Semua Bab Rejected By The Alpha, Desired By The Immortal King: Bab 41 - Bab 50

POV: ADIRA The holding cells stank of silver, rot, and desperation. My heels clicked down the corridor, each step echoing like a countdown. The torches along the walls sputtered as I passed, flames shrinking away as if they knew what I was about to do. Two guards blocked his cell. One looked nervous. The other stared fixedly ahead, pretending not to notice the way my robe gaped just enough to show skin. “I want the room,” I said. “Alpha Nareth ordered—” the younger one began. I slid the velvet pouch from my sleeve. The sound of coins clinking against each other was almost obscene in the silence. “I wasn’t asking.” The older one took it without meeting my gaze. “Twenty minutes.” I smiled — slow, deliberate. “I’ll take longer if I want to.” When their footsteps faded, I unbolted the door myself. --- The hinges groaned, and there he was. Kade. Bare to the waist, silver cuffs biting into his wrists. His hair was a shadow over his eyes, but I could see the hunger there — the ki

POV: ADIRA The ruins stink of damp stone, old incense, and something sweeter — rot left too long in velvet, the perfume of holiness gone to decay. At the far end of the blackened chamber sits the fallen priestess. Her veil hangs in two torn strips like dead skin. Where Selene’s silver symbols once marked her flesh, jagged claw marks have gouged them away, leaving only weeping scabs. Her clouded eyes lock on me. Madness and spite — both in equal measure. “You reek of desire,” she rasps, her voice soft as petals left to mould. I don’t flinch. “I want him.” Her mouth curls, teeth yellow and rotting. “Then take him.” “I want all of him.” I step forward, velvet skirts whispering over scorched stone. “Man and wolf. Without her between us.” A slow, knowing smile splits her face. “Then you must sever what binds them. Tear her from him. Kill her if need be.” “Tell me how.” --- She leads me to the altar — black stone laced with red-veined seams that pulse like sluggish blood. She sets

POV: ARAYA Dawn pools cold in the Vale of Hollow Winds, a pale film over black pines and frost-bitten grass. Breath ghosts from my lips. The air tastes like iron, pine sap, and the tension before a blade is drawn. Across the clearing, Dorian moves. Not trains. Moves—like the world is something he wears well. Bare-chested, skin sheened with mist, he glides through a slow kata, bone-forged blade cutting deliberate arcs. Each step is a conversation with gravity: softer, closer, claim. The scars across his ribs flash when he turns—pale lines like constellations someone tried to erase. Nyxara purrs in the back of my skull, lazy and smug. Look how our mate balances the world. Imagine how he’d balance you. “Focus,” I breathe, setting my feet shoulder-width apart, blade raised. My fingers are steady. My pulse isn’t. He finishes a sequence, the last cut shaving a curl of frost from a fallen branch. Then his eyes lift—storm-dark, unreadable—and find me watching. Caught. An apology flick

POV: ARAYA The Vale wears dawn like a bruise—violet thinning to blue, tender at the edges where trees still cradle night. Frost glitters on dead leaves; my breath smokes in pale ribbons. The air tastes of iron and pine resin, wrapped in the quiet that means something is listening. Dorian is already moving when I step into the clearing. Not training—moving. Bare-chested in the cold, skin slick with mist, he carves slow arcs with the bone-forged blade like he’s drawing a pattern the world itself respects. Scars ladder his ribs—white, thin, deliberate. My first thought isn’t tactical. Nyxara purrs behind my ribs, pleased. Look at our mate. See how the ground keeps him and the air forgives him. “I’m here to train, not stare,” I mutter. You can do both. Multitask for me, little flame. He finishes the sequence and turns, breath steady, eyes storm-dark. A curved practice blade spins toward me, handle-first. It lands in my palm with a satisfying thunk. “You’re still too slow.” “Good m

POV: DorianThe altar waited where the map forgot the mountains.I followed the vein of a dried river into the spine of stone until the sky squeezed to a crack and the world turned to bone-cold breath. Even light felt unwelcome here, thinning to a tired smear along the cavern mouth. The air tasted of rust and old prayers that never reached a god.I hadn’t come since the night my bloodline ended.The cavern recognised me anyway.A hush rolled through the ribs of rock as I stepped inside, a pressure change sharp enough to make my ears pop. The walls were studded with relics of my kin — skulls wired with silver-vine, ribcages stitched to pillars, finger bones strung like counting beads. Not trophies. Reminders. Each one marked with a cut rune: name, deed, debt.I passed the last name in that chain — mine — carved half a lifetime ago and left unfinished.At the centre, the altar waited.No flowers. No candles. Just a slab of stone blackened by ten thousand offerings and split by a seam th