All Chapters of Rejected by my mate: Bounded by the Ruthless Lycan : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

The road back to the pack grounds was not as treacherous this time around.That was the thing about dreading a destination. The return trip always felt lighter, even when you were carrying something heavy. Zara had the Codex strapped across her back and her mother's house behind her and neither of those facts had stopped being true, but the morning air was cool and the path was clear and Denice had somehow produced four slightly squashed but entirely edible pieces of flatbread from her bag."How did you fit all of that in there?" Wisteria asked, accepting hers with genuine admiration."Pockets," Denice said."That's not a pocket item.""Everything is a pocket item if you believe in yourself."Valkyrie looked at her flatbread. Then at Denice. Something in her chest expression did the almost-warm thing it rarely did when she was around someone she liked.Zara ate her flatbread and said nothing, letting the normalcy of it sit in her chest for a moment, because moments like this had beco

The silence after a battle was its own kind of loud.Not peaceful. Not the silence of rest or of a thing resolved.The silence of aftermath. Of men standing in a field that had been something else an hour ago, looking at what was left, taking inventory of what wasn't.Kael stood at the edge of the valley and let it be what it was.Rynese came to stand beside him. He was bleeding all over like someone bathed him with a red paint bucket but he was standing, which was the relevant part."Casualties?" Kael said."Fourteen confirmed. Seven more that need the healer before I can call them stable." A pause. "The infection has taken eleven men. The healer thinks it's containable.""She 'thinks' it's containable.""She said she thinks, so I'm saying she thinks."Kael nodded. He looked at the valley. His father was still sprawled out on the ground. He had not looked back at his decapitated frame yet and he was probably not going to look back at it ever."We need to move out tonight," he said.

The vampire bite marks didn't stop being what they were just because they stared at them for a long time.Zara had learned this about problems. Looking at them longer didn't change their shape. It just gave them more of your time."Alright," she said. "So now we have to worry about vampires.""Apparently," Kael said."Do you have history with them? Your family, your territory?""No direct conflict. Border agreements, mostly. They stayed north, we stayed out of their business." He looked at the marks again. "This doesn't look like a border agreement.""No." She crossed her arms. "This is a message. But it's not a threat exactly. If they wanted to threaten us they'd have left something worse.""A dead wolf on my father's bed is fairly worse Zara.""It's theatre," she said. "Staged. Deliberate. They want us to know they were here, they want us unsettled, but they haven't moved against us directly." She looked at him. "Which means they want something. And whatever it is, they think we're

The northern vampire territory announced itself before they crossed the border.There was no actual sign or marker or anything that polite. Just a sudden, sharp change in the cold air. The kind of cold that didn't build gradually but arrived all at once like a door had been opened onto something that had been waiting on the other side of it.Zara pulled her coat tighter and kept walking."She has an hour on us," Rynese said as he was reading the ground with focused attention. "She is definitely moving fast but not running. Probably doesn't want to be heard.""She's done this before. Back when I still lived with my father, she would run away everytime things got too difficult. And luckily for her, I always had to bear the brunt of her fuck-ups" Kael said. Not surprised. Not even particularly bitter about it. Just accurate."She promised to stay," Zara said."She promised she wouldn't disappear," Valkyrie said, from just ahead. "She's probably telling herself she's coming back, so it d

Zara woke up before sunrise freezing from the cold, the North was colder than she'd thought. The air was cold, even the ground itself was cold. She tried moving but Kael’s arms were wrapped around her waist, she remembered last night's kiss and immediately laid down back recalling all the memories of the previous day. Then the memory of everything that had happened returned all at once, the cave, the kiss, Kael. She turned sideways to face Kael, unfortunately, he was very much awake. She slowly lifted her head up and rested her hands on her chin staring directly at him. He looked at her, his silver eyes focusing on her gaze. She noticed the dark circles underneath his eyes, he looked like he didn't sleep an inch last night. “You know, ” Zara said quietly, “most people sleep at night.” “I slept” “That's not reassuring enough.” “I did.” He said trying to sound convincing but Zara knew him by now, they've been together long enough for Zara to tell how much sleep he's lost. More