All Chapters of The Alpha Triplets’ Rejected Omega: Violet Blood Reign: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Ava's POVI spent the first hour resenting the order.Ryker had come to my room himself, which meant it was serious, and had told me in three flat sentences that I was to stay in the deep servants' quarters for the duration of the delegation's visit. No upper floors. No main corridors. No kitchen, no library, no east wing."You're confining me," I said."I'm protecting you.""Those are different things.""Not right now they aren't." He had looked at me with that expression that gave nothing away. "Two days. Stay in the lower quarters."Then he left.I sat on my bed and stared at the wall and resented him and the order and the entire situation for approximately sixty minutes. Then Leta knocked and came in without waiting for an answer, which she had started doing recently, and sat down on the floor with her back against the bed and looked up at me."You heard?" I asked."Everyone heard. Well. Everyone who matters." She pulled her knees up. "Are you alright?""I'm confined to the lower

Zephyr's POVIt came through the bond like cold water, sudden and sharp, hitting my chest so fast I stopped walking mid-stride in the middle of the north perimeter corridor. The guard beside me took two more steps before noticing I had stopped."Alpha Zephyr?""Go ahead." I kept my voice level. "Finish the rotation without me."He hesitated for a second, which was all the hesitation I had patience for tonight. He went.I stood in the corridor and felt the bond. Real fear, not the low constant anxiety that had been present since she arrived, not the guarded discomfort she carried like a second skin. This was acute. This was something that had just happened.I moved.The Sylvan soul had been loud all evening, louder than usual, pushing with the particular intensity it got when there were powerful strangers in the palace and the mission felt urgent. It had been giving me a headache since Ryder's delegation walked through the main entrance. It wanted me in the lab. It wanted me to complet

Ava's POVI woke up because someone was in my room.Not a sound exactly. More like a change in the air, the specific density of a space that had been empty and was no longer empty. I had developed this particular sensitivity at my old pack house, where empty rooms were safe and occupied ones required immediate assessment.I opened my eyes.Ryker was standing at the foot of my bed.I screamed aloud.It was more of a sharp, startled sound that lasted approximately one second before I got control of it, but it was absolutely a scream and it came out before I could stop it."Don't do that," Ryker said."You're in my room." I sat up fast, pulling the blanket up. "While I was sleeping. You're standing at the foot of my bed while I was sleeping.""I knocked.""I was asleep. Knocking doesn't work on sleeping people.""It worked eventually." He was fully dressed, dark clothes, hair actually combed, which meant this was official enough that he had prepared for it. "Are you awake now?""Am I?."

Zephyr's POVI heard her leave Cax's room before the door opened.The bond gave it away, that slight shift in the warmth of it, like an ember being moved from one place to another. I had been tracking it all night without meaning to, sitting against the wall outside her door with my weapons across my knees and my back straight and my eyes moving between the two corridor entry points the way a proper overnight watch was supposed to work.Professional, and correct. Nothing unusual about any of it.The door opened quietly and she stepped out into the corridor and immediately walked directly into my outstretched legs.She stumbled and I caught her wrist before she went down, my hand closing around it automatically, and she looked at my hand and then down at me sitting against the wall and then back at my hand with an expression that went through surprised, embarrassed, and something she was actively suppressing, all in about two seconds."This isn't what it looks like," she said, with eno

RYKER’S POVThe heavy iron gates of the palace finally groaned shut, muffling the sound of Ryder’s retreating carriages, and the silence that followed was so thick I could hear the blood rushing through my own veins. For four days, the air had been thin with the threat of a formal challenge, but Zephyr’s perimeter work and Cax’s clever lies had held the line. The delegation was gone, and they had found nothing.I didn't go to the war room to debrief with my brothers, instead, I followed a pull in my chest that led me straight to the high-walled gardens. I found Ava standing by the frozen fountain, her breath hitching in the cold air, but for the first time since she arrived, the sharp armor of her fear was gone. She heard my boots on the gravel and turned around, and before she could catch herself, she gave me a real smile. It was a startled, beautiful thing born of pure relief, and it hit me harder than any blow I had ever taken in the pits."They're actually gone," she whispered, he