Semua Bab The Alpha's Refusal: Bab 101 - Bab 110

Rhys’ POVThe Great Hall was stifling. Between the smell of the heavy lilies Seraphina had insisted on and the heat from the hundred-candle chandeliers, I felt like I was being slowly suffocated. I stood at the head of the table, forced to listen to a minor elder drone on about mining quotas, while my eyes kept drifting back to the empty chair on my left.I hadn't asked Elara to be here—Seraphina had handled the "invitation," likely as a way to show off who was really running the show. But Elara’s absence still felt like a punch. I’d expected her to show up just to spite Seraphina, or at least to keep an eye on the transition of power. Instead, she’d vanished into the slums, leaving me to answer for her like she was some rebellious subordinate rather than a partner.Seraphina was leaning into my side, her voice a constant, sugary hum. She was making promises to the elders that I hadn't approved, complicating the hierarchy with every "we" she uttered. Every time she touched my arm to e

Elara’s POVThe West Tier was a pit of noise and black dust. I stood on the iron walkway, watching the workers below. It looked like the usual grind—men coughing, iron wheels shrieking, and crate after crate of coal waste being hauled toward the waste-chutes.In reality, half of that "waste" was the grain I’d managed to hide before Rhys’s men sealed the elevators. Every time a guard walked past, my heart did a slow, painful thud against my ribs."Alpha," a voice whispered behind me. It was one of my scouts, his face flushed. "He’s at the main gate. It’s Caïn."The clipboard almost slipped from my hand. Caïn. My top Beta, the one who’d stayed behind to hold the pack together while I was dragged into this mountain to sign the Pacte de Sang. He hadn't snuck in like a thief; he had marched through the front gates as a formal envoy of the North.I didn't wait. I left the guards and the coal dust behind, my boots hitting the stone stairs in a frantic rhythm.I found him in my quarters—a cra

Rhys’ POVThe heavy door clicked shut behind her, the sound echoing in the high-vaulted silence of my study. I didn't turn around. I stayed by the window, my reflection ghosting against the dark glass. I was counting her footsteps.She stopped exactly three paces into the room. Practical. Cautious."You're late," I said. I didn't bother to hide the edge in my voice. I’d spent the last hour watching the West Tier from this balcony—watching the silhouettes of her and Caïn through the grime-stained windows of the lower barracks."I had to ensure the shift change was handled," Elara replied. Her voice was like stone hitting ice—smooth, cold, and entirely unyielding.She walked to the desk. Thud. She dropped a leather-bound folder onto the wood. It wasn't a gesture of submission; it was a challenge."The timber rights, the border buffer, and the trade autonomy for the Northern sector," she said, her words clipped. "It’s all there. Sign it, Rhys. My people are waiting for the gates to open.

Elara’s POVThe door to my quarters clicked shut, and the sudden silence of the West Tier hit me like a physical blow. I leaned my back against the rough-hewn stone, my lungs burning as if I’d been running through a blizzard.I was shaking—not from the chill of the mines, but from the lingering heat of Rhys’s touch. My skin felt tainted, vibrating with a frantic pulse that wasn't entirely my own.That bastard.He didn't know who I was. To him, I was just a stubborn Northern Alpha he could toy with, a puzzle to be solved. And yet, his body had reacted to mine with a terrifying, subconscious hunger that made my stomach turn. I reached up, my fingers trembling as I touched the column of my neck where his breath had lingered. I hated him for what he’d done to "her"—to the woman I used to be. But most of all, I hated the small, traitorous part of me that had shivered under his hand, recognizing him even after all these years of burial."Elara?"Caïn stepped out from the shadows. He didn't

Elara’s POVThe silence in the Great Hall was heavy, the kind of silence that precedes a landslide. I stood paralyzed, my heart a fractured mess in my chest. For years, Jaxon had been a ghost—a flickering image that only haunted me in the quietest hours of the night. But seeing him now, in the flesh, was a physical assault I wasn't prepared for.Yet, as he spoke, the initial surge of agonizing recognition was eclipsed by a cold, jarring sense of shock.This was the boy?"He’s waiting for an answer, Father," Jaxon said, his voice rising with a shrill, entitled edge. He paced in front of the dais, his boots clicking with a practiced, miniature version of Rhys’s arrogance. He didn't look at me with curiosity; he looked at my soot-stained leathers as if I were a smudge of dirt on his path. "Is she mute as well as filthy? If the North can't even send someone who knows how to bow, why are we feeding them?"The shock hit me harder than any physical blow. I had lived in the frozen pits of th