All Chapters of Rejected by the Alpha Heir, Mated to His Rival Brother: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Ciara’s POVThe room my uncle gave me was clean and simply furnished — a bed, a washstand, a narrow window that looked out over the dark grounds. Someone had left a candle burning on the sill. I lay on top of the covers fully dressed and watched the flame until it burned down to nothing, and then I lay in the dark and watched the ceiling instead.Sleep didn't come.I kept returning to my mother's face in the vision. Not the face I'd memorized over eight years of grief — the hollowed cheeks, the fever brightness, the thin hands. The younger face. Full, unguarded, wet with tears she wasn't making any sound about. Holding my small wrist in both hands over a mark I had apparently carried my whole life without ever being shown it.She'd known from the beginning. That was the part I couldn't get past. Not that she'd kept it from me — I could almost understand that, the impulse to shield, to delay, to hope the problem would resolve itself or skip a generation or simply go quietly away. W

Kaden's POVThe training grounds were quiet at this hour. A few junior wolves running drills at the far end, their movements small and distant through the glass. I had been watching them for long enough that they'd cycled through the same sequence twice without my actually seeing them.I turned away from the window.Garrett was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, wearing the expression that meant he'd already decided what he was going to say and was simply waiting for the right moment to say it. I had known him long enough to recognize the difference between Garrett thinking and Garrett performing patience while he waited for an opening."Go ahead," I said."The whole pack is talking." He said it without preamble, which meant he'd been holding it for a while. "Draven took her somewhere and nobody knows where. Three days now. His guards came back with the carriage but not him." He paused. "Word is they were hit on the road. Ironpeak wolves. His men held them off — no seriou

Ciara's POVThe trees outside the window moved past in long grey intervals, bare branches against a sky that couldn't decide between cloud and light. I watched them with an absent mind, my thumb moving slowly over the worn bead on my mother's bracelet.Across from me, Draven worked through a stack of papers Marcus had prepared for him.He read with complete attention, made occasional notes in the margin with a pen he produced from his coat, and gave no indication that he was aware of being observed.I watched him anyway.The line of his jaw when he was concentrating. The small movements when he turned a page. The way he'd set three papers aside in a separate stack, which meant he was already sorting problems by priority even now, even here, before we'd cleared the border properly.My uncle's voice in my head: *Keep your eyes open.*I was trying.That was the problem.The more I watched Draven, the more I noticed things I had no business noticing. Not useful things. Not the sort of de

Kaden's POVThe library was one of the quietest rooms in the pack house — high shelves, north-facing windows, the kind of cold grey light that discouraged casual visitors. I had always liked it for that reason. Most people only came here when they needed something specific. It was not a room for lingering.Ciara was lingering.She sat in the chair nearest the window with a book open across her knees and her eyes somewhere else entirely. On her wrist, a thin braided bracelet — worn, the colors faded. She was turning it slowly between her fingers without seeming to know she was doing it. Her expression was something I didn't have a name for. Grief that had been picked up and examined and not yet put back down.I stopped at the door.Garrett's voice in my head, already composing the sentence he would use if he saw me standing here: *My lord, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish.* Reasonable question. I didn't have a reasonable answer.I walked in anyway.She heard me and looked up.

Ciara’s POVI found Draven that evening on the wide terrace overlooking the pack gardens.He was standing at the stone railing with a glass he hadn't touched, looking out over the grounds. The garden below was lit by lanterns strung between the trees, their light moving softly in the evening breeze. He turned when he heard my footsteps."How was she?" he asked."Honest." I leaned against the railing beside him. "Aggressively, completely honest. I found it refreshing and slightly terrifying."The corner of his mouth moved. "Sit."There were two chairs set back from the railing. We took them, turned slightly toward each other, the garden spread out below us and the night settling in around the edges."Tell me," he said.So I did. I told him about the *Veyrath* — the name, the history, the myth of the Moon Goddess and what Serafine believed about it. I told him about the politics of it, the old packs that had built alliances around it, the ones that had tried to control it. I told him wh