Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the Crown의 모든 챕터: 챕터 141 - 챕터 150

Ember Frost’s POVA faint voice sounded down from upstairs, soft and tired. “Anything you make is fine, sweetheart,” the woman said gently. “I’ll like it.”The girl carried the meal up carefully. Her mother wasn’t the lively woman she remembered from years ago. Time or something crueler had hollowed her out.Her skin looked drained of color, her frame too fragile for her age. She sat slumped near the hearth, barely holding herself upright. Only her eyes were alive, bright and warm like firelight. Somehow, that made the sight even more unsettling.Eira remembered the incident clearly.Mother and daughter ate in silence. The clink of spoons against bowls sounded louder than it should have. Then the girl spoke up, her voice small but calm.“Mom… where is Dad?”The woman’s hand jerked. Her spoon nearly slipped from her fingers.“Why would you ask that all of a sudden?” she said, forcing her voice to be calm.The girl hesitated, then answered honestly. “Sofia left school early today. She s

Ember Frost’s POVThere was only one problem with that theory.If this mysterious father truly existed, his strength had to rival Medina’s. Anything less, and Medina would have already sensed him. A simple concealment spell would be enough to erase his presence completely. So if he really was out there… why reveal himself now?Eira had clearly reached the same conclusion.“It feels like we’ve barely dealt with one disaster, and another is already lining up,” I said with a tired sigh. “I just hope this so-called father isn’t from some long-lived race. The Stormspire Mountains are already a mess. We don’t need another ancient threat crawling out of nowhere.”Eira squeezed my hand gently. After saying our goodbyes, I stepped aside and let Elder Harriet in to begin the examination.After seven days of recovery, my strength returned far faster than expected. I felt clear-headed and steady. I was even capable of resuming training, much to my own surprise.Orion didn’t like the idea at all.

Ember Frost’s POV“Humans rarely show true gratitude,” he said, his voice low and bitter. “They’ll praise their gods for every blessing and ignore the ones who actually help them. Too often, the kindness we offer comes back to us changed, met with indifference, resentment, or even cruelty for no reason at all.”He shook his head, eyes dark. “And if someone isn’t one of them? That’s a sin in their eyes. Creatures like us? They’d blame us for every misfortune that falls their way.”I couldn’t stay silent. These words felt too extreme. “You can’t judge all humans by the worst examples, Axel,” I said firmly. “Not every human is so ignorant or ungrateful. They still feel thanks; they still care. And even if we can’t always confront them directly, we can do good quietly. Must we watch them freeze to death in the wild and do nothing?”Axel’s lips curled in a sardonic sneer. “Nice speech. But who’s actually going to save them? You? Don’t fool yourself. If something happens to our so-called ‘n

Ember Frost’s POVI didn’t stop to weigh the risks. None of that mattered. People came first; everything else could wait.Eira raised her hand and released a sharp burst of magic, scattering the shadows that had been creeping toward us with greedy intent. At the same moment, Elder Harriet and I rushed in, grabbing the nearest frozen figures before the creatures could react.I had no idea what kind of transformation spell Harriet had cast, but in the blink of an eye, she’d turned into a massive, fur-covered beast. Broad shoulders. Thick arms. The kind of strength that made carrying three grown men look effortless.“Looks like it’s my turn to step out properly,” she said, her voice deeper now. “Call me Lenny while I’m like this.”I blinked. Even her name had changed with her form. Strange, but there were too many things happening at once to dwell on it. I hoisted the two women nearest to me and ran deeper into the cave, my lungs burning as I pushed forward.And just like we’d suspected,

Ember Frost’s POVThe feeling was wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.It wasn’t just that something was missing. It was that I knew it was missing, and yet every time I reached for it, my thoughts slipped right through empty space. The harder I tried to remember, the less certain I became. Even the awareness of forgetting felt unstable, like my mind was being wiped over and over before anything could settle.I heard the word "wolf" spoken aloud.I repeated it silently, letter by letter, as if memorizing it for the first time.W. O. L. F.That was all it was to me. Just a sequence of sounds and letters.There was no image. No emotion. No instinct answering back.Worse still—each time I tried to push further, something inside me pushed back. A quiet insistence whispered that there was nothing more. That the thing I was trying to recall wasn’t real. That it had never existed at all.That was when I understood.This wasn’t simple memory loss. This was suppression.Shielding.A technique so