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Home / Werewolf / Rejected by the alpha, claimed by his brother / Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

Lahat ng Kabanata ng Rejected by the alpha, claimed by his brother : Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

90 Kabanata

81: The Weight of a Crown I Never Wanted

Aric’s POVFor a moment, I sat completely still, the phone heavy in my palm, the world spinning far too fast around me.The car felt tighter, smaller, as though the leather seats were closing in around me. My pulse beat against my skull. My lungs struggled to decide whether to breathe or seize.Then something inside me snapped.I hurled the phone onto the seat beside me.The sound cracked through the car like a whip.The driver flinched violently, the car jerking a little before he steadied it. “My Prince, apologies—”“It wasn’t you,” I muttered, voice low, clenched.It was him. The King.Always him.For years, he had manoeuvred my life like a chessboard—pieces arranged, sacrifices demanded, strategies enforced.None of them mine.Every significant choice stolen from me. Every path paved with consequences if I dared to step aside.Tonight’s stunt was one of his most ruthless.Cornering me beside the Longman heiress.Before the entire country. Before foreign dignitaries.Before Selene.

82 The Heart I Couldn’t Stay Away From

Aric’s POVSleep didn’t come.Not even for a moment.I lay awake the entire night, staring at the ceiling as the hours crawled by with a heaviness that pressed into my bones.Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Selene’s face the moment she must have seen the broadcast—her expression crumpling, her heart breaking all over again.Did she cry?Was she shaking the way she does when she tries to hold pain inside?Was she staring at the screen in disbelief, wondering if I had chosen someone else?If I had lied to her?If she had been nothing more than a fleeting distraction?Or worse—Was she making up with Damon out of spite?Out of heartbreak?Out of wanting to forget me because I had hurt her in the most public, humiliating way?The thought made something dangerous coil inside my chest.I turned again, restless, suffocating.Not knowing was killing me.I kept replaying the moment my father whispered in my ear during the ball, threatening Selene so casually, so coldly, as if she were nothi

83 The Heart I Couldn’t Stay Away From

Aric’s POVThe rest of the drive felt like a war being waged beneath my skin.Every red light was an enemy.Every slowing car ahead was an obstacle.Every passing minute felt wasted.Every breath felt like salt rubbed into an open wound.By the time the driver pulled into the palace grounds, my heartbeat was pounding hard enough that I felt it in my throat, in my fingertips, in the very center of my skull.I didn’t go near Damon’s wing.I knew better.Provoking him would only create another battlefield we didn’t have time to fight on. And this, what I was about to do, wasn’t about him.It was about her.I slipped through the quieter eastern corridor, footsteps echoing off stone, and pushed open the door to the room Selene had once been imprisoned in.It looked the same.Cold.Forgotten.A space designed to strip warmth and hope from anyone who entered.The kind of room used not for comfort, but for containment.A cage dressed as accommodation.I moved to the window, standing where the

84 – Only For The Moment

Cassandra’s POVMy body trembled in Arden’s arms, a shiver that had nothing to do with the chill seeping from the stone walls of this forgotten room. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a frantic warning—I shouldn’t be here, in the dark with him, where every shadow could betray us.The palace slept beyond these doors, but danger lingered in every creak, every distant footfall.Richard’s wife. That was what they called me. A title that bound me tighter than any iron chain ever could. And yet here I was, slipping through corridors like a ghost, drawn to Arden as though he were the only light in this suffocating world.His scent reached me first—earthy from the road, laced with that faint, warm spice that always made my knees weaken. It wrapped around me, pulling me under, and my body responded before my mind could stop it.Heat bloomed low in my belly, a traitorous ache pooling between my thighs, urging me closer despite the fear clawing at my throat. And in that quiet press of

85 — What Remains of a Heart

Selene’s POVTime moved differently when Aric held me.Not slower. Not faster.Just… elsewhere.It was as though the abandoned pack chamber carved out its own pocket in the universe, a sliver of existence untouched by anything beyond its crumbling stone walls. The world outside didn’t just fade, it ceased to matter. The Alpha Council became a distant, irrelevant machine. Ivana’s poisonous words and the crushing burden of the Moon Crown dissolved into nothing. Even Damon, his grief, his desperation, his slow unraveling, felt like a faraway echo I couldn’t afford to hear.There was only Aric.His arms around me.His breath warming the side of my neck.The familiar scent of pinewood and midnight rain clinging to his clothes like armor.I hadn’t realised how starved I had become for safety until the moment he pulled me against him. It was physical, this hunger I’d carried without understanding. The kind that became painfully real the second his body surrounded mine, the second my cheek re

86 — What Remains of a Heart 2

Selene’s POVMy chest twisted painfully.The truth was too massive to ignore: he was the Alpha King’s eldest son. Duty would always come for him. Bloodlines would always own him. There was no universe where he could burn down the entire pack hierarchy for me. No reality where he could abandon the family that had shaped him into who he was.He couldn’t choose me.Not in the end.Not when everything finally settled.But I didn’t say any of it.I didn’t want him to think I doubted him. I didn’t want to break him apart with a truth he wasn’t ready to face.So I stayed silent.“I’ll see you again,” I whispered softly. “We’ll talk again. I promise.”He looked at me as though the promise itself wounded him.Then he kissed me.A desperate, aching, consuming kiss.One that burned.One that begged.One that spoke every forbidden thing he couldn’t force himself to say aloud.It felt like a beginning…And like the ending of something sacred.When he finally pulled away, my legs felt weak beneath

87 — Everything I Never Said

Selene’s POVFor a long moment, there was nothing.No sound.No movement.No breath.Only the two of us suspended inside a silence so heavy it felt capable of crushing bone.The air in the chamber was thick, still warm from the steam that had followed me out of the bathroom, yet cold along the edges in the way only ancient pack castle walls could be. Damon sat at the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped forward as though the weight of the Moon Crown, past, present, future, had finally settled onto him all at once. His eyes, usually sharp with Alpha discipline or shadowed by guilt, now looked dark. Hollow. Empty.He was waiting.For an answer.For a truth neither of us had dared speak aloud for six years.And I stood there wrapped in a towel, damp hair clinging to my shoulders, my skin still flushed from the scalding water I had used to erase the evidence of a man who was not my mate.But even beneath the heat, I felt cold.The kind of cold born from years of loneliness.Years of hoping

88 — Everything I Never Said 2

Selene’s POV“You didn’t hold me. Not once. You never asked how I was doing. How I felt. What I wanted.”The words left me before I realised I had spoken them.They came out raw.Stripped of politeness.Stripped of diplomacy.Stripped of the careful softness I had been trained to wear like a second skin inside this castle.I slowly shook my head as the memories returned with the sharpness of a blade.“It was always about you,” I continued quietly. “Your title. Your alliances. Your future heir. Your mother. Your reputation.”Damon’s lips parted slightly, his breathing catching as though some apology sat trapped behind his teeth.But before he could speak, I lifted my hand.A silent warning.A boundary he no longer had the right to cross.“I loved you,” I whispered softly.His eyes flickered instantly, wounded by the gentleness in my voice. Because it wasn’t tenderness.It was grief.The ache of mourning every illusion I used to believe in.“When I bonded with you,” I continued, “I thou

89 — The Things I Cannot Tolerate

Aric’s POVThe room still smelled like her.Selene’s scent lingered faintly, soft, wild, familiar, etched into the stale air of the abandoned chamber like a ghost that refused to fade. I stood there long after she slipped out with Lyra, long after her footsteps disappeared into silence down the corridor, long after I ran out of reasons to remain in the place that had once broken her.But I didn’t move.My hands were still shaking.Not from desire.Not from the memory of her lips on mine.Not from the heat of her body pressed against me.From rage.Pure, unrelenting fury.The kind that simmered beneath the skin, slow and vicious. The kind that made breathing feel like swallowing shards of glass. The kind that blurred my vision and turned my pulse into something violent.I was furious at everything.At the Alpha King.At Damon.At Ivana.At this cursed castle.At the suffocating politics that ruled this land.At the rotting council that fed on suffering and called it tradition.If I was

90

02 Where We Sin in SilenceIvana POVI didn't go home after Selena finished with me.I couldn't.Home meant my mother's eyes, sharp enough to slice through any lie. Home meant questions I didn't know how to answer. Home meant that quiet corner of the pack where pain echoed louder because nothing else lived there.So I limped into the woods instead.Night came quickly, the sky bruising purple, the air damp with rain waiting to fall. My ribs ached with every breath, and my side burned where her boot had landed again and again.Each step sent the same message through my body: you're human. you're soft. you're breakable.I hated that the pack could make me feel like a mistake in my own skin.I hated even more that I still carried hope like a sickness I couldn't cure.The cabin sat deeper in the woods, hidden behind thick branches and climbing vines. It wasn't mine. It wasn't his either. Abandoned years ago, left to rot, and somehow it became ours.A place for secrets.A place for love tha

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