All Chapters of Reborn & Became The Alpha's Obsession: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

꧁ JAXON'S POVThomas called it a gesture of unity. “The family should be present,” he said, straightening his jacket in the hallway mirror like a man rehearsing for an audience. “Shows the Alpha we stand behind Lyra. Shows the council we're a united front.”I knew better. Thomas didn't care about unity. He cared about being seen standing beside power, and if that meant riding along on Aurelia's excuse to visit her sister, he'd take the seat gladly.I went anyway. Told myself it was for Lyra, not for whatever tangled thing had been growing in my chest since the courtship went public. I almost believed it by the time the car passed through the Greyson gates.The estate was larger than anything I'd grown up around, staff moving with the particular discipline of a pack that took its rank seriously — Betas overseeing sections of the grounds, an Omega escort assigned to guide visitors who didn't already know the layout, the whole place organized in a hierarchy I only half understood and Lyr

꧁ ASHER'S POVI'd walked away from council votes, territory disputes, and one attempted coup with my composure fully intact, but I was certain something had changed, and did not walk away from that clearing the same way.It hit somewhere on the path back to the house, no warning, no build-up I could point to and say ‘there, that's where it started’. One step I was fine, formal robes still damp with dew from the grass, Lyra's hand warm in mine, and the next my chest had gone tight.I stopped walking.“Asher?” Lyra turned, and whatever she saw on my face made her step closer instead of asking again.“I need a minute,” I said.She didn't push. She just stood there with me, at the edge of the path, moonlight still thick enough between the trees to catch the pale of her dress, and let me have a minute without filling it with questions.Fifteen years, I'd operated on a simple principle — anything I couldn't solve, I set aside. Grief, fear, longing, all of it filed under ‘unavailable’ the da

꧁ AURELIA'S POVThe gala hall glittered the way only old money bothered to glitter — chandeliers dimmed just enough to flatter, silver trays circling on the arms of Omega staff trained to be invisible until needed, a string quartet playing something restrained enough not to compete with the conversation. I'd chosen my dress carefully for tonight, deep emerald instead of my usual soft pastels, something that read as confident rather than delicate. Delicate had worked for the rumor stage. Tonight I needed a presence.The ceremony had cost me my best weapon. Three weeks of careful, deniable doubt about the bond's legitimacy, and one bright, unexplainable flare of light had erased all of it in a single evening. I'd watched Marcus's expression that night from across the clearing, and I'd understood immediately, watching him recalibrate, that whatever came next would need to be sharper than gossip whispered in hallways.Tonight I intended to make it public.I found the right cluster within

꧁ LYRA'S POVI woke to the smell of something burning.Not disaster-burning, just enough char in the air to make me sit up and follow it, padding down the hallway in yesterday's borrowed sleep shirt, morning light spilling gold and lazy across the estate's stone floors. It was the kind of quiet, unhurried morning that made the whole place feel less like a political stronghold and more like an actual home, birds arguing somewhere outside the kitchen windows, the household staff nowhere in sight yet.I found Asher standing at the stove in the private kitchen off his quarters, sleeves shoved up, a look of genuine, focused betrayal aimed directly at a pan.“What,” I said, leaning against the doorframe, “is happening.”“Eggs.” He said it the way he might report a supply chain failure. “They were supposed to be eggs.”“They still are eggs. Just — committed eggs.”“Committed to what?”“Being a single object. That's usually not how eggs work.”He turned the pan slightly, studying the blackene

꧁ JAXON'S POVAurelia found me in the guest wing's small sitting room, late enough when most of the estate had gone quiet, the household staff down to a skeleton rotation and the corridors outside lit only by the low, amber wall sconces that stayed lit through the night shift.“You disappeared for two days,” she said, settling into the chair across from me without waiting for an invitation. “Where'd you go?”“Around. Cleared my head.”“Must have been a lot to clear.” She studied me for a moment, but her calculative eye couldn't be hidden behind those fake soft concerns in her voice, a mismatch I hadn't noticed as clearly before the gala. “You've been strange since the reception. Distant.”“I've had a lot on my mind.”“Care to share?”I didn't, and something in me hesitated longer than usual before answering, turning her question over the way I'd started turning over most things she said to me lately, checking for the seam where warmth ended and strategy began.“Not really,” I said.Sh