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Chapter 26: Her Mother's Hand

Penulis: Gemma Writes
last update Tanggal publikasi: 2026-08-12 14:25:17

"Are you ready?"

Mara sits across from me on the floor of my tent, the small wooden box between us, the tarnished key resting in my palm like it weighs far more than it should. I've stared at this box for two days now, and every time I reach for the key, something in my chest tightens enough to stop me.

"No," I say honestly. "Let's do it anyway."

The key slides into the lock with a small, resistant click, and the lid gives way easier than I expe
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  • Not yours to reject    Chapter 44: Proof

    "There's more, if you're willing to actually look at it."Dean leads me to a small tent set apart from the main camp, guards stationed nearby who nod him through without question. Inside, spread across a folding table, sits a collection of documents far more extensive than the single paper he showed me at the fence line."This is everything?" I ask, scanning the sheer volume of it, maps marked with faded ink, reports dated back further than I expected."Most of it. My father's been tracking Thomas Vance's movements for close to fifteen years." Dean pulls out one of the older maps, smoothing it flat across the table. "Long before your mother died, actually. Before either of us was born, if some of these dates are accurate."I lean closer, studying the careful notations, red marks scattered across territories I don't recognize, tracking something with obsessive, methodical patience. "Why would he start tracking Thomas that e

  • Not yours to reject    Chapter 43: Dean's Reversal

    "I heard what happened. With Jaxton."Dean is waiting near the fence line when I finally leave the medical tent, moonlight catching the steady, unbothered set of his shoulders, none of the desperation or instability that's defined every previous conversation between us. He looks fully like himself again, or fully like the version of himself he wants me to see now."You shouldn't have heard anything. That was a private conversation.""Word travels fast in a camp this small, especially after a day like today." He falls into step beside me as I walk, not quite touching, careful in a way that feels deliberate rather than accidental. "I'm not here to gloat, if that's what you're expecting. I'm here because I think you deserve better than people who keep secrets from you when the truth actually matters.""That's rich, coming from you." I keep walking, refusing to give him the satisfaction of slowing down. "You withheld informati

  • Not yours to reject    Chapter 42: Jaxton's Guilt

    "There's more I haven't told you."Jaxton says it once the elders and my father have left the tent, once the two of us are finally alone with the wreckage of everything just revealed. His voice carries none of its usual steadiness now. "I should have said this days ago, back at the border camp, and I didn't.""What else could there possibly be." I'm too exhausted to feel much beyond a dull, bracing dread, waiting for whatever fresh weight he's about to add to a day already overflowing with them."My father's letter, the photograph of your mother." He pulls both from his jacket, setting them carefully on the table between us, and I stare at the yellowed paper, at the woman in the photograph who looks so much like the mother I barely remember clearly anymore, younger and unguarded in a way I never got to see her. "I found these the night after the storm. I told you I needed to look into my father's history before saying anything more. Tha

  • Not yours to reject    Chapter 41: The Weight of Knowing

    "Jaxton, answer me."He finally meets my eyes, guilt written plainly across his face now, and something in my chest goes cold before he even speaks. "My father knew fragments of this. I told you that already, the letter, the photograph. I didn't know the full shape of the failsafe until just now, sitting in this tent. I swear to you that's the truth.""Then who else. Someone else's silence is answering for them right now, and I want to know who."The elders shift uncomfortably, and my father finally looks up, guilt carved deep into every line of his face."I've suspected for years," he says quietly. "Not the full mechanism or the failsafe specifically, not until the elders explained it just now. But I suspected your mother's death wasn't the accident everyone believed it to be. I had no proof, only instinct and fragments she left behind before she died.""You suspected, and you said nothing. For years." My vo

  • Not yours to reject    Chapter 40: Not an Accident

    "Your mother wasn't simply born into this bloodline," my father says slowly. "She was its last confirmed carrier, as far as the old elders could determine. The last of a line believed extinct for generations, until she proved otherwise the first time she healed someone in front of witnesses she couldn't fully hide it from.""That's not an answer to what you were about to tell me."He closes his eyes briefly, gathering himself. "Thomas didn't just want her because of what she could do. He believed, and the elders believed alongside him at the time, that securing her bloodline permanently, binding it to his own line through a mate bond, could restore something the old records call a failsafe. A stabilizing bond meant to protect carriers from the corruption that eventually claims anyone who uses the gift too long."Cold understanding settles into my chest. "He didn't want to kill her, not at first.""No. He wanted to claim her. Formally, permanently, the way Silas has been trying to clai

  • Not yours to reject    Chapter 39: Confirmation

    "He said I'm the one Thomas has been looking for."I sit across from Jaxton in the medical tent, hands finally steady after hours of treating wounded fighters, the adrenaline of the attack long since drained into bone-deep exhaustion. "Not a random target and not incidental to some larger bloodline research. Specifically me.""That tracks with everything else we've pieced together." Jaxton rubs a hand across his face, equally worn down by the day. "The break-in at your clinic, the stolen ledger. This attack, timed exactly when the council convened to settle the custody dispute. None of it reads as separate incidents anymore.""It's a pattern." I say it slowly, the full shape of it finally settling into place. "My mother wasn't an isolated tragedy that happened to our family once, years ago, and ended there. This is ongoing and active. Something that's been building toward exactly this moment for a long time.""You think Th

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