All Chapters of The Alpha’s Unwanted Mate: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Cassandra’s POVThe boy’s eyes welled, his small frame shaking as a loud wail tore out of his chest.“Mommy!” he cried, his little hands balled into fists.The maids stared at him and then back at me, not saying a word. What was wrong with them? From how they were looking at each other, I could tell they were communicating through the mindlink but why wasn't anyone comforting the child?Before I could even sit up, a woman burst in through the doorway, her eyes frantic until they landed on her son. She rushed to him, dropping to her knees.“My boy, what happened?” she asked, cupping his face, scanning his arms and legs.Meanwhile, Jessa bent down quickly, scooping up my crutches and slipping an arm under mine. “Up you go,” she muttered, pulling me upright with surprising strength.My leg screamed in protest, but I ignored it. The maids were still frozen and watching. Fine. Let them watch.I ignored the sting of my palms as I hobbled forward, grabbing two cookies from the cooling rack.

Cassandra’s POVI sat in my bed, staring at my crutches in the other end of the room. Sebastian had ordered that I get braces for my legs instead of hurling around in crutches. The elders said each segment would be like some sort of surprise, so I had no idea what we would be doing. I only knew it would be on the fields so I got myself something sporty. I hadn't seen or spoken to Sebastian in days. It was more like he was pissed at me and ignoring me and I can't lie, I was still angry at him. So the distance between us was widening.I sighed, getting off my bed and pulling my door open before stepping out.—One of the elders stepped forward, his robes swaying in the breeze. His voice carried easily across the field.“For a Luna to be accepted, she must be more than a partner to the Alpha. She must be a guide, a protector, a mother figure to the pack. What better way to test this ability than to see how well she safeguards our children?”Children.My breath hitched as a group of smal

Cassandra's POVI heard her before I saw her.That deliberate, sharp click of heels on tile that only happens when someone wants to be heard coming. I was at the kitchen counter with a mug of tea I had spent twenty minutes failing to make because the kitchen was the size of my entire old apartment and nothing was where logic said it should be. I had finally found the tea bags behind a container of oats the size of a small child, and I had just settled into something resembling calm.Then Lyra walked in.She was one of the senior pack females. Older than me by maybe five years, with dark hair pulled into a severe bun and eyes that looked at me the way people look at something they stepped in. She had made her position clear the first day I arrived, no words needed. Just that very particular brand of silence that communicates everything a person refuses to say out loud.Today she had decided words were necessary."You are in my spot," she said.I looked at the counter. Then back at her.

Cassandra's POV Sleep did not come easily. I lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and turned the evening over and over in my head, looking at it from every angle the way you do when something does not add up and you cannot figure out which part is wrong. Sebastian had been almost normal. Almost human, which was a strange thing to think about someone who was technically neither. He had asked about my sleep. He had listened to me talk about my father with an expression I could not entirely read. And then he had reached for my face and pulled himself back, and the reaching had undone something in me that I was still trying to undo back. I was up before seven. Mira found me in the east corridor just after breakfast, carrying a stack of folded linens and looking like she had been hoping to run into me. "Walk with me," she said. I fell into step beside her. We went through the south wing and out to the covered walkway that ran along the garden side of the house, where the

Cassandra's POVIt started the way bad things usually do. Quietly.I had gone to the garden to think. That was all. The pack grounds had pockets of stillness if you knew where to find them and the garden on the south side was one of those, shielded from the main training areas and most of the daily pack movement. I had taken to going there in the afternoons when the walls of the house felt too close.Claire was already there.She was sitting on one of the stone benches near the rosebushes, which I found out later were her favourite, which would have been useful information to have beforehand. She looked at me when I came through the hedge gap and something in her expression settled into something cold and decided."I was wondering when you would wander out here alone," she said.I stopped walking. "I did not realise this area was restricted.""It is not. Sit down.""I am fine standing."She stood up instead. She was wearing something that probably cost more than three of my rent payme