All Chapters of The Three Alphas’ Rejected Mate: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Jeremy's POVThe report from the mansion reached me before dawn, delivered by a messenger too winded to soften any of it.The assault had failed to secure its target. Kael had escaped capture. And Fred—one of my more reliable Watchers for longer than I cared to count—had turned his blade on one of his own in full view of soldiers and Watchers both.I didn't feel the surprise the messenger clearly expected me to feel. I'd watched loyalty erode all around me for months now. Selene first. Now Fred. A garden untended long enough eventually stopped being a garden at all."Anything else," I asked."No, my lord.""Then leave me."I visited Elias before I did anything else, some old, worn habit of using his suffering to steady my own resolve. Tonight I let the corruption go further than I usually allowed myself—not out of strategy, but out of something rawer, something closer to fury than I liked to examine too closely. I watched it take his voice from him entirely, the words he'd always

Garrick's POVSelene hadn't been wrong about the pull at all. I felt it myself now, the closer we got. It was not a sound, not quite a scent, just something wrong in the air that thickened with every mile, the same wrongness that had been trailing us since the mountain village's graves first opened.We weren't the only place it was happening. That was the part that had started to unsettle me more than any single grave could. Every village we'd passed through in the last week carried some version of the same story—ground disturbed, livestock spooked, an old woman somewhere swearing she'd heard her dead husband's voice calling from beneath the floorboards. Isolated incidents, if you only heard one. Impossible to dismiss once you'd heard a dozen.This village had it worse than most.The ground around the well had split open in a wide, ragged ring, pale root-like things breaking the surface and pulling themselves free of the dirt entirely—not corpses, not quite, something assemb

         Selene's POVI spent most of the day watching Garrick teach frightened people how to survive without him, and told myself the strange warmth in my chest watching it was just relief that he'd chosen differently this time.I found him near the well as the light started failing, the girl trailing a step behind me, quieter than she'd been all day."I want to try something," I said. "If you're willing."She nodded, though something wary had crept into her expression. "You think the thinness is connected to a name. That's what you've been circling all afternoon.""You really do hear people's thoughts.""Not all of them. Just the loud ones." A tired half-smile. "Yours have been loud since the village."I raised both hands, murmuring something low and careful, the same working I'd used on every disturbed grave for weeks now. "Most magic responds to inten

Kael's POV I didn't feel like walking back toward the mansion's main hall after training that morning, not with the memory of Rohan and Lira's laughter still sitting somewhere behind my ribs, uninvited and unwelcome company. So I walked the other direction instead, toward the east wing, and somehow, without quite deciding to, ended up outside Lily's door again. She was sitting by the window this time, sunlight catching her hair, looking more like an ordinary child than I'd seen her look in months. "Kael," she said, glancing up. "You look tired." "I am." I leaned against the doorframe. "You look better today." "I feel—" She paused, considering it seriously, the way she considered most things now. "Clearer. A little." Then, without any warning at all, her brow furrowed, and she asked, "Why does everyone call me Lily? I don't think that's actually my name." I didn't have an answer ready. I stood there a moment,

Rohan's POV The wounded still hadn't finished healing when the argument over patrol assignments started, and I should have known, looking back, that exhaustion and grief make terrible company for anyone trying to keep their temper in check. "We can't spare men for the western routes and the eastern watch both," I said, for what felt like the third time in as many minutes. "Not with the numbers we lost. We prioritize the direction the last assault actually came from." "Convenient," Sedric said, loud enough now that half the yard had stopped to listen, "that the direction you want prioritized happens to be the one that makes you look decisive, while the rest of us are left exposed on the side you're not bothering to defend." "That's not what this is." "Isn't it?" He stepped closer, something finally uncoiling in him that had been coiled tight for months. "You've had this pack eating out of your hand since the Alphas left. Everyone falling over themselves to thank you for holding t