All Chapters of His Mistaken Mate : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

The Dravon Pack territory was nothing like home. I realized that the moment the car crossed the border and the trees changed. Back in Holt Pack land, the forest was ordinary — tall enough, green enough, the kind of trees you stopped noticing after a while. But here the trees were massive. Ancient. They pressed close to both sides of the road like walls, their branches tangling overhead and blocking out the sky. It was midday but it felt like dusk. I sat in the back seat between two guards who hadn't said a single word to me since we left. There was a third guard driving. Nobody had introduced themselves. Nobody had asked if I needed anything. They had simply put me in the car with a small bag of Lena's things — because apparently my own belongings weren't considered worth bringing — and driven. Five hours. Five hours of silence and dark trees and the slow, creeping understanding that I was not going home. I pressed my face close to the window and watched the territory pass.

~ Nyra ~ He knew. I was almost certain of it. The way he said of course it is — calm, unbothered, like he was tucking the information away for later rather than dismissing it — that wasn't the response of a man who believed me. That was the response of a man who had decided to let me think he believed me. There was a difference. A big one. I thought about it through the entire post-ceremony gathering in the main hall, where pack members filed past us and gave formal greetings and I stood at Kael's side and smiled and said thank you and tried very hard not to look like someone whose heart was beating slightly too fast. He stood beside me the whole time. Close enough that I was aware of him every single second — the height of him, the quiet weight of his presence — but he didn't speak to me. Not once. He greeted his pack members, accepted their acknowledgments, and occasionally responded to something an elder said. He didn't introduce me. Not as Lena. Not as anything. I was jus