All Chapters of The Mate They Threw Away: Chapter 341 - Chapter 350

375 Chapters

341. Small, Burning Bodies II.

Sage.I don't remember the moment I stopped being able to see straight.One second the room was there, Ilsa's face, the crib, Emma's weight against my chest and the next it had folded into something white and roaring, like standing too close to a furnace with my eyes forced open."Sage!"Someone was saying my name. I couldn't tell how many times."…her lips are going blue, get Dr. Kessler, NOW…"I wanted to tell them I was fine. I wanted to tell them not to interrupt the current, that if they pulled me away now the strain would just snap back into the children, into Emma's small chest pressed against mine, into Liam's tiny hands.I couldn't make my mouth form the words.The heat had stopped feeling like heat somewhere in the last few minutes. It felt like being scraped hollow, like every part of me was being drawn thin and stretched over something too large to fit inside my body. I understood, distantly, that this was what Aura-Fever meant when the textbooks described it in careful cl

Last Updated : 2026-07-29

342. The Elder's Lie I.

Sage.The summit hall smelled like old wood polish and older grudges, and I hated every second I had to spend standing in it."You didn't have to come," Kieran murmured beside me, adjusting his cuff with the particular stiffness of a man bracing for a fight he hadn't fully planned for. "You're still recovering.""I recover faster than most people expect," I said. "And I wasn't going to let this happen without eyes in the room.""Whose eyes, exactly.""Mine. The regular kind and the other kind."He glanced sideways at me, something wary in it. "Try not to shatter any more windows.""No promises."The Elders filed in one by one, robes trailing, faces arranged into the careful neutrality of people who'd spent decades learning to hide behind procedure. I counted them as they took their seats, nine in total, the full quorum, which told me this wasn't meant to be a routine hearing. Nobody called nine Elders together for something routine.Elder Castemere took his seat at the head of the tab

Last Updated : 2026-07-30

343. The Elder's Lie II.

Sage.The session broke into chaos, Elders clustering into knots of hushed argument, aides scurrying between them with folders and whispered updates. I slipped out a side door before anyone could pull me into the middle of it, Kieran close behind."That's not going to make the Council fear you less," he said, once we were clear of the hall."Good.""I'm serious, Sage. A room full of powerful people just watched you unravel one of their own in under two minutes. Some of them are going to be impressed. More of them are going to be terrified.""Let them be terrified of the truth for once instead of me.""They don't separate the two anymore," he said. "That's the problem."I didn't have an answer for that, because he wasn't wrong, and we both knew it. We walked in silence toward the courtyard, the cool evening air a relief after the stifling weight of the hall, and I nearly missed the black car idling near the gate until Kieran stopped walking."Black Crest plates," he said, tone flatteni

Last Updated : 2026-07-31

344. Water and Salt I.

Sage.The omega's name was Petra, and she was dying slower than anyone in the room wanted to admit."Blood pressure's dropping again," Nessa said, adjusting the drip with practiced efficiency. "Third time in two hours.""Show me the latest panel." I scanned the results Nessa handed me, and my stomach sank further with every line. "Her silver tolerance markers are collapsing. This isn't a normal reaction to exposure.""She wasn't exposed to silver. Not directly. No wounds, no jewelry, nothing on the intake form.""Then something's poisoning her the same way silver would, without silver actually touching her." I set the panel down and moved to Petra's bedside, taking her cold, clammy hand in mine. "Petra. Can you hear me?"Her eyes fluttered open, glassy, unfocused. "Doctor.""I'm here. I need to ask you something, and I need you to think carefully before you answer. In the last few days, has anything tasted strange to you? Food, water, anything at all?"Her brow furrowed, the effort of

Last Updated : 2026-08-01

345. Water and Salt II.

Sage.By midnight, the water sample results were back, and I wished, briefly and uselessly, that they weren't."It's a match," Nessa said, sliding the report across the desk. "Same geometric structure we found in Baric's spinal fluid. Same silver-resistant behavior we saw under the scope. Whatever's in that water, it's the same architecture as everything else we've been tracking."I stared at the report without really seeing it, my mind already three steps ahead, cataloguing the scope of what this meant. "How much of the western district's supply is affected?""All of it. Every household we tested came back positive, even ones with no symptomatic residents yet.""Yet," I repeated, and let the word sit heavy in the room.Asher pushed off the wall where he'd been leaning, arms crossed, expression grim. "I've confirmed two more districts since I left the clinic. Same shell company, same contract pattern. If the trend holds, we could be looking at close to a third of Silver Crest's territ

Last Updated : 2026-08-02

346. A Favor From Black Crest I.

Sage.The public statement went out at two in the morning, and by dawn the clinic waiting room looked like the aftermath of a small war, cots lining the hallway, IV poles crowded three-deep near the nurses' station, the low, constant murmur of frightened people trying not to sound as frightened as they felt. Someone had propped the front doors open to let the corridor breathe, and even that hadn't been enough; the air still smelled of antiseptic and fear-sweat, thick enough to taste."We're out of standard chelation stock," Nessa said, appearing at my elbow with the particular grim efficiency she reserved for genuine crises. Her scrubs were stained at the cuffs, her hair escaping its knot in a way that told me she hadn't sat down in hours. "The pharmacy can't restock fast enough, and half the cases coming in now are advanced enough that standard protocols won't touch them anyway.""What would touch them?""Nothing in our formulary." She rubbed a hand over her tired eyes. "Strahovsky's

Last Updated : 2026-08-03

347. A Favor From Black Crest II.

Sage.I made it exactly forty minutes back into my shift before Nessa found me again, this time at a dead run."Trauma bay two," she said, breathless. "You need to see this now."I followed her at a pace just short of running myself, weaving through the crowded hallway, past cots and IV poles and the low murmur of frightened patients, until we burst through the doors of Trauma Two.The man on the table looked wrong in a way I couldn't immediately name."Found him collapsed near the eastern tree line an hour ago," said the paramedic still hovering by the door, voice tight. "No visible wounds. But his vitals keep spiking and crashing like nothing we've ever logged."I approached slowly, taking in the details my training screamed at me to catalogue. Pale, slack-jawed, breathing shallow but steady. And his skin, his skin had a faint, iridescent sheen to it that didn't belong on any werewolf I'd ever treated."What's his name," I asked."Corwin. According to the tags on his jacket," Nessa

Last Updated : 2026-08-04

348. Apex I.

Sage. Corwin stabilized an hour before Strahovsky arrived, though "stabilized" felt like too generous a word for whatever state he'd settled into quiet, distant, his eyes tracking things that weren't in the room. "He's not responding to standard stimuli," I told her, keeping my voice low as we stood just outside his door. "But he's not catatonic either. It's like he's listening to something we can't hear." "May I?" Strahovsky asked, already pulling on gloves. "Go ahead." She examined him with the same clinical precision she'd brought to Saturn's autop

Last Updated : 2026-08-04

349. Apex II.

Sage.Nobody moved for a long moment. The only sound was the wind sighing through the shattered window, and my own breath, ragged and strange in a throat that didn't feel entirely mine anymore."Sage?" Nessa's voice came out small, uncertain, the phone still frozen in her raised hand. "Is that…are you still in there?"I tried to answer and what came out instead was a low, rumbling sound, more growl than word. I flinched at it, at the wrongness of my own voice, and took a step back, claws scraping against the tile.“Say something. Anything. Show them you're still you.”I forced my jaw to work, forced human shape into a mouth that wanted to stay animal. "Nessa," I managed, the word thick and strange but unmistakably mine.Relief broke across her face, quick and total. "Oh, thank god."One of the patients an older man near the far wall, still gripping his blanket like a shield — made a strangled sound. "That's a doctor? That's Dr. Winters?""She just saved this entire ward," Nessa said,

Last Updated : 2026-08-05

350. Teal Mist I.

Sage. The water Nessa brought didn't help as much as the news that came twenty minutes later. "ICU's crashing," she said, breathless, appearing in the doorway of the small office where I'd been sitting wrapped in a blanket, still shaking from the transformation. "Multiple patients. Heart rates dropping in sync, like something's pulling them all down at once." I was on my feet before I'd fully processed the words. "Which patients." "All of them. Every infected case we've got in intensive care. Twelve total." "That's not possible unless…" I stopped mid

Last Updated : 2026-08-05

...

33 34 35 36 37 38

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP