Lahat ng Kabanata ng Rejected by My Mate, Desired by His Enemy : Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

"The summit looks like a small city that appeared overnight and might disappear just as fast."Donovan says it quietly as we roll through the main gate, and he's right. Temporary structures fill every open space between the permanent buildings. Tents, canopies, supply lines, generator cables running across the ground like thick veins. Hundreds of vehicles packed into fields that were probably empty last week. The smell hits through the window before I even open it, thousands of wolves in one place, wood smoke, food vendors, the particular sharpness of wolves on high alert.The security checkpoint takes twenty minutes. Guards with clipboards, cameras on poles every thirty feet, two wolves with tablets checking names against a master list."Alpha Ashford, Luna Whitmore. Purpose of attendance?""Mandatory," Donovan says.The guard checks his tablet twice, then waves us through. "Section B-7. Moonshadow territory."B-7 is a decent stretch of ground near the eastern perimeter. Our warriors

"Luna Whitmore will present evidence to this chamber," Elder Vera says, and the room changes temperature immediately.The emergency Council chamber holds twelve Elders, hundreds of witnesses, and one massive lie about to be exposed.The building is old stone, the kind that holds cold no matter what season it is outside. Twelve Elders sit in a curved semicircle on a raised platform, robes formal, faces arranged into expressions they've practiced for decades. Every Alpha at Summit who could fit is packed into the rows behind us, standing three deep along the walls. The air smells like stone and bodies and something sharp underneath, the particular scent of wolves who are afraid and trying not to show it.Donovan and I are in the front row. Haven is back at camp with Sage and eight guards, which is the only reason I can stand here and breathe at a normal rate.Elder Vera opened the session with two sentences and no warmth. Now she gestures me forward, and the murmuring in the room swells

“Elder Silas, you are hereby charged with conspiracy, funding of dark magic, and accessory to murder.”Elder Vera’s voice didn’t shake. Not once.The council chamber was packed so tight I could smell the sweat and fear mixing in the air. Every seat filled. People standing along the walls. More crowding the doorway outside. And at the front, Vera stood with a stack of documents and read names like she was calling the dead.Twenty-three of them.Each one hit the room differently. A sharp inhale here. A muttered curse there. Someone near the back actually laughed, like they thought it was a joke, and then went very quiet when no one laughed with them.Elder Silas. Fifteen years as Council Senior. The man who’d presided over half the Summit’s laws. Accused.Alpha Reinhardt. Three territories under him, more allies than I could count. Accused.Beta Markus. War hero. I’d heard his name my whole life as someone to respect. Accused.By the time Vera reached name twenty-three, the chamber had

"Fifty against fifty should be even," Donovan says through the bond, "except Morgana's wolves glow with dark magic and ours are just flesh and blood."He's right. I can see them from my position in the tree line, purple-black light crawling across their skin like something alive. Our warriors are crouched in the dark, silent, waiting for my signal. No light. No magic. Just muscle and teeth and the knowledge that a three-year-old is sleeping twenty minutes away and we cannot lose tonight.In the clearing, Sage walks the north road wearing Haven's face. She has the walk right, the slight bounce, the way Haven holds her arms out a little when she moves. Oliver walks beside her, his gold light invisible under Sage's illusion, masking the spell so cleanly that even I can't feel the seam.Morgana's wolves close in from three sides. Slow. Certain. They think this is easy.Morgana herself comes last.She moves through her wolves like water, unhurried, dressed in black, and the dark magic arou

"Haven is gone and Morgana is laughing."Not quietly. Not under her breath. She's laughing with her whole chest, spelled chains rattling as her shoulders shake, head thrown back like someone told her the best joke she's heard in years."You fell for it," she says. "All of it. So easily.""What are you talking about?""The safe houses. The map. Silas leading you right to me." She looks at her brother with something warm and cruel in her eyes. "He's so useful when he thinks he's doing the right thing."Silas goes very still beside me.Sage arrives at a run, breathing hard, and the look on her face turns my stomach before she opens her mouth. "Haven is gone. She was taken from Vera's tent two hours ago. The guards were spelled unconscious. Nobody heard anything."Through the bond the terror is absolute and total, mine and Donovan's both, crashing together until I can't tell which is which.I grab Morgana by the front of her shirt. The spelled chains go taut. "Where is she?"Morgana smile