My little fierce mate のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 71 - チャプター 80

By dusk, two of the younger warriors were already second-guessing me. I caught the flicker of doubt in their eyes during council briefing — subtle but there. The kind of doubt that spreads if you don’t stomp it out fast.When the meeting ended, I stayed behind, alone. The room smelled of wood polish and candle smoke. The silence pressed heavy.That was when I heard her voice again — soft, deliberate.“Still keeping long hours, I see.”I didn’t turn. “You shouldn’t be here.”“I couldn’t sleep.”“Not my problem.”She chuckled. “Oh, Jake. You’ve become so… cold.”“Maybe you should ask yourself why.”Footsteps. Slow. Her scent brushed past — faint honey and smoke. I hated that my body still remembered it, even as my heart recoiled.“I saw her today,” Stephanie murmured.My pulse jumped. “You what?”“At the training yard. The Luna.”I turned sharply. “You keep your distance from her.”Her smirk was almost affectionate. “Relax. I didn’t approach her. I just watched.”“That’s worse.”“She’s

ELLA’S POVMorning in Whitecliff never really starts softly — it prowls.The light filters through the trees like a warning, not a greeting, and the mist rolls low across the courtyard as if it knows what’s coming.I woke before dawn, wrapped in the scent of Jake’s skin and smoke. His arm was draped over my waist, his breath heavy against the back of my neck. For a heartbeat, I almost believed we’d burned the ghosts away.But peace has a short lifespan here.He stirred when I moved, eyes half-open, still dazed from sleep. “You’re awake too early,” he murmured.“So are you,” I said, stealing his line from last night.That pulled a tired smirk from him — the kind that looked like love in disguise. But behind his eyes, there was something restless.He kissed my shoulder before sitting up. “Marcus sent word. Stephanie’s been asking to meet with me again.”I stilled. “And you plan to?”He looked down at his hands, flexed his knuckles like he was deciding which part of himself to use — the

STEPHANIE'S POVThe rain had stopped by the time I reached Whitecliff’s iron gates, but its ghost still clung to me — the faint shimmer on my coat, the cold threading through my hair. I didn’t bother wiping it away. Let them see me this way — a little wrecked, a little radiant. The kind of woman storms adored.The guards bowed when I entered, their eyes darting up with that look I’d missed — recognition mixed with unease. Good. They remembered.Whitecliff hadn’t changed much. The hall still carried that scent of pine and iron, the same faint echo of dominance that once made me ache to belong. But there was something new — something softer, warmer, threaded into the air like a song I didn’t remember leaving behind.Her scent.Ella.I smiled, slow and deliberate, as I passed the dining hall. Voices drifted out — laughter, feminine, grounded. She was there, no doubt, surrounded by those wolves who had so quickly accepted her as Luna.My Luna.It was laughable.I walked on, my heels click

DUKE’S POVI like the quiet before I strike. It tastes of old rain and metal—clean, promising. The café window fogs as I set my cup down and pull a sheet of parchment toward me. Candlelight gutters; the world outside is a smear of damp stone and the pale fall of the moon. Everything moves slower when you make it move. That’s the truth men forget: momentum is a choice.I dip a pen, consider the ink, the way words will feel when they reach the right hands. Stephanie's hand—my pawn, my queen in silk—has to read what I write and feel the architecture of inevitability in every line.There will be no fear, only the delicious certainty of arrangement. She needs to understand that I will do more than promise. I will take, and I will place what I take in her lap like a gift she can’t refuse.The message will be simple. Precise. Like a blade.I write:Tonight. Dusk into lunar edge. Draw Jake and Marcus with the north-wood alarm. Two decoys—smokebow hunters. One staged fall. One blooded trail. S

So I practiced the fall. It’s not as easy as theater makes it; if you fall too hard, people panic, and panicked wolves do not think; they act. I needed measured faint: delicate, believable, dramatic enough to demand a man’s hands. I practiced collapsing on the bed like a woman who’s been holding her breath for decades. I learned how to make my fingers slack, where to let them curl, how to breathe shallow enough that when someone pressed a hand to my throat they would believe the skin was cooling.I thought of Ella when I rehearsed. Not because I hated her — though I hated that soft light she carried and how quickly it turned men into worshipers — but because she was the instrument of my revival. If I could show the pack that she was soft and flighty, that she was a delicate fire not meant to carry a crown, then doubt would tick beneath their feet like an old clock. It’s a small cruelty, but cruelty is a tool for many of us.Still, even as I leaned into the seduction of the plan, a thr