Semua Bab The Alpha’s Reluctant Mate: Bab 11 - Bab 20

IVY’S POVSleep had become a stranger to me. Even with the door bolted, even tucked beneath layers of blankets in the room they’d “relocated” me to, I couldn’t escape the feeling that eyes were watching from the dark corners. That if I let my guard down for even a moment, something or someone would reach out and finish what the fire had started. The silence was too loud. The walls too thin. My heart too alert. Since the fire, the compound had shifted. Whispers didn’t die in the corners anymore; they followed me like a curse, clinging to my steps, infecting every glance tossed my way. They thought I didn’t hear them. But I always did. “She’s bad luck…” “Ever since she came here, things have gone wrong…” “Maybe Derick’s right…” And Kane? Kane had said nothing. Not a word since that night in the ruins, when he looked between us, between me and the man who’d tried to kill me and walked away without choosing either of us The bond between us still pulsed with li

IVY’S POVI could still taste blood. It was metallic on my tongue, thick in the back of my throat like a memory that wouldn’t fade. My body ached in places I hadn’t even known could hurt. Knees scraped raw, knuckles bloodied, muscles trembling from the release of power I didn’t understand. But none of that compared to the look on Kane’s face when he saw me. Not the carnage, not the unconscious bodies of the warriors that had tried to kill me, but me. He had stood at the edge of the clearing, frozen, like something sacred had shattered in front of him. Now, back at the pack house, hours later, I sat in the dim corner of Kane’s office, the same room I had once been too afraid to enter without asking permission. The fire crackled softly in the hearth, but the warmth didn’t reach me. I was still cold, wrapped in one of Kane’s spare shirts, blood washed from my skin, but nothing could cleanse the way he looked at me now. Not anger, not hate but worse. More like caution and fe

IVY’S POVThe corridor was darker than the night above us, but I didn’t need light to see. I felt everything. Each step awakened something old in the marrow of my bones. Each whisper of air carried memory and magic. Kane stayed beside me, his presence a constant force, yet I barely registered him as my fingers brushed the walls. Ancient carvings pulsed faintly with my touch, markings I hadn’t learned but somehow understood. Soulbinder, Moonborne., Celestial-born. I should have been afraid, but all I felt was this burning need to know who I truly was. The corridor widened into a vaulted chamber. At its center stood a single dais, surrounded by silver-lit runes that curved across the floor like the orbit of stars. Hovering above it was a sphere, a globe of swirling silver mist. I stepped closer. The mist parted. Visions exploded. This time, I wasn’t falling. I was soaring. Through sky, through time, through blood. I stood upon the mount of Silvercrest in its prime, no

KANE’S POV.The return to Nightfall Pack was anything but triumphant. The familiar scent of pine and earth did little to quell the storm brewing within me. Ivy walked beside me, her presence a constant reminder of the prophecy and the blood oath I had sworn to my father.I watched her from a distance, my emotions a tangled web of duty, desire, and dread. She was my fated mate, the one the Moon Goddess had chosen for me. But she was also the last Moonborne, the very bloodline my father had sworn and dedicated his life to eradicate and now, fate had bound me to her.My father’s teachings echoed in my mind, a litany of warnings about the dangers of the Moonborne. He had believed them to be a threat to our kind, a blight that needed to be purged. And I had vowed to continue his mission.But now, faced with the reality of Ivy, I found myself questioning everything. She was not the monster I had been led to believe. She was strong, compassionate, and fiercely loyal. She had risked everythin

IVY’S POVThe wind had changed.There was no howling or thunder to warn of it. No prophetic murmur from the stars. Just a subtle shift in the way the trees leaned into each other, the way the silence clung too long to every space I walked through in the Nightfall Pack. It had only been days since our return from Silvercrest, but already everything felt… different.Especially him.Kane didn’t touch me anymore. Not even in passing. His presence, once a furnace at my back, now burned at a distance. I’d catch him watching me sometimes, his gaze hard, unreadable, the ghost of some inner war shadowing his expression. But when I turned to meet his eyes, he was already gone. Or worse, he looked through me like I was just another soldier under his command.He’d changed.And I knew why.The truth, the whole ugly, shining truth still echoed in my bones. I was the last of the Moonborne, descendant of a line he had sworn to destroy. A line his father had hunted to extinction. A line that now lived