Semua Bab Rejected By The Alpha, Desired By The Immortal King: Bab 51 - Bab 60

POV: ARAYA The clearing reeked of steel, sweat, and the faint scorch of Hollowflame still cooling in the dirt. My arms ached from last night’s drills, bruises blooming beneath my skin like wildflowers—and still Dorian demanded more. He circled me now, shirt plastered to his shoulders, blade catching threads of fading light. No teasing curl to his mouth. No smirk in his eyes. Which meant this wasn’t training. This was a lesson—and it would hurt. Nyxara purred in the back of my skull, velvet and fangs. Stop watching his arms, little flame. Watch his hips. That’s where the kill comes from. “I am watching his hips.” Mhm. In the way a starving wolf watches a feast. Heat flushed my throat—not from exertion. Not entirely. Dorian lunged. Steel clashed, the shock racing from my wrists to my ribs until my whole body felt strung too tight. He pressed me back a step, then another, until my shoulders struck the training post. I twisted free, blade snapping for his ribs. He blocked

POV: Erik The dark does not starve me. It feeds. Every heartbeat above the soil sends a faint vibration through my roots, a reminder that the world still moves, still breathes… still bleeds. I drink it all in — the tremors of battle, the laughter of mortals, the rustle of gods shifting in their high thrones. But tonight — ah, tonight — the flavour has changed. Adira’s blood still lingers in my cage, sweet with ambition. I savour it slowly, letting the memory of her bargain soak through the roots. She thought she came to take from me. Fool. No one takes from me without being taken in return. Her child is already mine. Not in flesh, not yet — but in the way all prey is claimed before the teeth break skin. And because of her, I have something sweeter than her life to hunt. The Hollow-Blood. Nyxara. --- She burns brighter now. I feel her through the rot and stone, a flare that cuts through centuries of damp and silence. She does not yet know the shape of my hunger.

--- POV: Selene The doors of the Loom’s chamber closed behind me without a touch. I stood on Solara’s high terrace with the taste of thunder still in my mouth and the tremor of that bodiless Voice grinding through my bones. Below, the divine city glittered like hammered gold and white stone. Spires rose like frozen flames; bridges of light arced tower to tower, singing as winds passed through their latticework. In the courtyards, lesser deities rehearsed their rituals as mortals breathe—mindless, necessary. None of it felt steady. Fate had spoken. Not to the council. To me. And the world had tilted. A silver-winged page landed on the balustrade, bowing low. “Moon-Queen. The Council convenes. They demand—” “I know what they demand,” I said, frost in my voice. My hands still shook. “Announce me.” He sprang aloft, leaving a trail of motes. Below, the curtains of the Ober Hall drew open like eyelids. I walked inside. --- The Council of Aetheria had never learned silence. Gods of

POV: ArayaThe clearing still smelled of yesterday’s rain — damp earth, pine, and the faint metallic tang of steel left too long in the weather. My bare feet sank into the soil, grounding me before the first strike came.Dorian was already waiting. No shirt. No armour. Just loose training trousers that made it far too easy to follow the way his muscles shifted beneath skin. The bone-forged blade from the altar rested against a stump, but today he was unarmed.“You’re slower today,” he said, stepping into the circle without preamble. “Distracted.”“I’m fine,” I lied.He began to circle me. Not like a wolf — no sound, no wasted movement. Older. Sharper. As if the forest itself was holding its breath for me to make the wrong step.You’re staring at his hands again, Nyxara purred in the back of my mind, voice thick with amusement. Imagine what else they could hold.Heat crept into my cheeks. Shut up.Dorian moved first. A low feint toward my ribs. I blocked, but his other hand caught my w

POV: Araya The morning air was knife-sharp and silvered with frost, but it never touched me. Dorian’s shadow cut through the clearing in measured arcs, the bone-forged blade in his hand catching stray shards of sunlight. He moved like the weapon wasn’t just his — it was an extension of him, bone and steel fused in purpose.“Again,” he said, voice low and steady, carrying that unshakable authority that made my pulse misbehave.I lunged. Fire snapped in my palm, Hollowflame curling like a serpent around my fingers as I aimed for his unguarded side—Steel kissed my throat before the flame could land.“You’re too obvious,” he murmured.The words should have irritated me, but paired with the heat of his body so close, they made my heart stumble.Nyxara’s voice was velvet and fangs in my skull: “He’s not wrong. You telegraph every intent. Want to win? Change the game. Distract him.”I didn’t ask what she meant. I already knew.I feinted left, spun right, and stepped in closer than I ever h