All Chapters of Rejected Omega, claimed by the Ruthless Alpha: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Her palms were slick with his blood.It soaked through her fingers, hot and frighteningly fast, welling up between her hands no matter how hard she pressed.“Take my strength,” Aria whispered, voice breaking. “Take my life, just don’t take him.”Her mark flared.Not its usual dull throb.It went white‑hot, searing against her throat like a brand.The silver light that had burst out of her in all directions now narrowed, focused, pouring down her arms in two blinding streams. It burned along the lines of her veins, a river of moonfire rushing toward her hands.Into him.It hurt.Not like a wound.Like being turned inside out.Her vision blurred at the edges, then went abruptly black—And then there was only the Moon.---They stood in nothing.No ground underfoot, no air on skin.It was just a vast, dark expanse that felt less like emptiness and more like the inside of a held breath.Above them, a Moon hung impossibly large—so close it seemed she could reach out and touch it. Its light

The pass had gone quiet.Not truly.Not with the low groans from the medical tents, the crackle of torches, the mutter of voices too tired to rise above a rasp.But after the roar of battle, the silence felt heavy. Unnatural.The royal banners had vanished down the valley an hour ago.Snow had already begun to fall in thin, drifting veils, trying to cover what the day had done.It failed.Blood turned the trampled ground dark. Splintered palisade stakes jutted at odd angles. Abandoned weapons and torn bits of cloth littered the kill zone like the shed skin of something vast.Inside the main command tent, the air was thick with sweat and smoke, and the metallic tang of too many bodies packed into too small a space.Jace stood at the end of the long table, a crumpled list in his hand. He looked more wrung out than Aria had ever seen him—dark circles under his eyes, a cut along his jaw barely bandaged, posture held rigid by will alone.Kael leaned against one of the center poles, arms cr

The throne room smelled of cold stone and incense.It used to smell, faintly, of roses.Lucian stood below the dais, the weight of a hundred gazes pressing between his shoulder blades as a courier finished stammering out the latest report from the north.“—and the line held, Your Majesty,” the man said, eyes fixed on the marble at Rowan’s feet. “The rebels did not break. Our forces were…forced to withdraw to a more defensible position.”Rowan’s fingers tightened on the carved arms of the throne.“How many dead?” he asked.The courier swallowed.“Three companies significantly depleted,” he said. “One elite unit…crippled. The rest—wounded, but—”“Numbers,” Rowan snapped.The courier flinched.“Over two hundred confirmed dead, Sire,” he said. “More wounded. We await exact tallies.”A murmur rippled through the assembled nobles.Lucian kept his face smooth.Inside, something twisted.Two hundred.He could see them in his mind’s eye—men and wolves he’d drilled with, marched with, sent nort

“Sometimes,” she said slowly, “the only way through a tangle is to burn one path so completely there’s no way back. No lingering maybes. No what‑ifs for the gods to play with.”Aria looked at her.“You’re saying I have to pick,” she said. “Really pick. Not just say I choose Kael and hope the Moon respects that and leaves Lucian alive.”“I am saying the Moon is fond of clarity,” Nyra said. “Of lines drawn in blood and bone. She is not fond of half‑measures. You stand in two stories right now. One as Kael’s Luna. One as a prince’s discarded prophecy. That will not hold forever.” She held Aria’s gaze. “And when the trial comes, it will not just test your heart. It will test what kind of world you’re willing to live in when the smoke clears.”“I didn’t ask for his bond,” Aria said. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”“No,” Nyra said. “But here we are.”Aria closed her eyes.Her chest felt tight.Her head spun.The fever clawed at her bones.And still, she reached for his hand—in memory, if no

By the time the camp settled into something like sleep, the wind had sharpened.It dragged along the stone walls of the pass with a long, low moan, slipping under tent flaps and through half‑mended palisades. Fires had been banked to coals. Patrols rotated in low voices. Somewhere farther down the camp, a wounded wolf cried out in his sleep and was soothed into silence.Aria lay on a proper cot for the first time in days.It should have felt like luxury.Instead, the healer’s tent felt too still.Too warm.The fever had ebbed, then surged, then ebbed again, leaving her skin damp and her thoughts heavy. Blankets pooled around her hips. Her mark throbbed at her throat like a second pulse.Kael had been gone less than an hour.Late patrol, he’d said. Checking the outer sentry lines himself because apparently almost dying only made him more irritatingly determined to inspect things with his own eyes.She’d told him he was impossible.He’d kissed her forehead and said, “Sleep anyway.”So s