Lahat ng Kabanata ng Killed and Reborn: My Alpha’s Obsession : Kabanata 181 - Kabanata 190

They camped one last time on the ridge above Blackmoon’s valley.Tomorrow, if the weather held and no one did anything monumentally stupid, they’d ride down into home: familiar trees, familiar stone, familiar halls, and an unfamiliar weight of watching eyes.For tonight, it was just them and the stars.They’d chosen a small rise a little away from the main fire for their bedrolls, within the ward‑ring but out of easy earshot of Rhea’s snoring and Jax’s muttered jokes. The sky was clear, cold, and high, stars spilled thick enough that the dark between them seemed almost an afterthought.Rin lay on her back, hands folded under her head, cloak pulled up to her chin. Kael lay on his side facing her, propped on one elbow, silhouetted against the faint glow of the banked fire.“You’re thinking too loud,” he said quietly.“I’m not thinking,” she lied.He snorted. “You’re Rin. Of course you’re thinking. What about?”She watched a faint trail of light flare and vanish as some wayward spark dec

The wards felt her before she saw them.Rin couldn’t have pointed to the exact line on the ground where Blackmoon’s holdings began—not without a map—but her skin knew. One moment, the air was just cold and clean; the next, it buzzed faintly along her forearms, like distant bees under stone.Rowan’s work. And Aria’s. And, once, Rin’s own, when she’d been old enough to apprentice on outer sigils.Home, the valley whispered along those lines. The shape of it rose up ahead as they crested the last real ridge: a broad bowl of land cradled in rough stone arms, river glinting, fields just beginning to green under spring’s hesitant hand. Smoke curled from chimneys; somewhere, a dog barked.Rin reined in for a heartbeat at the top of the rise, letting her horse stand. The others slowed automatically behind her.The view hit her in two places at once.In her chest, where familiarity sat: the particular gray of Blackmoon rock, the crooked line of the training yard wall, the way the manor bulked

The council chamber felt smaller with the doors shut.It wasn’t, of course. The high, arched ceiling, the long table with its nicks and burn marks from decades of arguments, the big windows looking out over the inner courtyard—none of that had changed.But with the great double doors barred from the inside and two guards posted outside, the space between the table’s edges and the walls seemed to contract. The air went denser, packed with breath and expectation.Rin took her usual seat on Aria’s right, Lucian opposite. Rowan and Mara sat a little further down, opposite each other. Elder Veyra, gray hair plaited back tighter than a bowstring, held her habitual spot near the table’s center—a place that said she was neither on the throne nor far from it.Rhea stood with her back to the wall between two windows, arms folded, officially there as head of security, unofficially there because she refused to let her heir be interrogated alone in any room.Kael sat near the foot of the table, to

Aria’s office was one of the few rooms in the manor that hadn’t grown since Rin was small.The shelves were more crowded now, the desk more scarred, the chair behind it creakier, but the bones of the space were the same: narrow windows looking over the inner courtyard, a battered table shoved under one of them for maps, a chair in the corner with a throw Aria insisted wasn’t there for napping.Rin stood just inside the door, fingers caught in the hem of her sleeve.“Shut it,” Aria said, without looking up from the stack of notes she was pretending to sort. “Before someone decides, they need to ask us about grain yields in the middle of this.”Rin shut the door.The muted clatter of the manor—the ring of a dropped pot from the kitchens, a shout from the training yard—cut off to a low murmur. For a moment, neither of them spoke.Then Aria pushed the papers aside and leaned back in her chair, studying her daughter.“Sit,” she said, nodding at the chair opposite.Rin did. The wood creaked

By midmorning the next day, the valley had decided to watch. Word had gone out—Rhea saw to that—that there would be a joint training on the main field: Blackmoon and Nightfang styles side by side, heirs present. It could have been a circus. Aria sat at the head of the planning table in the war room, a sheet of parchment in front of her more for show than use. Rhea leaned over it, tapping with one scarred finger. “We put you two in the middle,” she said, nodding at Rin and Kael. “Short, sharp demonstration. Then drills. Make them see you as one front.” “Nothing fancy,” Aria added. “Just enough to remind the packs that we didn’t all forget how to fight during the peace years.” “Nothing fancy,” Rin repeated. “Good. If anyone suggests I levitate rocks in a circle while Kael broods under them, I’m leaving.” Rhea’s mouth twitched. “That was only one suggestion,” she said. “I killed it.” Aria slid a glance at Rin. “There is value,” she said carefully, “in visible symbols of un