All Chapters of Mated to My Rival Step Brother: Chapter 241 - Chapter 250

Lyra’s POV:I woke up slowly, the kind of waking that feels like floating up from a warm dream. Maya’s arms were still around me, her body curled against mine under the thin blanket. We were both completely naked, skin to skin, the blanket pulled up just enough to cover us from the cool morning air coming through the slightly open window. Her leg was draped over my thigh, her face tucked into the crook of my neck, and her steady breathing brushed softly against my skin.This was the best morning of my life.The bruise on my chest still sat there, faded now to a dull purple-yellow, but the sharp pain from yesterday had almost disappeared. Only when I tried to move my right arm too quickly did a tiny sting remind me it was still healing. Everything else felt perfect. Warm. Safe. Hers.I stayed still for a long minute, just breathing her in. Her hair smelled like the Academy shampoo mixed with something sweet that was purely Maya. I turned my head carefully and pressed a light kiss to he

Alex's POV:I sat in the undergrowth for approximately three seconds after he stepped back onto the trail and then I stood because sitting in the undergrowth was not a position I intended to remain in.My legs were fine. My hands were fine. The place on my chest where his hand had been when we landed was not a bruise and was not an injury and was not something I was going to think about.The branch was enormous.I looked at it properly now that the immediate moment had passed. Old oak. The split at the joint was clean on one side and ragged on the other which meant the rot had been working at it for a long time and the clean side had held until it could not anymore. If it had come down on the trail where I had been standing the weight of it would have been significant. The kind of significant that did not resolve quickly.Blake had been ten meters ahead of me.He had turned and come back and covered the distance and moved me off the trail before I had fully registered that something w

Lyra's POV:The call lasted four minutes.I know because I watched the timer on Maya's phone from across the kitchen table without meaning to, counting the seconds in the specific way you count things when you are trying to occupy the part of your brain that would otherwise be doing something less useful like panicking.Her face had gone pale in the first thirty seconds and had not come back from that.She said yes three times and no once and I understand once and nothing else that I could hear from where I was sitting. Her free hand was flat on the table and I watched her fingers press down against the surface slowly, the way you pressed down on something when you needed to feel that the ground was still there.Then she said goodbye and ended the call and sat with the phone in her hand and looked at it."Maya," I said.She looked up at me."It is my father," she said. Her voice was even in the way that voices were even when evenness was being maintained through effort rather than the

Blake's POV:He was quiet for a second."Because it is not only your circle," he said. "The rogue alpha does not discriminate by pack when he decides he wants to destabilize something. Shadowclaw has had our own version of this problem for three years." He glanced at me sideways. "I am not your enemy, Silver. I need you to start actually believing that."I studied his face.He held it steady. Not performing steadiness. Just carrying it the way people carried things that were genuinely true."I do not have answers yet," I said carefully. "We know the threat exists. We do not know who."He nodded once. Slow."Watch the edges," he said. "Not the people closest to the center. He never plants at the center. Too obvious, too much scrutiny. He plants at the edges where the access is quieter and the suspicion does not land as naturally." He straightened up. "That is all I have. Consider it freely given."He stood and walked back to the Shadowclaw side without another word.I sat with what he

Blake's POV:Rolf won his pairing in six minutes flat.I watched the last ninety seconds of it from the preparation area doorway before the marshal moved us through and what I saw was clean and efficient and completely without drama. The Greywood heir was good and Rolf was better and the margin between them was not enormous but it was clear and Vega called it without hesitation.Rolf came off the floor and passed me in the corridor and said nothing.I said nothing back.We understood each other at this point.Aaran's pairing was first of the remaining two. His opponent was a Stonecrest heir who had been one of the quiet surprises of the physical round, strong defensive instincts and a ground game that had caught two previous opponents off guard. Aaran knew about the ground game. I had watched him review the footage twice in the preparation area.He handled it well.The bout went five minutes and twenty seconds and Aaran won it on three clean scoring sequences and a controlled finish t