All Chapters of Mated to My Rival Step Brother: Chapter 291 - Chapter 300

Blake's POV:The reception had the specific energy of people who had been through something enormous together and had arrived somewhere worth celebrating and were not going to waste a single moment of the arrival.The Silver Mansion dining room had been transformed. Long tables. Good food. The kind of noise that built when everyone present had history with each other and the history was mostly good and the parts that were not good had been resolved or were in the process of being resolved.Alex sat beside me at the main table and his hand was on the table between us and I had my hand over his and neither of us was performing anything for anyone.The bond was warm between us.That was the thing I was still adjusting to. The specific warmth of it sitting in my chest, present and constant, not demanding attention but available, the way good things were available, there when you reached for them and not requiring you to reach.I could feel Alex's contentment through it.He was happy.Actu

Selene's POV:Our night got busier due to packs' things to wrap. The dawn after the wedding, Gregory had surprised me completely. Instead of staying at the Silver Mansion or heading straight to the main Thorne estate, he had taken my hand after our quiet departure and led me through a winding path into the southeast reaches of Thorne territory. "I built this for us," he said simply, his voice carrying that steady warmth I had loved for decades. "Thirty years of waiting deserved its own place."The villa was nestled among ancient pines and rolling hills, a private sanctuary that felt both grand and intimate. The bedroom suite was the heart of it, a fantasy woven from stone, wood, and magic. High vaulted ceilings arched overhead, inlaid with soft glowing crystals that mimicked starlight even in daylight. The centerpiece was an indoor swimming pool, fed by a natural hot spring, its waters shimmering with a faint ethereal blue glow from submerged runes that kept the temperature perfect an

Blake's POV:The east wing suite was wrapped in deep, quiet darkness when I woke. The flowers still scented the air, softer now, almost sleepy. Alex’s arm was heavy across my waist, his breath warm against the back of my neck. For a long moment I just lay there, letting the bond settle around me like a second skin. Steady, content, humming with the low thrum of satisfaction that came from being thoroughly claimed.I tried to shift onto my side to face him and immediately regretted it. A sharp, deep ache flared through my ass, making me hiss between my teeth.“Fuck,” I muttered, freezing in place.Alex stirred behind me, voice rough with sleep and already laced with amusement. “Problem, Silver?”“Don’t you dare laugh,” I warned, but my voice cracked on the last word as another twinge hit when I tried to adjust my hips. “I can’t even tilt without it feeling like you split me in half again.”He chuckled softly, the sound vibrating against my back. One big hand slid down my side, gentle b

Lyra's POV:The year did not move in a straight line.That was the thing nobody told you about recovery. You imagined it as a slope, steady and consistent, moving always in the same direction at a predictable rate. What it actually was turned out to be something more complicated. Good days followed by days that were not good. Progress that held and then a morning where something had shifted in the night and the progress needed to be recalibrated.I learned to stop measuring by the slope.I measured by the moments instead.The first moment was three weeks after the wedding when Maya sat up in bed without assistance for the first time and did not wince doing it. She sat there for a moment just existing in the upright position and then she looked at me with those eyes and said I did it and I said yes you did and the specific quality of her face in that moment went directly into the part of me that kept the things worth keeping.The second moment was five weeks in when she walked to the w

Blake's POV:I looked at him.He looked back."Tell me," he said.I glanced across the room to confirm Lyra was occupied."She is proposing tonight," I said quietly. "To Maya. After the party." I paused. "She built a treehouse. By herself. Over the past two months. At the lake on the eastern Silver territory edge because Maya mentioned once that she liked the lake in the evening and Lyra filed it."Alex looked at Lyra across the room.Something moved across his face."She built a treehouse," he said."By herself," I said. "Asked nobody for help. Spent three weekends doing it."Alex was quiet for a moment."Of course she did," he said softly.I looked at my mother across the room and she was laughing at something Lyra had said and the image of them together, Thorne Luna and Silver heir, comfortable and warm and nothing like the formal distance that should have existed between those two titles, was one of the things I was going to keep from this year."Speaking of good news," Alex said.