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Chapter 20: Someone Inside
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2026-09-18 17:00:00Kane's POV,
We reach the ridge by midafternoon, and I know before we've even dismounted that the scouts undersold it.
"There." Soren points, low, though there's no one close enough to overhear. Smoke rises from somewhere beyond the treeline, thin and controlled, the kind of smoke a disciplined camp makes when it doesn't want to be seen from a distance. Untrained eyes would miss it. I've spent too many years reading exactly this kind of sign to miss anything.
"How many fir
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Rejected by my Alpha, Claimed by the King Chapter 22: Every Falconer
Soren doesn't slow down until we're deep in the east wing, past the barracks, into a storeroom I haven't set foot in for years.A young guard stands near the door, pale, holding something wrapped in cloth like it might bite him."Show him," Soren says.The guard unwraps it. A dead hawk, wings bent wrong, a small leather tube still strapped to one leg."Found it in the old grain tower an hour ago," the guard says. "Wing's broken. Looks like it hit the tower wall in the dark and didn't survive the impact.""Trained bird?""Not one of ours, Your Majesty."I crouch and unfasten the tube myself, careful, though the bird's long past caring. The paper inside is small, tightly rolled, the kind of message meant to travel fast and disappear just as fast if it needed to.I unroll it under the lamp.Numbers first. A count — twenty-four, the exact size of the company I rode out with this morning. Below that, a route, marked in shorthand I recognize immediately, because it's the same shorthand my o
Rejected by my Alpha, Claimed by the King Chapter 21: Not mine
Word reaches the palace before they arrive. I'm in the healer's wing when I hear it, a stable hand running through the courtyard shouting for someone to fetch the healers, that riders are coming in fast, that there are wounded.I don't remember deciding to run. I just find myself at the gate, breathless, watching torches move through the dark toward the palace walls.They come in slower than they left. That's the first thing I notice, the horses tired, the formation looser, men slumped in their saddles. I count them without meaning to.Then I see him.He's upright. Moving on his own. But there's blood on him, dark and dried along one sleeve, more of it streaked across his jaw like he wiped his face with the back of a hand that wasn't clean."Kane."His name comes out of me before I remember I'm not supposed address him that way. He hears it anyway, and his head turns, and for one long second across the torchlit courtyard, something in his face changes.He dismounts and I'm moving befo
Rejected by my Alpha, Claimed by the King Chapter 20: Someone Inside
Kane's POV,We reach the ridge by midafternoon, and I know before we've even dismounted that the scouts undersold it."There." Soren points, low, though there's no one close enough to overhear. Smoke rises from somewhere beyond the treeline, thin and controlled, the kind of smoke a disciplined camp makes when it doesn't want to be seen from a distance. Untrained eyes would miss it. I've spent too many years reading exactly this kind of sign to miss anything."How many fires do you count?""Six, that I can see. Could be more past the ridge line."Six fires means more than sixty men, likely closer to a hundred, and men like Voss's don't march that many soldiers to the edge of a kingdom for nothing. I dismount and hand my reins to the nearest soldier, and Vaelor stirs under my skin, in a calm manner. Very different from his restless self, sharper now, focused, the part of him built for exactly this kind of danger."Send two men forward," I say.
Rejected by my Alpha, Claimed by the King Chapter 19: Before First Light
The courtyard is still dark when I get there. Torches burning low along the walls, breath fogging in front of every mouth, horses stamping and blowing steam into the cold.I almost turn back twice.Soldiers move around in tight, practiced formation, checking straps, checking blades, none of them sparing me more than a glance. I press myself against the stone archway and watch, and for a moment I think I've missed him entirely, that he's already mounted somewhere in the crowd of grey coats and I've lost my chance without even trying.Then I see him.He's by the largest horse, one hand resting on its neck, listening to something Soren's saying with his jaw set hard. He looks different out here. Harder. The man the whole kingdom fears, not the man who wraps a jar in four seconds and calls me little stray.I make myself walk toward him before I can talk myself out of it again.Soren sees me first. He says something low to Kane, and Kane's head turns, and across the space between us someth
Rejected by my Alpha, Claimed by the King Chapter 18: Space
I'm in the wing doing what I was assigned to do but my focus was entirely on something else. I didn't want to admit it but I cared enough to know that Kane hadn't come to the healer's wing today like he always did.I notice it more than I want to. I catch myself glancing at the door every time it opens, and every time it isn't him, something in my chest does a small, confusing thing I don't have a name for. Relief, maybe. Or the opposite of relief. I can't tell anymore, which is its own kind of exhausting.I'm sent on an errand midmorning, a list of supplies to collect from the storerooms near the kitchens, and it's on my way back, arms full of jars, that I run into Mira coming the other way with a stack of folded linens.She stops the second she sees my face."What's with that look. Why do you have such a sullen expression?" she says, "I'm guessing it has nothing to do with your assigned duties.""No. Not really."She studies me a moment longer, then shifts her linens to one arm and
Rejected by my Alpha, Claimed by the King Chapter 17: You're my mate!
Kane finds me after the healer's wing empties for the night.Greta's already gone. The wounded soldier's asleep, breathing steady now, and I'm alone folding the last of the clean linens when the door opens and he steps in, closing it behind him with a quiet click that feels different from every other time he's walked into a room I was in."Sit down," he says."I'm fine standing.""Sit down, Luna."Something in his voice makes me listen. Not the command of a King. Something closer to a man about to do something he's been putting off for a while. I sit on the edge of the nearest cot, and he pulls a chair around to face me, and for once he doesn't sit close enough to crowd me. He keeps his distance, like whatever he's about to say needs the space between us to survive it."I owe you an explanation," he says. "For Vaelor. For all of it."My stomach tightens. "Okay.""Every wolf carries one inside them. You know that much, even without having one yourself." He says it plainly, no unkindnes
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