All Chapters of The Three Alphas’ Rejected Mate: Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

Garrick's POV Mae's power flickered again a few hours into the ride, faint and thin the way it had been getting since we left Rebecca behind. I noticed. I chose not to sit with it. There'd be time for that once we weren't riding straight toward a war. We reached the clearing by midafternoon, the men from the village I'd once conquered already waiting, restless, armed with whatever they'd managed to scrape together in the time since I sent word ahead. I counted them twice before I let myself accept the number. Not enough. Nowhere close to enough for what Jeremy could throw at us. "We're going to the mansion," I said, before anyone could get comfortable with the plan they'd already half-formed in their heads. Mae frowned. "Why there? Kael doesn't have that kind of time to spare on a detour." "Because Jeremy doesn't fight blind, and neither should we." I kept my eyes on the horizon rather than her face, easier that way. "He's spent years being a master strategist. Patient, thoro

Rebecca's POVI came back slowly, in pieces, the way you surface from deep water when you've stayed under too long to trust your own lungs immediately.Before the light, before the voices, there had been a pull—distant, magnetic, something calling to whatever lived beneath my mark with a force I couldn't name or answer. I remembered straining toward it, desperate to understand what it was, my soul reaching while my body stayed locked somewhere I couldn't escape from. I'd felt it grow closer, achingly close, close enough that I understood, in whatever half-formed way a person understands things while unconscious, that something mine had arrived nearby.Then it began to fade. Slowly, then all at once, like whatever had been pulling had turned and walked away from me. And only after it thinned into nothing did the rest of the world start creeping back in—Selene's voice, low and focused. Emily's, older, steadier. My own name, spoken so many times by so many people that it fi

              Garrick's POVThe trail went cold a half day out from where we expected to find him, and I felt the first real edge of panic creep into the men around me, the kind that spreads fast through a group that's already been riding too hard on too little sleep."Nothing," one of the scouts reported, returning empty-handed for the third time, frustration and exhaustion both written into the set of his shoulders. "No tracks past the ridge. No word from anyone willing to talk, and the two who might've known something wouldn't meet my eyes long enough to lie convincingly."Mae's jaw tightened beside me, some old, unnamed dread visibly building in her the longer we came up empty-handed. She'd been quiet most of the ride, quieter than usual, her hands flexing at her sides like she was testing something none of the rest of us could see. "He's still alive," she said, quiet, more

Kael's POV Consciousness came back to me the way water finds a crack — slow, then all at once. I could feel my own pulse. I could feel the cold dirt floor under me. What I couldn't do was move. My eyes worked, at least. That was something. Mae was a few feet away, sitting upright against the wall like she'd been arranged there, eyes open, unmoving. Awake. Whatever this was, she was in it too. Garrick was closer, head bowed, shoulders slack in a way that didn't look like sleep. "Garrick." My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "Garrick." Nothing, for a long moment. Then, slowly — too slowly, like it cost him something — he lifted his head. He looked at me for a second before he spoke, and when he did, there was something almost fond buried under the dryness of it. "Why do I always have to save you from danger, Kael?" It wasn't really a question. I knew that. I still didn't have an answer for it — not one that accounted for the mountain village, or Harlan, or

Fred’s POVI'd spent most of my life watching. That was the whole shape of what I used to be — a Watcher, a set of eyes that reported and never acted, never chose, never bled for anything because bleeding wasn't the job.The clearing didn't look like watching. It looked like the end of something.We hit it at a dead run, and for a second all I could process was how much worse it was than the rider had made it sound — bodies already down, Garrick's men holding a line that had gone thin and ragged, Jeremy's soldiers pressing forward in numbers that kept multiplying no matter how many fell.I saw Tyler's wings unfold behind me — not for show this time, but because Rebecca stumbled and he moved to cover her without thinking, and something about that certainty was exactly what Emily said would make them hold. I saw Ezekiel stop swallowing whatever fear was climbing his throat and let it show on his face for once, and the water came up out of the ground like it had been waiting for per