All Chapters of EVEN ALPHAS KNEEL: The Rejected Mightiest Luna : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Chapter Thirty OnePOV: Kael DravonKelvin put the file on my desk at noon and I opened it and read every page of it and by the time I finished the last one I had stopped feeling anything as uncomplicated as anger and had moved into something considerably colder and more focused than anger, the specific state I entered when a picture I had been assembling from partial information finally completed itself and showed me something I should have seen months ago.Damien was not just a rogue operative. The file connected him to supply networks running through six outer territories, financial movement tied directly to operations I had been trying to trace for two years, communication records that placed him inside a coordination structure that answered to one person and one person only. Every piece of it pointed the same direction. Every thread led back to the same hand. The Rogue King had placed Damien inside Pack Ironveil specifically to reach Sera and everything from the compound modificat

Chapter Thirty ThreePOV: Sera AshwoodHe came back the next morning exactly when he said he would which was the first thing that told me this was a man who did not make empty statements, and I was already downstairs and seated in the front room when Mira showed him in because I was not going to be the one walking into a room he was already standing in if I could help it.Alpha Mordecai was not what I expected from the name or the reputation. He was not visibly monstrous. He did not carry the obvious markers of something wrong the way you might expect a cursed man to carry them. He was tall and composed and he moved through my front room with the particular ease of someone who had never once in their life felt unwelcome anywhere, and he looked at me when he sat down across from me with eyes that were the specific color of deep water, dark and still and giving away nothing about what was underneath."Seraphine Ashwood," he said."Alpha Mordecai," I said."You know who I am," he said. It

# Chapter Thirty Five## POV: Sera AshwoodI was at my desk going through the elder's latest communication about the ceremony preparations when Mira brought in my evening meal and I thanked her without looking up and reached for the cup and then stopped.I stopped because something in the way she set it down was wrong. Not dramatically wrong, not the kind of wrong that announces itself, but the small quiet wrong of a movement that has an extra beat in it, a fraction of a second longer than the action required, the specific hesitation of someone who is doing something with their hands that their conscience is not fully on board with.Mira had worked in our household for eight years. Eight years of bringing me tea in the morning and water at night and meals at every hour. Eight years of learning the rhythm of my life well enough that she could move through my rooms without being told where anything was. Eight years and I had never once seen her hesitate over the simple act of setting do

Chapter Thirty SevenPOV: Sera AshwoodMy father came to find me before I had even finished processing what had happened in my room. He stood in the doorway and I could see the moment his eyes landed on Mira's body, could see him understand what he was looking at without needing anyone to explain it, and his entire frame went rigid in a way I had never seen before.He looked at Mira. He looked at me. He said my name once quietly.I looked at him and said, "I need you to listen to everything I am about to tell you and I need you to not react until I am finished because I do not have the capacity to manage your reaction and think at the same time right now."He came in and sat down without arguing and I told him everything. I told him about Mira's hesitation. About the way her hands had shaken. About the poison that had moved through her so fast it had stopped her heart before she could speak a name. I told him about the compound in my food and the knowledge that someone close enough to

Chapter Thirty Nine POV: ZaraI watched him leave from the window and stood there until the car disappeared through the settlement gates completely and then I turned away and sat on the edge of the bed and pressed both palms flat against my thighs and breathed through everything sitting in my chest with the particular discipline of someone who has been practicing not falling apart for long enough that it has become less of an effort and more of a reflex, something the body does automatically because the alternative has stopped being acceptable.My plan had not worked. That was the simple truth of it and I was not someone who spent time refusing to look at simple truths because simple truths were the only foundation anything useful could ever be built on. I had miscalculated what Kael would do when faced with that specific situation and he had done something I had not fully prepared for, which was to hold me and say the things that cost him something and then walk out the door toward