All Chapters of Rejected by the lycan king: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

The festival’s glow lingered like a dream.For the first time in what felt like lifetimes, I woke to birdsong instead of alarms. The scent of jasmine drifted through the open window of my chamber. Duskfall, once a city built on division, now moved to the rhythm of a shared heartbeat.But beneath the peace, I felt it again that low, persistent hum deep in the core of my being. A signal.The gates had quieted, but their power remained alive.And not all who survived our ending welcomed our new beginning.1. The SummonsA silver hawk arrived at midmorning, bearing a letter sealed in obsidian wax.I broke it open and read the sharp, clipped handwriting aloud:“You closed the Rift. But not all gates were yours to seal.Return what you’ve claimed… or face the consequences.The Ashbound”Rafael frowned. “Who are they?”Seris looked up from her scrolls, eyes wide. “I’ve seen that name in the old Hollow archives. The Ashbound were a sect that believed magic should never have been divided. They

Caelen fell to his knees.Not in surrender.In revelation.Behind him, the Ashbound stood frozen as the living flame twisted above my palms, not wild, not destructive but luminous and steady. The wind stirred but did not rage. The sky brightened without a single spark.This wasn’t the fire they feared.It was the fire they forgot.1. The Memory They Buried“You were wrong,” I said, stepping toward Caelen.“No,” he breathed, “we were incomplete.”His voice cracked, the first fracture in his certainty. He looked up at me truly looked.“You carry not only the flame,” he said, “but the echoes of every choice that shaped it. The gates weren’t failures. They were refinements.”I nodded. “The flame is not a weapon. It is a mirror. And it chose to reflect all of us.”2. A Test of HumilityThe Circle of Seven approached. Dahlia handed Caelen the Echo Sphere.“Look,” she said simply.He did.And in that moment, every gate opened again not in the world, but in memory. Caelen saw the frost of Ela

The throne pulsed beneath my hand cold, ancient, unyielding.I didn’t try to melt it with magic. I didn’t speak a spell. I didn’t command it to yield.I simply stood still.And I listened.To the heartbeat beneath the frost.To the silence that had ruled this place for centuries.To the part of myself that still wondered what might happen if I let it all go.1. The Throne's VoiceIt didn’t speak in words.The ice sang instead.It sang of the time before the gates. When power had no form, no limit. When the world was still dreaming itself into being.The throne remembered a single bearer a woman who held fire, storm, earth, and sky within her bones. She didn’t rule. She balanced.But when war came, the balance broke. She divided herself, fracturing the flame into seven parts.Each gate was not created to test.It was created to contain.2. The Flame’s EchoAs I stood before the First Seat, I felt the seven gates stir inside me not as separate echoes, but one woven song.The gates had n

We didn’t mark the Ninth Gate with stone or fire.We marked it with memory.It wasn’t housed in a temple, but in the words we spoke. The choices we lived. The stories we passed to children who would never know war, only the echo of what was risked to earn peace.The Ninth was not a gate at all.It was the world itself, finally whole.1. The ChronicleIn the Hollow Library, Dahlia, Seris, and I began a record unlike any before. Not a royal archive. Not a tome of prophecy. A living, breathing Chronicle of the Gates.Each gate was given its chapter its truths, trials, and transformations recorded in our own voices. Not just mine, but Rafael’s, Xander’s, even the queen of the Frozen Crown.For the Ninth, we left pages blank.Let the world write that one day by day.2. Rafael’s OathHe asked me to meet him in the Grove.Not at the center, where the Echo Sphere shimmered, but at the edge beneath a silverleaf tree we once planted in silence.He held a small box, unadorned, humble.“Ophelia,”

The world didn’t end in fire.It didn’t crack in two, or tear open the sky, or rise a new queen from blood and bone.No.It unfolded.Quietly.Like pages of a story still being written.1. The Circle ExpandsThe Circle of Seven had long since outgrown its original form.Now, we were dozens. Gate-walkers, peacekeepers, lore-weavers, healers. Some were Crescent born. Some Hollow. Some neither just curious souls who had chosen to help shape a better world.And we no longer met in council chambers.We met beneath the Spiral Tree.We didn’t speak rulings.We shared stories.2. The Next GenerationA child approached me in the Hollow Garden.She was no older than eight, her face smudged with ink, her cloak embroidered with all nine sigils in crooked little loops.“Lady Ophelia?” she asked.I knelt. “Just Ophelia.”She held out a scroll. “I wrote a new gate. It’s called the Gate of Questions.”I smiled. “And what does it test?”She grinned. “Nothing. It just asks.”I laughed—a full, free laug