All Chapters of THE MATE HE COULDN'T CLAIM : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Chapter 031 First Rogue RecruitsThe ruins of the cabin still smoked behind us when we left.I didn’t look back. Not because it didn’t hurt because if I did, I might lose the thin thread of control I had left. My wolf prowled just under my skin, pressing against the surface, eager to rip apart whoever had done this.Caleb kept his pace steady beside me, his eyes scanning the treeline for movement. We hadn’t spoken since we saw the tracks. Whoever they were, they’d come in numbers, and they’d been organized. That wasn’t random.Sylvia’s hand was all over it.No Home to Return ToBy the time the trees thinned and the slope leveled out, my muscles burned from the climb. I leaned on my knees, catching my breath, the cold air burning in my lungs.“We can’t stay in one place anymore,” Caleb said. “Not unless we have numbers.”I straightened, meeting his gaze. “Numbers we don’t have.”He studied me. “We can get them.”I knew what he meant. And I knew the risk. Rogues weren’t just wolves wit

Chapter 033 The Blood TreeThe forest didn’t look the same at night.It pressed in on you, all shadows and whispers, the cold seeping into your bones until you couldn’t tell if the shiver was fear or the air itself.I’d been here before the ridge line that curved toward the deeper heart of the Appalachian wild but never this far. My mother had once warned me: Some places werewolves avoid for a reason. Tonight, I was going to walk into one.Caleb’s warning from earlier replayed in my head.> “If the Seer says to seek the Blood Tree, it’s not because she wants you to find something pretty. Be ready for what you can’t unsee.”Following the SignsIt started as a faint pull in my chest, the same instinctive tug I’d felt the night I first shifted. My wolf stirred beneath my skin, restless. She didn’t speak in words, but I could feel her certainty. This way.The rogues followed behind, quieter than they’d been all week thanks to our silent training drills. Miri had her knives ready. Garrick

Chapter 035Visions and Pain(Adelina’s POV)I used to think pain was simple.A clean thing. A broken bone, a cut, a wound that bled until it clotted. Pain you could point at, measure, bind.But thisThis was not simple.This pain was everywhere and nowhere at once. It crawled under my skin, pressed against my bones, dragged me down into the earth itself. Sometimes it came like a wave crashing into me without warning; other times it coiled slowly, twisting until I wanted to scream.And always always it brought visions.The First NightIt started three nights after the attack. My body still ached from the hunters’ ambush; every muscle screamed when I moved. But it wasn’t the wounds that kept me awake it was the fire.That night, I woke to find my palms glowing faintly in the dark. Gold light traced the lines of my skin like molten rivers. I should have panicked, but before I could even breathe, the world shifted.The cabin around me blurred, melted, vanished.I stood instead beneath a

Chapter 037 The Burden of AlphaThe weight of leadership was never something Lucien had asked for, but it had been his reality since the day his father was killed under mysterious circumstances. That night, the mantle of Alpha had been thrust upon him like a cloak woven with fire and stone heavy, searing, and impossible to take off. Every decision since had been a thread in that cloak, binding him tighter to a fate he could not abandon. And now, with the Seal discovered and the council restless, the burden pressed harder than ever before.The morning after the Seal’s revelation began in suffocating silence. The pack house, usually alive with chatter and laughter during breakfast, felt like a mausoleum. Even the scent of fresh bread and spiced meat couldn’t pierce the tension. Everyone knew something had shifted. Everyone was watching him.Lucien sat at the head of the long oak table, elbows resting on the smooth grain, hands steepled. The Seal lay locked away in a reinforced case in

Chapter 039Funeral of Mama OyaThe world always feels different when someone like Mama Oya leaves it.It wasn’t just the silence she left behind, but the way the air itself shifted, as if even the forest mourned her. The birds had stopped singing the morning after she passed, and the wolves in our camp refused to howl, their muzzles tilted toward the sky but their throats locked with grief.I hadn’t expected her death to shake me so deeply. Mama Oya was old—older than anyone I had ever met, older even than the mountain itself, it sometimes seemed. I knew it was coming. She had warned me in her cryptic, maddening way: Child, every root must wither, even those tied to the Moon.And still, when I found her still body, wrapped in her woven shawl, her hands folded over the beads she never set aside, my heart cracked open like it was the first loss I had ever known.She was more than a seer. She was the one person who looked at me—at my scars, my bloodline, my unborn child—and saw not a bu