All Chapters of The Alpha’s Rejected Mate Returns with Twins: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

The scent hit her first. Pine smoke and storm winds, cold and biting, threaded through the air like a warning. Sharp. Unmistakable. Dangerous. It coiled around her before she even saw the gates, wrapping itself around her ribs and squeezing until her breath caught.Cassia stilled at the edge of the trees, boots sinking slightly into the damp, moss-slick earth. Her grip instinctively tightened around the two smaller hands in hers. Muddy, restless, unaware of the storm beginning to churn low in her chest. The wind whispered through the branches above, brushing over her skin with the same voice she remembered from a lifetime ago. One that still knew her name.Beside her, two pairs of small feet shifted impatiently, crunching twigs and damp leaves beneath them. Behind them, the crumbling remains of the old highway stretched back into the hills like a broken spine. Cracked, swallowed by time and the kind of silence that came only after fire. Everything behind them was gone. Burned to ash.

The wind shifted, and everything in me stilled.One foot hung mid-turn, frozen in the dirt. My chest locked. Breath caught. Muscles coiled so tight I swore I heard something in my spine creak. A split second, no longer, and then it hit me. The scent. That godsdamned scent.Lavender and ozone. Rain on hot stone, sweet and wild. It hit like a memory I hadn’t let myself touch in six years. One I’d buried deep and burned the ground over. But it didn’t matter. The moment it reached me, everything inside me surged. Snarling, clawing, the wolf that lived just beneath my skin, the one I’d caged and trained and starved of her, went feral.Cassia.Her name wasn’t just a thought. It detonated, shrapnel in my blood, flame under my skin.I staggered back a step, the air shifted with me. The pack; spars scattered, conversations stalled, went quiet in a ripple of tension. Some of the younger ones frowned, confused, ears twitching at the charge that had crept into the clearing. But the older warriors

The pack house hadn’t changed.Still all sharp corners and polished wood. Still that curated sterility beneath the surface, like it had been built not to shelter, but to impress. A place meant for display, not for warmth. Every line of it too crisp, too clean. Just like him.I lingered in the doorway of the guest room longer than I needed to, letting the hush of the space settle around me. Nova was tucked on her side, lashes fluttering faintly, lost in a dream I’d never be able to protect her from. Leo slept close, his fingers curled loosely against her ribs, the soft sound of his breath matching hers like they shared a single heartbeat. Even in sleep, they reached for each other. Always touching. Always connected.They didn’t know how close we were to danger. Again. And if I was honest, I didn’t know either.I let out a breath, quiet and shaky, then pulled the door closed with a soft click. The silence in the hallway felt deeper than it should’ve, like the whole house was holding its