บททั้งหมดของ THE REJECTED BETA : บทที่ 41 - บทที่ 50

Astance’s POVThe scent of old parchment and cold stone usually calmed me, but tonight, the study felt like a pressure cooker. I had maps of the Southern border spread across my desk, weighted down by daggers and obsidian stones. My mind was a chaotic grid of supply lines, flank manoeuvres, and high-altitude strike points. I was ready to burn it all. For Marie. For the insult to my house. For the sheer, unadulterated arrogance of a man who thought he could reach into my mountains and pull a leash.The heavy doors creaked open. I didn't look up, my fingers tracing a jagged ridge on the topographical map. "I told you I didn't want to be disturbed unless the Southern militants had crossed the treeline, Kaelen.""Then it’s a good thing I’m here to disturb you for an entirely different reason," Kaelen’s voice rang out.There was something wrong with his tone. It wasn't the clipped, soldierly cadence he’d carried since the letter arrived. It was light. I looked up, my eyebrows furrowing i

Noah’s POVThe sun rose over the Southern District not as a herald of a new era, but as a pale, sickly eye peering through a haze of humidity. I stood on the elevated marble dais of the estate’s grand plaza, the weight of the traditional Alpha mantle, heavy with gold thread and the scent of cedar feeling like a leaden shroud across my shoulders.Below me, the sea of faces was a tapestry of suppressed judgment. The heads of the lesser houses were there, their silks shimmering in the heat, along with the district’s elite and the swarm of press cameras that hummed like metallic insects. Usually, a Thorne announcement was met with a roar of anticipation, a vibrating energy of power. Today, the air was flat. It tasted of dust and defeat.My father stood three paces to my right. He was a statue carved from obsidian, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression so stoic it bordered on the inhuman. He didn't look at the crowd, he looked through them, as if he were already presiding over

Noah’s POVThe smell of the Council Chamber always reminded me of a funeral, old wood, cold stone, and the suffocating scent of jasmine that had been bred to mask the smell of rot. I sat at the head of the mahogany table, my hands clasped tightly in front of me, trying to ignore the way my palms were sweating against the polished grain.To my right sat my father, a silent monolith of disapproval. To my left, the twelve Elders of the Southern High Houses were arranged like a row of vultures on a fence, their eyes sharp and unkind. They weren't here to celebrate my announcement, they were here to perform an autopsy on my authority."A secretary, Noah?" Elder Vane’s voice was like dry parchment rubbing together. He leaned forward, the emerald signet on his finger catching the dim light of the overhead chandeliers. "You expect us to sanction the elevation of a common clerk to the position of Luna? The Thorne bloodline is not a playground for your mid-day dalliances.""It is a strategic

Marie’s POVThe air in the Southern Council Chamber was no longer oxygen, it was a pressurised mist of ice and old, suffocating tradition. I stood in the shadow of Astance, my breath hitching in my throat as I watched the Patriarch, Noah’s father, loom over the mahogany table like a gargoyle brought to life by sheer, unadulterated malice."You come here alone, Archon?" The Patriarch’s voice was a jagged rasp of Southern gravel. "You breach the sanctum of the Thorne lineage, you bypass my security, and you think your presence alone is enough to challenge my authority on my own soil? You are a guest who has overstayed his welcome by the length of a death sentence."I felt the shift in Astance beside me, the sudden, violent cooling of the atmosphere. The gold in his eyes wasn't just flickering,it was a steady, blinding solar flare. I knew the moment had come. I couldn't stay a ghost in the periphery any longer. I couldn't let him fight a war for a woman the South had already declared

Noah’s POVThe Council Chamber was a tomb of glass and ozone, and I was the ghost trapped within its walls. I stood by the wet bar, my fingers white-knuckled as they gripped the marble edge, my chest heaving with a rhythmic, stuttering panic that I couldn’t swallow down. I hated him. I hated Astance with a primal, bone-deep intensity that made my very skin crawl. I hated the way he moved, the way he breathed, and the way he looked at Marie as if he had carved her from the very mountain he ruled. He had walked into my home and dismantled my dignity with a flicker of his eyes, and the shame of it was a physical weight in my gut.But more than my hate, there was my fear.I watched the Southern guards, my father’s personal butchers level their spears in a synchronised, metallic ring that sang with the promise of a massacre. I saw Kaelen’s eyes darting, calculating the trajectory of every blade, every exit, his body coiled like a spring ready to snap. I could see the same hesitation in