All Chapters of Her Daughter’s Mate: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Aria's POVI checked the time again. 9:45 p.m.The third time in ten minutes. There was no sound in the house, but only the ticking of the wall clock. My phone was on the table and the screen was on with unanswered calls.Damien still hadn't picked up.I exhaled and rested my back against the couch, and had to take a breath. I was likely to be busy, I said to myself. He had to be. The job of the pack was sometimes too much, and perhaps there was some emergency at the border. He could never skip the eighteenth birthday of his daughter on purpose... could he?However, I was aware of lying to myself."Mom?"I glanced round and beheld Lyra standing at the doorway. Her hazel eyes, which were usually bright, were dull."Is Dad coming?" she said, and her fingers were twitching at the hem of her sleeve.I cleared my throat and replied. "Of course, sweetheart. He'll be here soon."She looked at me as she did not think it. Last year neither did he come. Or the one before that."Lyra, I said, pa

POV: LucianThe palace was more active than I supposed. All the corridors were filled with footsteps, all the rooms were filled with flowers and fresh polish. It was weird to be home after four years in a foreign land with people who were used to seeing me as a stranger.Forty or fifty laborers were installing lights, gold curtains, and tables. It was the Mating Ceremony tomorrow night--the night of the year when unmated wolves of the Blood Moon Pack were summoned under the protection of the Moon Goddess to discover their predestined mates.The voice of my mother was full of joy behind me. “It is happening, at last, My son has come home, finished his education, and is ready to occupy his throne. I have long been dreaming of it.”My father laughed at his seat. “He is just a day home, Helena. Give him time to breathe."She did not look at him at all, but came nearer to me, “Lucian, my love, this is not a pack tradition, this is the gift of fate. Goddess herself may decide who you are go

POV: AriaI was unable to breathe a moment. I could not take my eyes off the man by the Alpha.The man from the bar. The very one that I had been making so much effort to forget.My chest tightened. The crowd had died down to a wailing murmur, and, except for the sound of my own heart being beaten heavily, I heard no more.The candles surrounding the ritual area became as grey as possible, until a loud shout woke me up again, in a deep, commanding howl that rumbled through the night and drowned out the conversation.“Lucian Vale, the son of the Alpha of the Blood Moon Pack!” A young soldier yelled.The name reverberated in the night, as Lucian left his seat next to the Alpha, his father. Every head turned in unison. Gasps and murmurs, murmurs of people who could not believe what they had just heard.He came out, so calm and so tall, that he did not need to make himself noticeable. He spoke in a voice that was strong enough to silence the rest of the people when he started speaking.“G

Aria’s POVThe cold wasn’t coming from outside. It wasn’t the thin mountain air or the dawn chill slipping through the tent walls. It was inside me—deep, trembling cold that sat right under my skin and wouldn’t leave. Every place Helena had touched me still ached like she’d pressed ice straight into my bones. The Luna. The woman who was supposed to guide the pack with grace. Her soft, elegant fingers had felt more like a warning than a gesture—an unspoken brand that kept whispering in my ear: I’m watching you.There was no point trying to sleep. I lay there on the hard cot, staring at the seams in the tent fabric and listening to the last scraps of celebration drifting over the clearing. Lyra’s moment. Her new beginning. I was just… stuck here. I knew I should have fled right after the announcement—packed up my mother and Lyra and driven until the Vale’s scent was nothing but a memory. But if I’d left right after Lucian declared his mate… it would look like I was running from so

Aria POVI didn’t run from the Vale Lodge—I escaped it.Lucian’s command still rang in my skull, cold and sharp as his mother’s smile. And the worst part? They both expected me to obey. To play along. To risk Lyra’s future like it was some bargaining chip on a political board.My hands were shaking on the wheel before I cleared the driveway.Then it hit me.A stab of heat, right at the place I kept hidden under my collar—the spot where his mark should’ve been. A wave of fury. Not mine.His.Lucian had felt me slipping away, and the weird, fragile bond tethered through Lyra lit up like a live wire. His thoughts weren’t words—they were pressure, anger, disappointment, all of it firing like sparks against my ribs.I bit down on a sob and whispered to nobody,“He belongs to Lyra. This is for Lyra.”But the pain didn’t let go.By the time I pulled up to the Blackwood property, my pulse was a pounding blur. The place looked worse than I remembered—like heartbreak had sunk into the wood and