All Chapters of Mated to My Ex's Brother: Chapter 41 - Chapter 48

 When people talk about proposals, they usually describe something sparkling and grand. Candlelight, roses, champagne flutes clinking against each other. But my life with Jaxon had never followed the script of fairy tales. We fought, we stumbled, we got lost, and somehow, we always found each other again.That morning felt no different. I had just come from the café where I sometimes wrote my thoughts down, the ones too heavy to carry inside. The city buzzed around me, heels tapping against sidewalks, horns blaring, the faint smell of roasted chestnuts from the vendor at the corner. My mind, however, was elsewhere. The divorce trial was still dragging its shadow behind us. Cyrus’s presence still haunted my nerves. And despite everything Jaxon and I had begun building together, I feared it could all crumble at any second.When I stepped into our apartment, the first thing I noticed was the silence. Not unusual, but somehow char

 The city glittered beneath us, a restless sea of lights that refused to sleep. The night air was cool, the kind that licked against bare skin and raised goosebumps, but Jaxon’s warmth pressed into me from behind, anchoring me against the balcony railing.“Are you cold?” he murmured into my hair, his breath sliding down my neck.I shook my head, though I shivered anyway. Not from the chill—but from him. The way his hands curved possessively around my waist, the way his chest rose and fell against my back like he couldn’t get close enough.“I shouldn’t want this right now,” I whispered, my voice catching, “not when everything else is falling apart.”“You think too much,” Jaxon countered, his lips brushing over the shell of my ear. “Sometimes you just… feel.”My breath hitched when his mouth found the tender spot at my

  Jaxon noticed instantly, his eyes narrowing.“Why is he calling you this late?”I froze, staring at the phone as it buzzed across the table, the glow of Cyrus’s name on the screen almost blinding me. My pulse hammered so loud it drowned out the sound of everything else.I had no answer—at least, not one that wouldn’t shatter the fragile thread holding us together.And as the phone kept buzzing, Jaxon’s jaw tightened.“Elara,” he said, his voice low, almost dangerous. “Answer it. Put it on speaker.”I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly bone-dry. His tone left no room for excuses. No softness. Just raw demand, an Alpha testing the limits of my silence.“I…” My hand hovered over the phone. Every nerve screamed at me not to answer, but Jaxon’s eyes pinned me down. Those dark, stormy eyes that once made me feel safe now felt l

I thought I had finally gotten used to Cyrus’s voice lingering like smoke in the back of my head. Even when he wasn’t speaking, even when my phone wasn’t buzzing with his late-night messages, I could feel him there. My mate bond had dulled but it hadn’t disappeared, and that was my curse.But nothing could have prepared me for the venom in his words tonight.“Come back to me or you will never see your Jaxon again.”I froze where I stood in the hallway. The phone was still warm in my hand, my knuckles white around it. For a long moment, all I could hear was the rushing in my ears and my own heartbeat, so fast it made me dizzy.Cyrus didn’t even sound like the boy I used to know. He didn’t sound like the Alpha heir who had once looked at me with something close to tenderness. No—his voice was sharp, almost gleeful in its cruelty, as though the thought of ripping me away from Jaxon amused him.“You’re bluffing,” I whispered, though my voice shook.His chuckle on the other end was low, de