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159. Permission to Smile
publish date:
2026-02-26 23:53:04
NightingaleHello Readers, How long Lyra will stay happy?
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Mated to My Rival Step Brother 286. Send Off
Blake's POV:The reception had the specific energy of people who had been through something enormous together and had arrived somewhere worth celebrating and were not going to waste a single moment of the arrival.The Silver Mansion dining room had been transformed. Long tables. Good food. The kind of noise that built when everyone present had history with each other and the history was mostly good and the parts that were not good had been resolved or were in the process of being resolved.Alex sat beside me at the main table and his hand was on the table between us and I had my hand over his and neither of us was performing anything for anyone.The bond was warm between us.That was the thing I was still adjusting to. The specific warmth of it sitting in my chest, present and constant, not demanding attention but available, the way good things were available, there when you reached for them and not requiring you to reach.I could feel Alex's contentment through it.He was happy.Actu
Mated to My Rival Step Brother 285. Both Directions
Blake's POV:The wedding was not supposed to be large.That was what we had said when we planned it. Small. Meaningful. The people who mattered and nobody else.Somehow the people who mattered turned out to be a considerable number of people.The Silver Mansion ballroom had been opened for the first time in years and the staff had done something with it that made the high ceilings and the old stone walls feel warm rather than formal. Flowers from the estate grounds. Candles rather than the overhead lights. The particular quality of a space that had been prepared with genuine care rather than obligation.Pack representatives from both Silver and Thorne were present because this was not only a personal event but a political one and we had accepted that rather than fighting it. What happened today would reshape the formal relationship between our packs and the people with standing in both deserved to witness it.But at the front of the room where it mattered it was just us.Lyra standing
Mated to My Rival Step Brother 284. Thirty Years
Selene's POV:The morning of the wedding was quiet.I had asked for quiet specifically. Not a production. Not the formal Silver pack ceremony with the full attendance and the traditional procession and the pack representatives in their formal colors and all the weight of what a Silver Luna's wedding was supposed to look like.That was not this.This was thirty years of finding our way back to each other across every obstacle that had been placed between us and the ceremony that marked the end of that particular journey deserved to be small and real and attended only by the people who understood what it had cost.I sat at the window of the Silver Mansion guest room in the early morning light and looked at the grounds below and thought about the first time I had seen Gregory Thorne.Academy. First year. He had been in the training grounds and I had been crossing to the library and he had looked up and our eyes had met across the distance and I had looked away because he was Thorne and I
Mated to My Rival Step Brother 283. What Gregory Said
Maya's POV:The medical wing had a particular quality in the mornings.The light came in at a low angle through the east windows and sat on the white walls in a way that was neither harsh nor warm but simply present and I had spent enough mornings in this room over the past two weeks to know every variation of it. The early grey. The pale gold that followed. The full morning light that arrived around eight and stayed until the window angle shifted at noon.I knew the ceiling very well.I knew the pattern of the beams and the small irregularity in the third panel from the left where the wood had been replaced at some point with a slightly different grain. I knew the sound of the morning healer's footsteps versus the afternoon healer's footsteps. I knew that Lyra arrived seven minutes before the shift changed every morning without fail.I was getting better.Not quickly. The right side was slower than the left which the healers had explained was related to the rib involvement and the sp
Mated to My Rival Step Brother 282. Every Breath
Lyra's POV:I did not leave her side.Not in the forest. Not during the carry back. Not in the medical wing when the Academy healers took over and I stood at the edge of the room watching them work and translating everything they said into what I already knew from the texts I had read and the knowledge I had built over years specifically because knowledge was the thing that did not fail you when everything else became uncertain.The claw wounds were deep.Both sides of her chest. The ribs on the right had taken the worst of it, two of them compromised, and the tissue damage on both sides was significant enough that the lead healer had looked at me when she arrived and said she is strong and I had said I know and neither of us had said the other thing that was in the room.I knew the other thing.I had known it the moment Maya went down in the forest and I had covered the distance between us in the specific time of someone who is not thinking about distance but only about the person at
Mated to My Rival Step Brother 281. End of The Rogue Alpha
Selene's POV:I saw Maya go down.From across the clearing I saw it and I felt it the way you felt things that involved people you had decided mattered to you and Maya had been deciding to matter to me for longer than she knew. The claw marks. Both sides. The specific terrible precision of someone who understood anatomy and had used that understanding as a weapon.She shifted and put herself between Aldric and Lyra.Still standing.Still holding her position with everything she had left which was not much and was somehow enough.I was already moving.Gregory was beside me and Blake was coming in from the right and Alex from the left and the four of us converged on the same point with the specific quality of people who had been fighting separately and had just become one thing.Aldric turned and saw us.And hesitated.I had been waiting for that hesitation for thirty years."It is over, Aldric," I said.He looked at me.The flat expression was still there but underneath it something ha
Mated to My Rival Step Brother 057. The Eyes on Me
Alex's POV:By Monday afternoon, it felt like the academy had learned how to breathe differently.Every step I took echoed louder than it should have. The halls were the same stone, the same banners, the same sharp smell of training oil and old books. But the air carried something else now. Attenti
Last Updated : 2026-03-22Mated to My Rival Step Brother 062. When Silence Feels Wrong
Blake's POV:Noon at the academy felt too bright for the kind of tension sitting in my chest.The sun stood high, warming the stone paths and training grounds, but the light did nothing to ease my thoughts. Students moved around me in small groups, laughing too loudly or whispering when they though
Last Updated : 2026-03-22Mated to My Rival Step Brother 058. What the Council Asks
Alex's POV:Monday evening crept into the academy like a warning that refused to announce itself.The sky outside the tall windows darkened slowly. Lanterns lit the corridors one by one. Shadows stretched longer across stone floors. I stood near the upper balcony, hands resting on the cold railing,
Last Updated : 2026-03-22Mated to My Rival Step Brother 061: Wolves Who Do Not Look Away
Blake's POV:Tuesday early time settled over the academy like a held breath.The halls were quieter than they should have been. Even the lamps outside the dorms seemed dimmer, as if the walls themselves were listening. I walked back to my room with slow steps, my bag heavy on my shoulder though it
Last Updated : 2026-03-22
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