All Chapters of Claimed by my Rejected Mate: Sold to the Brutal Alpha: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

JESSICA POV The sound of the heels of Vanya had just died away, when the door creaked open. This time it was not a jealous competitor. It was the so-called Sisters of the Silk--the personal handmaidens of Thorne. They didn't speak. They were ghosts, and had their faces covered, and their hands smelled of lye and bitter almonds. The King is preparing the first stage, the eldest said. I was pulled out of my cot, and my legs ached like lead when they took me to the Royal Bathing Chamber. It was a lavish nightmare of white marble and steam so heavy that it seemed like wet shroud. A basin of moonstone in the middle was carved out of one piece, and the water that was in it had the power to make an unnatural, silver light that simmers. "Strip," the woman commanded. “No,” I groaned. They did not even wait for my permission. They tore the fabric off, with surgical, savage brutality. I was standing in the heat naked and shivering and my skin was prickling under the eyes of them all. But

JESSICA’S POVThe red silk felt like a second skin, draped over my body with a weight that felt more like a burial shroud than a wedding gown. It was a masterpiece of cruelty—slit high at the thigh to show the "property" Thorne had acquired, plunging at the chest to expose the pulse in my throat. Every time I moved, the fabric hissed against the stone floor, a sound like a snake in the grass.As the servant, a hollow-eyed woman named Elara, worked the brush through my hair, I wasn't thinking about the "wedding." I was thinking about Belladonna."The King says you are to be perfect," Elara whispered, her voice barely a thread. She didn't look at me in the mirror. Her hands were shaking so violently that the silver-backed brush clattered against my scalp."Elara," I said, catching her wrist. The Null-Magic collar bit into my neck as I tried to exert even a fragment of my will. "Look at me. Stop shaking."She hesitated, then slowly raised her gaze. Her eyes were clouded with grey hopeles

JESSICA POV The temple room was a grave of silence and obsidian. The mirrors that hung along the walls did not reflect the light, they seemed to absorb it, and all the wavering candles became ghosts. And here I was pitched upon the cold, hard altar in the middle of the room and the "Null-Magic" stones which were the floor stones were vibrating so much that I could taste them. It was a trembling, which attempted to extract the magic out of my blood, and to rub it down to dust. The guards were in the fringe and their faces were covered with silver masks. They didn't speak. They didn't move. They waited upon their King, and their devotion was a dreadful, clock-work affair, which not even health could make to falter. I rested on the rock, and my breath was spasmodic. My mind was a storm. Thorne had been poisoned, but the guards had remained faithful to his dying order. I needed time. The Alphas would have to be nearer. I had to find a means of letting them not initiate the ceremony b

RYDER’S POVThe iron shackles bitten into my wrists weren't the problem. I’d worn heavier chains in the pits of the North. The problem was the scent of Jessica faint, fading, and laced with the copper tang of fear drifting through the ventilation grates of my cell. It was driving me into a crazy state that no Null-magic could suppress."Keep your head down, mutt," the guard growled, slamming the butt of his pike into my kidneys.I stumbled, a dry groan escaping my throat, but I didn't fall. I couldn't. Under the sleeve of my shredded tunic, the small obsidian blade I’d palmed from the dining hall three nights ago pressed against my pulse. It was a sliver of glass, really, but in the hands of a man who had nothing left to lose, it was a god-slayer."You’re making a mistake," I rasped, my voice sounding like grinding gravel. "You should have killed me in the courtyard."The guard laughed, a hollow sound inside his silver helm. "The King wants you alive to watch him claim her. He says t

JESSICA’S POVThe ritual chamber was no longer a room; it was a hungry throat. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of burning frankincense and something more primal—the smell of an impending storm. Outside, the sky was a bruised purple, the stars hiding as if ashamed of what the moon was about to become.The handmaidens approached me with ceremonial bowls carved from human bone. Their fingers, cold and impersonal, began the final anointing. This wasn’t like the previous baths. The oil they used now was thick, viscous, and laced with crushed belladonna and "Moon-thistle." As it touched my skin, my vision blurred at the edges. Every nerve ending didn't just wake up; they began to scream.The oil felt like liquid fire. It was designed to turn my skin into a conductor, a raw wire that would allow Thorne to siphon the Sovereignty out of my marrow. Every brush of the handmaidens’ silk gloves felt like a serrated blade. Every breath of air that moved through the open rafters felt like a