All Chapters of Born to shine: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

🦊 Melanie POVThree hours earlierI knocked on the door.“Come in,” Fenrir’s voice came from inside.I stepped through and followed the short corridor into the living room.Fenrir was sitting on the sofa, already looking in my direction.“It took you long enough,” he said instead of greeting me.“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”He inclined his head toward the chair across from him, inviting me to sit.I took my place without hesitation.“You waited for Arria to leave.”Not a question, but a statement.Sometimes I found his ability to see through people deeply irritating, but right now it made things easier.“Yes.”There was no point in lying to him.“I’m not going to act behind her back.”A small smile found its way onto my face even though his answer wasn’t exactly in my favor.I had expected it.And no matter how inconvenient it was at the moment, seeing how fiercely the two of them stood by each other was still touching.“I know.”I had thought this through enough times to

🍃 Arria POV“Aron Ward, have you ever lied to a member of this pack?” I asked, looking him straight in the eyes.I tried to feel him through the thorn inside him.“How is that relevant?”Nothing.I felt absolutely nothing from his side.“The answer is yes, no, or I refuse to answer,” I reminded him of the terms he himself had insisted on.He studied my face.I was still deathly pale and shaking inside from everything I had found out.I made no attempt to hide it.If he interpreted it as fear for Melanie, and if he cared enough about her, maybe he would finally choose to answer on his own.“No.”Relief hit me so quickly that for a moment I didn’t realize something was wrong.I still felt nothing.What was going on with his thorn?Obviously, I had to accept that nothing involving Aron was ever going to be easy.Instead, I looked at the crystal positioned behind him.Blue.Truth.We would have to do this the traditional way.“Were you ever pressured into doing things you believed were w

🔥 Aron POV“Stone. Report.”Fenrir opened the work meeting exactly three hours after the ceremony formally naming him Alpha of Oakcrest.“One pack. Two hundred and ten members. They’ll arrive tomorrow,” Stone began without hesitation. “Two more will arrive the following day. Six hundred and fifty-eight werewolves in the second wave.”“Packs?”“CrystalRiver and Shadowfang.”“Shadowfang?” Fenrir’s aura flared. “I killed their Alpha after the attack on Newmoon.”“Yes. Both were supposed to be our allies according to our calculations, but apparently Shadowfang’s Alpha received orders from the palace that same morning, along with a promise of significant financial support if he aided the Crown.”Long meeting.I leaned against the backrest.“Destroying Newmoon would have erased his economic dependence on us and freed a considerable amount of capital.”“Exactly.” Stone nodded. “Smart offer. Failed execution. And now the result is working in our favor.”He shifted one of the papers in front

🔥 Aron POV“All those things that create openings by distracting the enemy or obscuring their vision gave your pack time to regroup and a few seconds in which physical strength stopped being the deciding factor.”“Yes. Arria’s ideas were very useful in defense,” Gregory confirmed. “They could be just as useful on the offensive.”“Especially for the elves,” Arria added. “Just like me, they don’t stand much of a chance in a direct confrontation. But with a few distractions... we could control the distance, and through that, the outcome.”We.She said we.What was she thinking?She had to stay far away from the battlefield.Far away from Vaerion’s reach.My eyes found Fenrir.He was already looking at her.“I knew you would understand that best,” Maximus continued. “I think it would benefit everyone if we gave the elves a chance to familiarize themselves with your pack’s creations and develop strategies around them.”“Or better yet, a joint strategy,” Keran joined in, fully committed no

🦊 Melanie POV>Hope came first.Hope that whatever we were doing together—I didn’t even know what to call it—could somehow be salvaged and maybe, with enough time, grow into an actual relationship built on mutual respect and understanding.It wasn’t much.Actually, it was so little.So painfully normal.And somehow that hurt even more, because it meant that the last dream of the girl who had been betrayed by her own pack—the girl who had still dared to dream big about a love like something out of a fairy tale—had been crushed by the very fated bond that was supposed to make that dream come true.Still, it could be fine, right?But then the doubt hit.Most likely, Aron needed me for something practical. Maybe there was something he wanted me to do, or something we needed to discuss that had absolutely nothing to do with us.>I answered him anyway.Because I needed to go back there and find out whether there was some kind of common ground left for us, or whethe