All Chapters of Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the Dark King: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The wolf didn’t move.It simply watched her, head lowered in a bow that felt less like submission and more like recognition. Like greeting an equal. Or welcoming a lost piece of itself back home.Aria’s breath shook.“It’s… me?” she whispered.Erevan stepped in front of her again, though his shadows trembled as if unsure whether to protect her or retreat. “It is a manifestation,” he said tightly. “A construct of the convergence. Not a real being.”But Aria couldn’t look away.Because the moment her gaze locked with the wolf’s mismatched eyes, something inside her chest shifted—clicked—unlocked.A low sound hummed in her bones.Not a voice.Not words.A memory.The wolf took a single slow step toward her, and light rippled along the floor beneath its paws.“Aria,” Erevan warned. “Stay back.”“It’s not attacking.”“That doesn’t mean it’s safe.”But it felt safe. Comforting. Familiar in a way nothing else had been since her awakening. Her wolf—the animal part she’d lived with all her lif

The figure stepped out of the wavering rift as though crossing a threshold it had walked a thousand times before. Its feet touched the chamber floor with no sound at all, as if the stone bent beneath it, accommodating its presence rather than resisting it. Silver light poured from its skin in soft waves, but woven through that brilliance were shadows—liquid, alive, curling around its form like dark silk. The air thickened instantly, shifting with pressure and weight. Aria felt it hit her chest, pushing her heartbeat out of rhythm.Erevan’s arm snapped in front of her in a shield, but even he took a step back, his shadows rising in a jagged crown behind him. “That is not you,” he said under his breath, as if trying to convince both of them. But Aria couldn’t tear her eyes away. The figure’s face sharpened into focus as it approached the glowing edge of reality. It was… her. Not exactly, not perfectly, but close enough to send a cold shock spiraling down her spine. Her jawline. Her chee

Aria clung to him, her face pressed into the cold line of his throat, trying to breathe through the storm crushing her lungs. The chamber felt too big and too small all at once—echoing with her counterpart’s words, suffocating with possibilities that tasted like fate and loss. Erevan’s arms wrapped around her, strong enough to hold her together, but trembling faintly beneath her palms. His shadows coiled around them like a cocoon, guarding her from a world suddenly too sharp to face.For a long moment, neither moved.Neither spoke.Neither dared to.Aria finally pulled back—not because she wanted distance, but because she needed air, sense, clarity—anything that resembled stability. Her chest rose and fell in ragged breaths as she looked around the chamber, at the fading glow of the rift, at the wolf-reflection sitting like a silent sentinel, and finally at the trembling path of light where her future-self had stood moments ago.“I can’t do this,” she whispered.Erevan’s hand cupped t

Erevan felt her hesitation like a blade sliding beneath his ribs, sharp and silent and perfectly aimed. Something in him—something primal, wounded, ancient—recoiled as her eyes drifted toward the outstretched hand reaching through the breach. He tightened his grip on her shoulders, dragging her attention back to him with a tremor he could not contain.“Aria,” he whispered, voice raw, “look at me. Do not look at it.”But she couldn’t help it. The voice still echoed inside her, wrapping around memories she didn’t even know she held—warmth that felt like a lullaby, sorrow that tasted familiar. It gripped her from the inside, tugging softly, insistently, like a child pulling on the sleeve of a sleeping mother. A call she didn’t remember learning to hear.A call she didn’t want to answer.And yet—her blood surged toward it.The chamber air thickened, charged with magic that smelled of cold starlight and ancient ruin. The cracks spiderwebbing across the floor pulsed in time with her rapid h

Light swallowed her whole.It wasn’t gentle.It wasn’t warm.It wasn’t the soft, ethereal glow she had seen in her visions.This light burned.It tore through her like a storm, ripping at her thoughts, her breath, her body—until she wasn’t falling so much as being unmade. Her scream dissolved into the brightness, stolen by the force dragging her through the breach. She felt Erevan’s shadows claw at her ankles, desperate, furious, clinging to her like a lover refusing to let go.But the rift was stronger.It yanked her deeper—a violent, devouring pullthat felt like gravity turned ravenous.Aria’s bones vibrated.Her magic convulsed.Her wolf howled inside her, the sound splitting her mind.For a moment she wasn’t sure she had a body at all. She was light, shadow, memory, blood—all spinning, burning, unraveling. Something cold wrapped around her waist, a force like a hand but not a hand, shaped from pure energy, a grip that seared through her clothes and into her very soul.Her wolf s