All Chapters of Arya’s Second Chance Mate: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

Chase's POVThe search party leader held out what he was carrying, and it took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. A torn piece of cloth, dark green with a small silver mark stitched into the corner. I recognized it right away. It was a piece of the uniform Jake's men wore, the same mark I had seen on the man who attacked me outside his home weeks ago."Where did you find this," I asked."Caught on a fence post, about two miles past the old mill road," the man said. "There were tracks nearby too. Wagon wheels, heading east, then turning north."North. That matched what Sean had started to tell me before we were interrupted. I looked at him, and he gave a small nod, like the pieces were finally lining up in his head the same way they were in mine."That is the direction of the old hunting lodge," Sean said. "Jake's grandfather used it years ago, before the two families split apart. Jake kept it after the war between our packs ended. Most people forgot it was even his.""Yo

Chase's POVWe fought our way through the lodge room by room, and every hallway looked the same after a while, smoke and shouting and the sound of bodies hitting the floor. I kept my mind fixed on one thing only. Finding Arya. Finding my son. Everything else was just noise I had to move through to get there. Men came at me from doorways and side halls, and I fought them off without really seeing their faces, my whole body moving on instinct while my mind stayed somewhere else entirely.Angus stayed close behind me, cutting down anyone who got too near, and somewhere off to my left I could hear Sean's voice calling out to the others, directing them toward a set of stairs that led up to the higher floors. I trusted that he knew this place well enough to guide us right, and for now, that trust was the only map I had.I caught Jake's scent before I saw him. Sharp and familiar, laced with the kind of arrogance that seemed to follow him everywhere he went, even now with his own home falling

Chase's POVJake ran through a set of doors that led out onto a wide stone balcony overlooking what used to be a garden, though most of it was trampled now, crushed under the boots of men fighting somewhere below us. Smoke rose up from parts of the lodge already burning, thick and gray against the early morning sky, and for a moment neither of us moved, both catching our breath, both watching the other with the kind of focus that comes right before something ends. The sounds of the fighting below seemed to fade into the background, like the whole world had narrowed down to just the two of us standing there in the wreckage of a place that used to belong to his family.I could feel the wolf pressing against the edges of my control, closer to the surface than it had been in years. Part of me wanted to hold it back, to finish this as a man rather than as the beast people whispered about behind my back. But another part of me, the part that kept thinking about Arya chained somewhere in thi

Arya's POVI did not think. I did not have time to think. The moment Anastasia raised that blade toward Chamberlin, something inside me broke loose, something I had never felt before in my entire life, not even during the full moon parties when the other wolves shifted around me and I stood there feeling like the only ordinary person in a room full of extraordinary ones. All those years of watching from the sidelines, believing I was the plain one, the weak one, the daughter who did not have anything special hiding under her skin.Heat spread through my body, starting somewhere deep in my chest and moving outward through my arms and legs until my skin felt too tight to hold whatever was happening inside me, like something long asleep had finally opened its eyes. I pushed Chamberlin behind me, my hands moving on instinct rather than thought, and I heard myself make a sound that did not belong to the woman I had always believed myself to be. Low. Fierce. Nothing like the quiet, careful

Arya's POVI woke up slowly, the way a person wakes when they have been pulled back from somewhere very far away. White walls. A soft beeping sound somewhere nearby. The smell of clean linen and something faintly medicinal underneath it. For a moment I did not know where I was, and my heart started to race before a familiar voice cut through the fog."Arya."I turned my head, and there was Chase, sitting in a chair pulled close to the bed, dark circles under his eyes, his shirt still stained with dirt and blood that was not his own. He looked like a man who had not slept in days, and something in his face when he saw my eyes open made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with the wound in my shoulder."Chase," I said, my voice raspy and unfamiliar to my own ears.He reached for my hand, holding it carefully, like he was afraid I might break if he squeezed too hard. "You are safe," he said. "You are both safe. Chamberlin is fine. He has barely left this room since we brought y