All Chapters of The Lycan's Rejected Mate: Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

Alec:I looked toward the blood darkening the Badlands dirt in wide, ugly stains where the rogues had fallen. Patrols were being reassigned, wounds assessed, the pack settling into that disciplined rhythm that followed violence—but my focus wasn’t on the bodies or the strategy forming in the back of my mind.It was on her.Violet sat on a flat stretch of stone near the edge of camp while Anna cleaned the shallow rake along her shoulder. The sleeve of her shirt had been cut away, exposing angry red lines that crossed older scars mapped across her skin. She didn’t flinch when antiseptic was poured over the wound. She simply watched the tree line like she expected something else to emerge from it.She was the picture of unshakable control. As if driving a blade through Brogan’s skull had been no more taxing than morning drills for her.“She’s good,” Asher muttered beside me, folding his arms as he leaned against a tree.I didn’t answer immediately, because good wasn’t the word.I had wa

Violet:I don’t know what woke me. It wasn’t a sound, not exactly. The camp lay quiet beneath me, the fire reduced to a low glow of embers, the lycans sprawled in exhausted sleep after their patrol rotations. The night air cooled my skin as I rested along a thick branch high above them. But something felt wrong. The Badlands didn’t breathe the way forests did. They didn’t whisper or hum. They waited. And something had just stepped into that waiting.My eyes opened slowly, and I stayed perfectly still. Instead of moving, I let my senses stretch outward. The perimeter wards hummed faintly along the edges of camp—steady, intact. Then there it was. A shift in the dark. Heavy. Deliberate. Not rogue. Not lycan. Something else. It moved wrong, its gait uneven, almost dragging. When the wind shifted, it carried a faint scent with it—rot and iron and something bitter that stung the back of my throat. A Badlands creature.It had slipped through a weak pocket in the perimeter, likely where the f

Violet:The moment we crested over the ridge into Darkwater, the silence of the forest hit me. There were no birds, no lingering prey, not even the rustling of a hungry animal in the weeds. I looked around at the fog coating the forest, and I told myself that was all it was… fog. Soon, my denial bled out, and clarity filled me. I saw it for real this time, the smoke that curled into the sky in thick, black plumes, heavy and churning. This wasn’t the soft gray of hearth fires or the pale drift of morning cookfires. This smoke was oily and wrong. The closer we got, the more you could smell the burning timber, the burning flesh. We were too late… By the time we reached what was left of the gates, the wood was charred, and the metal was twisted like broken bones. Bodies lay scattered on the grounds. Some I recognised as Darkwater members, and some I knew as Badland rogues. Either way, the effects of this battle cost more than just gates and buildings.“Alec…” I whispered through the l

Violet:I woke to the morning drifting in again. I had no idea how long I had slept for, only that all the warmth that was once cascading around me had leached from me completely.With a stretch I stood, I showered and dressed enjoying the morning quiet, trying to avoid wondering what Aleric thought when he woke up to find he had crawled on top of me. I tried to not let myself believe in the warmth of it, in the meaning I felt behind it. Instead, I braided my hair carefully, and headed toward the kitchen for coffee, trying to ignore the way I wanted to see him, to see those beautiful eyes and smell his all male scent. Just before I reached the Aleric’s study laughter caught my attention… male laughter. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But then I heard Asher say, through a barely contained snort, “You climbed on top of her.” There was a pause. Then Aleric’s voice, flat and irritated. “Lower your voice.”“Oh, I am never lowering my voice about this,” Asher shot back. “You were sprawled ac