The Wolf Star: A Rejected Mates Story のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 61 - チャプター 69

[CW- Body horror in this chapter - not as gory as in previous chapters. Please look after yourself while reading.]A warm wind blew over the red sands as Yonus walked Peggy and North around. Through the mind link, Peggy could feel the warm sand between his paws, his ears flicking slightly as the sand in the air annoyed him. North was slowly settling in her arms, and she was rubbing gentle circles on his tummy, making him let out little burps and murmurs. After a moment, she picked him up and held him so his head was leaning against her shoulder, and she rubbed little circles into his back. She felt him get slightly heavier in her arms.“Are you doing ok now?” she murmured to him.“Mmm…” North mumbled against her shoulder. His little hands shifted into fists on her shoulder.“Good, then-”Yonus suddenly stopped, nearly sending Peggy forward. “Yonus, what-?”Turpentine filled her nose, and she looked back toward the statue. North tensed in her arms as they both saw the large, shambling

[CW- This chapter contains violence, implied domestic abuse or sexual assault, and threat to life. Please take care of yourself while reading!]Thea had learned very quickly that there were two kinds of days in Kurnich’s castle.Days when he was occupied elsewhere, and days when he was not.Today was the latter.She moved along the corridor with her back pressed close to the wall, her arms full of folded linen, her ears flat against her head. She didn’t lift her gaze from the floor. None of them did anymore. Looking up was a risk. Looking up meant you might accidentally catch his eye. Catching his eye meant he’d remember you existed.It was better not to exist.From the east wing came the sound of something shattering. Thea froze. The linen trembled in her arms.Silence. Then a woman’s sob, which the walls quickly swallowed.Then silence again.Thea started walking.The castle had been bad before the queen left. Bad in the way that a tooth that needed pulling was bad. There was always

“Right,” Eli said, spreading the map on the ground. “Now we need to move.”Nobody argued with that.The map was old and imperfect and had been folded and unfolded so many times that the creases had started to wear through. Eli pressed it flat with their palm and anchored the corners with a boot, a waterskin, and the hilt of Archer’s sword, which he’d surrendered without being asked. Peggy sat cross-legged on Yonus’s back. Ariadne had North in her arms and was standing slightly apart, bouncing him gently. Archer was looking at the map with the focused expression of a man trying very hard not to look like he didn’t understand the map.“We’re here,” Eli said, tapping a point in the south. “We need to get here.” They moved their finger a significant distance northwest. “Out of Lycan territory, out of range of Kurnich’s scouts, and preferably somewhere with a bed and a door that locks.”“Agreed on all counts,” Peggy said.“The problem is getting there.” Eli traced the route with one finger

The scaffolding had gone up on the eastern wall overnight.Aurellia stood at the window of the war room and watched the workers move along it, small and purposeful against the pale morning sky. From up here Leviathorp still looked the way it always had,the market stalls setting up below, flower petals drifting across the cobblestones in the warm breeze, children already chasing each other between the legs of adults who were too busy to mind.She turned back to the war room.The table was covered. It had been covered for weeks,maps overlapping maps, pins trailing threads across territories, margins filled with her own handwriting and that of her advisors and, occasionally, the cramped annotated notes that Alice left when she’d been working through the night. The central map was the one she kept coming back to.

The next morning, they moved fast.Not running. Running attracted attention, and drew on reserves they couldn’t afford to burn. The kind of pace that ate distance, that didn’t invite conversation because everyone’s breath was needed for the walking. North had gone back in Ariadne’s arms, where he seemed perfectly content, watching the treeline pass with his usual serious attention. Yonus kept the rear. Eli kept magical sigils rotating. Nobody talked.Then, Archer opened his mouth.“We should make the forest edge by nightfall if we keep this pace,” he said. “Once we’re into the trees we’ve got better cover. The vampire territories start about a day’s walk past that.”“And after that?” Ariadne as