Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Alpha Rejected His Bride For Me: Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 110

(Lena POV)The walk back to Theo’s house had been a blur of shadows and the rhythmic pounding of my own heart. The evening before, the air had felt thick, pregnant with the moisture of the coming rainy season and the static of a war about to ignite. Kai had walked me to the south gate himself—a break from his usual cold, calculated distance.At the gate, the moonlight had caught the sharp planes of his face, making him look more like a statue than a man. He had stopped, his hand resting briefly on the rusted iron, and looked at me with an intensity that made my breath hitch."Go back to Theo's," he’d said, his voice a low vibration. "Stay there tomorrow. Don’t be at the boundary.""Why?" The word had felt small."Because if you are in the compound when Varden moves, someone is going to ask why the heir’s mate came back the day of the attack. I don’t have an answer for that question that doesn&rsq

(Lena POV)I don't know when I slept; maybe it was because of my selfish action or something else that made me feel a headache and fall asleep, but I remember that Theo was here questioning me and left when I didn't answer his questions.Now the house felt larger than it was, the silence in the hallway stretching out from the empty space where Theo’s boots usually sat by the door. I poured the water into a mug, watching the tea leaves swirl and settle at the bottom, and carried it to the window.Outside, the street was gray under a low ceiling of clouds. Mrs. Gable was hanging laundry three houses down, her movements stiff as she pinned a heavy wool blanket to the line. She stopped for a moment, looking toward the community room at the end of the lane, and then looked at Theo’s front porch. I stepped back behind the curtain, the ceramic mug hot against my palms.By noon, the rain started, a fine, cold mist that turned the dirt road into a slick of orange mud. I put on my coat and move

(Julian POV)The dining hall felt like the inside of a drum, vast, hollow, and amplifying every tiny sound. The sun was just beginning to hit the high, arched windows, casting long bars of amber light across the oak table.Kai was eating an apple. It was the only thing on his plate.I sat three chairs down, my own breakfast a cold, congealed mess of eggs that I hadn't touched. I watched him. For the last three days, the frantic, jagged energy that had defined him since Lena’s first departure had vanished. There were no more midnight border runs that left his boots stained with red clay. No more outbursts in the training yard. He was still, and that stillness was more unnerving than his rage had ever been.He held a small silver pocket knife, the blade clicking against the ceramic plate with every downward motion as he sliced the fruit into perfect, uniform wedges."The men are talking, Kai," I said, my voice low.Kai d

(Julian POV)"My mother had this music box," she said, her voice dropping into the quiet space between us. "It was porcelain, painted with small blue birds. When she died, my father put it in a box in the attic. He told me it was too fragile for the main house. I was twelve. I spent the next three years realizing he wasn't talking about the porcelain."I shifted in my chair, the leather creaking. I didn't have a story about a music box. I had stories about training daggers and the way my father used to map out the southern border on the kitchen table with salt shakers."Harrison didn't like things that didn't have a function," I said.Sienna nodded, her gaze fixed on the dead fireplace. "Everything in that house had a price tag. The clothes I wore, the tutors he hired, the way I walked. It was all a down payment on a contract he hadn't signed yet. Then the match with Kai came up. My father spent three hours explaining the logistics of the

(Darius POV)The dial tone hummed in the receiver for a few seconds before I set it back into the cradle. Harrison was right. He was right in the way he was always right when he stopped playing the role of the drunk and started speaking as a man who had survived four decades of pack politics.I looked at the map on the wall, the one with the pins marking the Varden ridge and the eastern boundary. The pins were still there, small red heads sticking out of the paper, representing a reality that no longer existed. I had built the plan on a specific set of assumptions. I had assumed Kai was still the man who had spent three weeks drinking himself into a stupor after Lena left. I had assumed he was the man who had lost his temper in the training yard in front of twenty witnesses, the man who was so hollowed out by suspicion and grief that he couldn't see the edges of the room he was sitting in.I stood up and walked to the window. The glass was cold