All Chapters of Mated To The Cursed Alpha : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

MIRA'S POVBy the third day, I was already feeling like the room was closing in on me.It was a beautiful room — I knew that. High ceiling, large window, furniture that was well made and comfortable. By any objective measure, it was nicer than any room I had slept in for the last two years. But by the third day, I knew every crack in the plaster ceiling and exactly how the light moved across the floor from morning to afternoon, and if I spent another full day inside those four walls I was going to lose my fucking mind.I called for the guard stationed outside my door."I want to visit the library," I said. "Can you take me?"He checked with someone — I heard a low exchange in the corridor — and then told me yes, they could escort me. Two guards, which I suspected was more than a normal library visit required, but I didn't say anything about it.We walked through corridors I hadn't seen yet and people stared. I had expected that, so I kept my eyes forward and my chin level and trie

ROWAN'S POVShe thought she would have been better off staying with Finn.I was already moving down the corridor toward the alarm, guards falling in around me, Tobias pulling up on my left, and that sentence was following me like something I couldn't outrun.She had stood there in the library with her hands shaking and tears on her face and told me she was starting to think Finn's cruelty was preferable to my distance. Because at least with Finn, she'd known what she was worth to him. She hadn't had to keep hoping.I had done that. I had made her feel that way deliberately, methodically, one closed door at a time.Tobias was briefing me as we moved — intruder at the east wall, multiple figures, not confirmed hostile yet. I processed it, gave instructions, kept walking.My wolf was pulling in two directions at once — the threat at the wall and the woman I had just left standing alone in the library.I had told myself the distance was for her. That was the story I had been carrying sinc

ROWAN'S POVMira came through the gate behind me.I had told her to stay inside. She had looked at me with an expression that made clear she had heard the instruction and was making her own decision about it, and then she had followed me anyway.I had a half-second to decide whether to stop her and chose not to. Locking her inside while Finn stood at my wall was not something I was willing to do.So she was behind me, and Finn saw her the moment we came through the gate.I watched his face when he saw her. The hollowed-out desperation I had read from forty feet away changed into something more focused and more dangerous.Not hope — something past hope, into the territory where a man has simplified everything down to one remaining objective.He looked at me. "Send her over. She walks to me, I take my men and we leave. No bloodshed."My wolf came forward so fast I had to actively hold it back. Every instinct I had was telling me to close the distance between us and end this immediately.

ROWAN'S POVI have ended fights before.I have put down challengers, settled border disputes with force, handled threats to the crown in ways that required my wolf and not my judgment.I know what it feels like to fight with control — to use exactly what the situation requires and no more, to stay present and deliberate even when the wolf is pushing forward.This was not that.When I came out of the water and saw Finn's hands on Mira — his weight bearing down on her, her claws already raked across his face, his hands moving to pin her again despite the wounds, I snapped and my wolf took over so completely that I have no clear memory of the distance between the river's edge and the moment of impact.There was water and rocks and the cold and then there was Finn beneath me and I was already moving.We went down hard on the rocks and I felt his claws find my shoulder immediately and I did not care.The pains I felt was information. It told me where his hands were, which told me how to mo

*MIRA'S POV*On the third day, Elara finally said I could get out of bed.She said it with conditions attached though. The baby was fine and my body was healing, but I needed to move slowly, avoid stress, and not push myself into anything my body wasn't ready for. She listed these things while checking my pulse, with her fingers light on my wrist and her eyes on the small clock she kept in her coat pocket.I said yes to all of it and meant none of it.I sat on the edge of the bed after she left and took stock. My ribs were sore on the left side where I had hit the rocks, and my hands had healed cleanly with no scarring from the claws, which Elara said was normal for partial shifts. My legs were steady when I stood, though not strong.Good enough.Rowan had visited every day. He came in the mornings, sometimes for twenty minutes and sometimes longer. He brought books the second day — a history of the Royalfang territory and something lighter about pack traditions that I suspected Elar