All Chapters of The Alpha’s Reluctant Mate: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

KANE’S POV The message arrived just after nightfall. It came in the hands of a weary, mud-streaked boy, no older than fifteen, his clothes torn as though he’d been riding through the forest for days. His chest rose and fell rapidly, and he stammered when the guards tried to stop him. “I…I have a message for Alpha Kane,” the boy gasped. “From… from Ivy.” At the sound of her name, my attention sharpened like a blade. I was halfway across the courtyard before the guard could question him further. “Give it to me,” I said, holding out my hand. The boy hesitated as though weighing whether he should speak. His eyes darted between the guards and me. Then, with trembling fingers, he pulled a folded parchment from inside his tunic. The wax seal was smeared but intact with Nightfall’s crest. My heart kicked hard in my chest. I broke the seal. Kane, I need to see you. Come to the east wall of the safe house before the moon reaches its peak. Alone. I have a plan that could turn the tide, b

IVY’S POVThe fiery ring of the eclipse blazed above me, devouring the sky with its unnatural light. It wasn’t just a simple astronomical phenomenon, it was alive. The blazing circle glowed like the unblinking, merciless eye of some ancient god staring down at the world, judging, condemning. Its molten halo bled through the darkness, staining the battlefield in hues of gold and crimson, shadows twisting unnaturally across the torn earth.The light I had summoned still hovered in the air around me— thick, molten, shimmering like liquid glass. It was alive with heat, alive with power, and the air rippled in its presence as if reality itself was trying to bend away from it. Every breath I took carried the sting of that heat into my lungs. The soldiers who had dared to stand against me moments ago were no longer men, just scorched silhouettes burned into the ground, faint smoke rising from where they had fallen. The silence where they had stood moments before was deafening.Kane lay on th

IVY’S POVThe whisper didn’t stop.It didn’t even pause. It throbbed faintly at the edges of my mind, curling through my thoughts like tendrils of smoke slipping under a closed door— an intrusion that was both unwelcome and irresistible.Ivy… come closer.The sound wasn’t quite a voice, not in the way someone might speak to you aloud. It was more like an echo inside my bones, the faintest vibration that somehow made the hair at the nape of my neck stand on end.Beneath the fractured stone floor, a glow pulsed softly, casting ghostly silver light through the broken cracks. The relic. Its radiance was strange. It was neither harsh nor warm, but something steady and unyielding, as though the light had been burning for centuries without dimming.It didn’t belong here. Not in these ruins, not in this place that smelled of old ash and long-dead fires. The air around it felt… different, alive, ancient, patient and it was waiting— for me.I told myself not to touch it yet. Not when I didn’t e

IVY’S POVThe silence after the battle was unbearable. The echoes of shattered stone still trembled through the ground, but the Hollow’s roar was gone, swallowed in the void Kane had carved into it. Its corpse, if something so ancient could even have a corpse, lay crumbled in smoke and fragments of blackened dust that bled into the soil. My chest heaved, lungs straining as if the very air had been stolen from me. Relief should have come. Safety should have felt real. But instead, a cold dread clawed at my spine. Kane stood at the center of it all, his body still half-wreathed in shadows that refused to let him go. His head was lowered, his broad chest rising and falling in harsh, uneven breaths. The dark magic pulsed around him, not like a cloak, but like living chains that dug deeper into his soul with every second. “Kane…” My voice was fragile, barely audible, but it was all I could manage. I took one cautious step forward. He flinched. Not from exhaustion, but from me. Slowly,

KANE’S POVThe ruins were silent once Ivy’s footsteps faded into the night. Her absence carved a hollow ache inside me, deeper than the shadow already festering in my veins. I had promised to protect her, but instead, I had bound myself to something darker than any oath.The air in Silver Crest felt different now. Heavier. Every stone, every shattered arch seemed to hum with a voice only I could hear. At first it was faint like a whisper brushing against the edges of my thoughts. Then, as the hours passed, it grew louder, clearer, a chorus of shadow urging me to surrender.My body was no longer entirely mine. The wolf inside me paced like a caged beast, restless, snarling at the weight pressing down on him. My claws lengthened when I didn’t will them to. My reflection in a shard of broken marble showed eyes black as pitch, endless voids where once there had been fire.I pressed trembling hands to my face. “This isn’t me,” I rasped, voice thick with something foreign. Even my own tone