All Chapters of STOLEN BY THE MATE I DIDN'T WANT: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Selene dreamed of chains breaking.Not snapping—not shattering in violence—but loosening, link by ancient link, with the slow inevitability of time finally claiming its due. In the dream, the sound was almost gentle: metal sighing as it released a burden it had grown tired of holding.The chains were old.Older than kingdoms. Older than the words used to justify them.They were etched with vows spoken by mouths long turned to dust, vows meant to bind not flesh, but will. And one by one, those vows failed—not because they were attacked, but because no one remained who truly believed in them.Selene woke with that sound still echoing in her bones.The ravine was cold.Ash clung to the black stone walls, carried by a wind that smelled faintly of sulfur and old rain. It coated her lashes, her hair, her tongue—evidence of a place where the world had once been torn open and then stitched back together badly, leaving scars that still wept power.Above her, the sky was pale and washed-out, as

The first tremors came before dawn.Not earthquakes. Not storms. Not the familiar hum of old magic that usually whispered through the city like a lullaby. This was sharper. Faster. A pulse that moved through stone and mortar, through flesh and blood, and reached the edge of perception before it announced itself fully.Selene felt it first—not as a surge of power, not as resonance—but as a ripple of expectation. A waiting. The world seemed to inhale, as if unsure whether to follow the rules it had always obeyed.She had expected a reaction. She had not expected silence before it.From her vantage atop the cliffs, she could see faint glimmers along the ley lines, faint sparks where the anchors had thinned, bending to the absent authority. Cities flinched. Rivers shifted slightly from their paths. Trees shivered as if aware that the world had changed shape overnight.She smiled.Not wide. Not gloating. But a thin, sharp acknowledgment of the truth: the first domino had fallen.Behind her

The city did not recover.It adapted.By midday, the tremors no longer came in waves—they settled into a constant, uneasy vibration, like a held breath that refused to release. Stone no longer cracked outright. Instead, it flexed, groaning softly beneath the strain of unfamiliar rules. Wood did not splinter unless forced; it bent, protesting but enduring. Magic did not lash out in wild bursts as it once might have. It hesitated. Paused. Reconsidered. Then flowed… differently.The world was learning how to exist without its chains.From the palace balcony, Kael watched the city shift beneath the pale sun. It was subtle enough that a careless observer might miss it—but Kael had lived his life reading battlefields, sensing the moment before a charge broke loose.Streets subtly realigned where no hand touched them, cobblestones sliding into new patterns like pieces of a puzzle rearranging themselves. Towers leaned a fraction closer together, shadows overlapping as if conferring in silence

Liora woke before the sound reached her.She always did.There was no noise in the palace, no cry, no tremor, no crack of breaking wards,but something inside her chest tightened, sharp and instinctive, as if a thread she’d been holding slack all her life had suddenly gone taut.She sat up slowly, one hand pressed flat over her sternum.Still.Listen first.The habit was old. Older than this palace. Older than the name she answered to now. Panic had never helped anyone—not children, not healers, not women who survived by noticing what others missed.The room felt… wrong.Not dangerous. Not invaded.Aware.The air held itself too carefully, like someone standing very still so they wouldn’t be noticed. The candle by her bedside burned without flicker. The walls did not hum—not audibly—but her bones felt it, a low tension running through them like distant weather.Silver.She was on her feet before the thought finished forming.Liora pulled on her robe and crossed the corridor barefoot, s

Selene stood beyond the city, where the wind carried the scent of stone and iron, the distant smoke of hearths, and the faint pulse of life threading through the streets below. She did not move among them. She did not touch the wards or whisper to the towers. She only watched.The city beneath her shimmered in ways no one could fully name. Roofs shifted as if breathing, street tiles leaned subtly, fountains hesitated mid-splash, and the river curved in arcs no map could claim were fixed. The city was alive in its own right—not obedient, not chaotic, just… attentive.The council met. Their voices reached her faintly—not sound exactly, but intent, sharp and desperate, like a bird caught in a cage and trying to argue with the bars. Every gesture, every incantation, every whispered ancestor’s name traveled through the currents of the ley lines and bounced back at them, distorted. She tilted her head, noting how quickly they scrambled, how their certainty fractured at the edges.They still