Share

Chapter 51 He was a King

Author: Nora25G
last update publish date: 2025-12-17 14:06:24

"Of this. If you look at me exactly the way you're looking at me now," Pain flashed across his face.

"Like I'm just another person who took your choices away."

That hit harder than I expected.

Because he was right, that's exactly how I felt.

"I need air," I said.

"Sophia—"

"Please. Just... give me a minute."

I walked out before he could respond.

The pack house was quiet in the pre-dawn hours. Most people were sleeping—those who could sleep after yesterday's battle.

I made my way to Thea's work
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Locked Chapter

Latest chapter

  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter 251Looking Back

    I found the drawing book two days later.Not because I was looking for it. Alaric had left it on the kitchen table when he went out to his morning session with Aldric, and I came in to refill my coffee. There it was, open, the pages spread the way a book spreads when it's recently been used, and the spine was still warm from a hand.I didn't mean to look. I looked anyway.The page it was open to was not the view from the wall, which I'd seen him working on two nights ago. This was something different. Something I hadn't seen him work on, which meant he'd done it this morning before the session or last night after I'd gone to bed, in whatever hours he occupies when the rest of the house is quiet. His particular way of seeing the world doesn't have to accommodate anyone else's.It was a figure.Not detailed—he doesn't draw people with much detail, preferring the shape of things to their surfaces. But the outline was clear enough. Someone is sta

  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter 250 Ancient Things Do Not Become Curious

    The channel took until mid-morning to establish.I sat through the preparation without useful occupation, which is its own particular difficulty. There are things I am better at than I was two years ago: delegation, patience with ambiguity, and the recognition that not every problem benefits from my direct intervention. Sitting in a chair while Aldric made fine adjustments to instruments whose function I only partially understood, doing nothing, is not one of them.Kael brought coffee at some point. He set it beside me without comment and sat down on the low bench near the door, where he stayed for the next hour, requiring nothing from me. The coffee was excellent. I drank it and watched Aldric work and tried not to think about what three weeks of increasing signal might mean.You should eat something, my wolf said.I ignored her.I'm noting that for the record.She has developed over the past year a dry quality that I find both useful and a

  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter 249

    The signal came back at 4:47 in the morning.I knew the exact time because I was already awake, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea that had gone cold somewhere between the second and third hour of not sleeping. The window above the sink faces east. I wasn't watching it deliberately. I was looking at the grain of the wood on the tabletop, following one dark line where the tree had curved around something in its growth. Then the light caught the edge of my vision, and I looked up without meaning to.Silver. Clean and brief, just above the treeline.Gone before I could be certain I'd seen it.I put the cup down carefully.You saw it, my wolf said. She is not excitable. When she says something directly like that, without qualification, I have learned to trust it.I sat still for another moment, then I got up, rinsed the cup, and went to find Aldric.He was already in his workspace.This did not surprise me the way it on

  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter 248 Recovery Complete

    Aldric was presented as the anchor and interpreter for the parts that required translation. A thirty-minute window. Cassius was somewhere in the deeper realm, in whatever configuration Cassius occupied when not in full physical presence.I sat in on the first four and then stopped because I understood that my presence was changing what happened. Alaric said things to Cassius that he might not have said with me there—not secrets, not anything I needed to be protected from knowing, but things that were his to have.A relationship that was his own, not mediated through me.What I did instead was wait in the hallway and talk to him afterward.He always came out and sat on the bench across from my room's door and told me the relevant parts. The updates on Cassius's research into Vael—ongoing, without urgency, but ongoing. The state of the deeper realm, which Cassius monitored with the patience of someone who had been doing it for centuries. Occasional obse

  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter 247 Remembrance

    There was nothing. He offered two possible explanations: that Vael, having lost the vehicle he'd spent years developing, had retreated to assess and plan, or that the work's disruption of his presence in the Realm had cost him more than we'd realized, and he was recovering.“Which do you think it is?” I asked.“The second,” Aldric said. “He is old, but the work was thorough. What we did there was not small.”“But he's not gone.”“No, he is not gone.” He met my eyes. “There will be more. That threat exists, and it has not been resolved. But the immediate vector through Alaric is closed, and Alaric himself is no longer vulnerable in the way Vael needed him to be.”“So we have time.”“We have time. And we should use it

  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter 246 The Streams

    A wolf in the outer settlement, older, established, someone who had been at Black River since before I arrived, who saw Alaric in the market square and whose wolf-sense produced an instinctive alarm.He didn't act on it. He stood still and then removed himself from the situation with the self-possession of someone who understood that his instinct was not the same as the truth. But Alaric felt it. He came and found me an hour later with the contained expression of someone working through something.“Someone feared me,” he said.“Yes.”“I felt it.”“I know. You have a sensitivity to people's states that you didn't have before.”He thought about that.“Is it going to happen often?”“Probably yes, for a while. Fewer people

  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter81 To meet her

    "Is it? She's spent two centuries collecting pieces of ancient magic. Studying the First Wolves. Learning how they created the packs. She wants to undo that creation. Reshape it in her image.""How do we stop it?""The ritual requires three things: Moon's Tear. Royal Blood. And a thousand wolf sacr

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-28
  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter 78 Moonrise Departure

    "How?"His eyes met mine. Gold flecks are more prominent than usual. Power stirring beneath the surface."By not playing defense anymore. We go on offense. Find Leighton. Capture him. Make him tell us what he's told her.""He's in Cult territory. Protected. Would it be suicide too?""Then we're sma

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-28
  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter 82 Victory in Defiance

    “You have to! That's what he's doing! Buying you time!”Through the bond, I felt Kael's determination.His absolute certainty that I needed to survive. Go, his voice in my head. Get them to safety. I'll follow.You'd better.I promise.I ran. Carrying Liana with magic. Marcus is limping behind. Awa

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-28
  • Returning in Reverse After Betrayal   Chapter 83 Hello again Julia

    The war room hummed with tension as pack members filed in around me. I took my seat at the head of the table, acutely aware of the Luna Mark still glowing faintly on my shoulder—a constant reminder of last night's awakening. Kael stood behind me, his hand resting protectively on my shoulder, stead

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-28
More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status