《A Dorm With My Alpha Mate 》全部章節：第 71 章 - 第 80 章

Sylvie's POVThe truth, once spoken, doesn’t just hang in the air. It sinks. It seeps into the cracks of every lie, poisoning the foundations. I saw it work its way through the frozen tableau of the courtyard—saw the dawning horror on the faces of the older warriors who remembered the ‘tragedy’, the flicker of doubt in the Silvermane ranks, the way my brother’s grief-stricken rage began to curdle into something colder, harder, and far more dangerous.Alistair’s rigid mask was the only thing that didn’t change. He absorbed the accusation, the revelation, as if it were a minor tactical setback. “A fanciful tale from a traumatized child,” he stated, his voice cutting through the murmurs that had begun to rise. “You hid in the woods, your mind weaving stories to justify your fear. Your father mourned you. We all did.”But his eyes—his cold, calculating eyes—flickered to the side, just for an instant. To where the remaining elders of the other packs stood, wounded and wary. He was weighing

Sylvie's POV The silence in my room after leaving my mother was not peaceful. It was a new kind of noise—a high, ringing emptiness where hope had been. I stood in the center of the dark, my arms hanging limp at my sides. The word ‘duty’ echoed in the hollow space she had left inside me. It didn’t feel noble. It felt like a stone tied to my ankles.For the next three days, I moved through the lodge like the ghost I was already becoming. I spoke when spoken to. I ate what was put in front of me. I went to my lessons with Mistress Helene, who taught me history and needlepoint and the quiet art of being pleasing. I traced the routes of old pack migrations on a map and felt a kinship with those dashed lines—always moving, never arriving, their purpose determined by a hand that was not their own.No one noticed the change. Why would they? To them, I was still the quiet daughter, the smaller, softer echo of my boisterous brothers. My father was absorbed in the preparations for the ‘fostering

Sylvie's POVSix months of secret sweat and silent pages turning, the day of the transaction—the day of the trade—had come and gone. Caden Silvermane, a quiet, watchful boy with his father’s eyes, had arrived with a small entourage. I had stood in the receiving line, a perfect, polite doll, and curtsied. My father had clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder, a gesture meant to look proud, but which felt like a brand. Soon, it said.But ‘soon’ had stretched. Alistair, ever the strategist, had cited ‘logistical delays’ and ‘seasonal instability in the passes’. A moon cycle became two, then three. The delay was a gift, wrapped in the cold calculus of politics. It gave me time.My plan was no longer a desperate child’s fantasy, I birthed a tactical operation. The library maps were committed to memory, but I began to draw my own on stolen parchment, refining them with observations from the highest window in the east tower. I noted the patrol patterns of the perimeter guards—their boredom, thei

Sylvie's POVCaden returned a week after I overheard that conversation. His arrival was a quiet affair, a simple escort to the border to be ‘returned in light of the changed circumstances’. I watched from a high, narrow window as he unmounted the horse, his small shoulders rigid. With Caden’s arrival, the rhythm of the keep shifted subtly. Malrick’s training intensified. I’d see him in the weapons yard at all hours, practicing the same killing stroke a hundred times, two hundred, until his muscles trembled and the training master called a halt. He never protested. He just started again the next day, his eyes fixed on some invisible point of perfection only he could see.My work continued, a mindless cycle of grime and obedience. I began to notice a different pattern, one that had nothing to do with borders or treaties.It was the girls.The keep had its share of servant children—daughters of cooks, stable hands, lower guards. They were a ragged, busy lot, doing small chores, chasing

Sylvie's POV Malrick was already in the training yard, a solitary figure moving through slow, meditative forms. He didn’t acknowledge me as I approached. Varl stood like a grumpy statue in the archway, his arms crossed, his disapproval etched on his face“Again,” Malrick said, without preamble, tossing me a practice sword.By night, in the pre-dawn gloom, I was… Malrick’s experiment.He was a relentless, brilliant tutor. He had no patience for traditional forms or honorable techniques. He was interested in one thing: efficiency of violence. He would dissect my movements from our first spar.“You don’t defend,” he observed one morning after I’d slipped another of his attacks. “You redirect. Why?”“A defense is a wall,” I muttered, circling him. “Walls can be broken. A redirection is a door. It lets the attack pass through to nowhere, or better yet, turns it back on itself.”He stopped, his blade lowering. A slow, chilling smile touched his lips. “Yes. That’s it. You don’t oppose force