepted that love w
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid Between Them
LeahThey put me in a guest wing of the Vorreth palace that was nicer than anywhere I'd slept in eight years of marriage to Cain, which felt like its own kind of insult. I hadn't asked for comfort. I'd asked to see Brody, and been told, gently, that it wasn't possible yet.I was standing at the window when the door opened without a knock.The woman who walked in matched every detail I'd built in my head from a single sentence a guard had once said to frighten me. Velvet Lattucinna, in pale blue instead of wedding white, composed in a way that made my own wrinkled borrowed clothes feel like an accusation."You're the reason my wedding stopped in the middle of a sentence," she said, closing the door behind her."I didn't ask him to leave the altar.""No," she agreed. "I don't imagine you did. That's almost the worst part."She crossed the room and took the chair by the window without being invited to sit, the same easy authority I'd once had to fake my way through in Ironveil's dining h
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid The Slow Ride
LeahThe helicopter ride back gave me twenty minutes of silence to figure out what I'd just done, and I spent every one of them failing.I sat across from Kieran instead of beside him, which felt like the only responsible choice available to me. He didn't push for anything closer. He watched the window, jaw tight, already halfway back into whatever version of himself had to face a council in an hour.Kael sat wrapped in a blanket next to me, quiet, watching both of us with the kind of attention a boy who'd survived on scraps of other people's secrets never really turned off."You kissed him," he said, once the noise of the rotors gave us enough cover that no one else would hear it."Don't.""I'm not judging. I'm just saying it out loud so you can't pretend it didn't happen.""I know it happened, Kael.""Then why do you look like you're planning his funeral instead of yours?"I didn't answer that, because there wasn't a clean way to explain it. I'd spent seven years married to a man w
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid Insecurities
KieranNeither of us slept much. She sat curled in the chair by the stove, and I sat close enough to feel the warmth coming off her, and for most of the night that was the whole of it. No conversation. No distance closing further than it already had.Somewhere past midnight, the bandage on her palm had come loose. I noticed before she did, her fingers curling instinctively around the ache of it in her sleep, the wrap sliding toward her wrist.I reached for her hand without thinking too hard about whether I should.She woke the moment I touched her, eyes open and sharp, the old instinct to defend herself still faster than her recognition of who was in the room. It took her a second to place me. Then she let her hand stay where it was."It slipped," I said, nodding at the bandage."You could have just told me to fix it myself.""I could have."I didn't let go of her hand while I redid the wrap, and she didn't pull it back. I kept my eyes on the work, on the thin line of the cut, because
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid Way Too Hot
His thumb traced along my jaw like he had every right to touch me. The heat coming off his skin was insane — way too hot, like this bastard was straight-up branding me with molten iron. That Lycan energy prickled across my nerves, making my pulse stutter while something between my thighs tightened
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid Nothing Come Free
LEAH "Who sent you?" I asked low and sharp. "The one responsible for your father's death." That stopped me cold. My father, died eleven years ago in a lycan brutal attack. He was just a man who doing his job, trying to protect a warehouse full of food and medicine supplies, and those fucking mo
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid Bad Memories
I had just zipped up my bag when the bedroom door swung open. I didn't need to turn around to know who it was — that perfume always clung to her. It dragged up every bad memory I'd buried during my years as her daughter-in-law. Every bit of suffering in this house started with Lady Margaret. "W
Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid Damaged
"I lost our pups." "Mm." His thumb kept moving across the screen. "Anyway, Brody hasn't eaten yet. Make him breakfast. Simple is fine." I didn't respond. I was too stunned to respond. What Cain was doing was cruel beyond anything I had words for. After everything I had given up, after walking
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