All Chapters of Cursed Ugly Mate: Reborn for Vengeance: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

LeahEyes raked over me—my hoodie, my boots, the faint purple bruise still blooming beneath concealer on my cheek. No one smiled. No one offered a hand. I saw the calculation in their faces: too young, too scarred, too unpolished. An outsider playing at medicine.Jafar’s gaze settled on me last. He inclined his head—polite, but only just.“Miss White,” he said. “You’re expected.”He gestured to the circle of physicians. “Allow me to introduce my colleagues.”He began with Dr. Elara Voss—chief of Lycan neurology at the Royal Institute, silver hair pinned in an elegant chignon, eyes sharp as scalpels. Then Dr. Torin Blackwood—toxicologist, broad-shouldered, hands scarred from years of handling venom samples. Dr. Liora Kane—surgeon, the one who’d once reattached a severed limb during a border skirmish. One by one he named them—each title longer, each resume more

LeahThe air seemed to be intensified.I didn't know what the Dowager Queen Mother would do.For a long moment, she simply stared at me. Then she exhaled, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of years with it. “Come here, child. Sit.”I obeyed, lowering myself onto the stool beside her chair. She reached out, her cool fingertips brushing my swollen cheek with a gentleness that made my throat tighten.“Tell me,” she said, and her voice had regained some of its former command, but underneath it was something else—a hunger, almost. “Tell me everything. How did you reach it? The Silverthorn grows high, where even the eagles fear to nest.”So I told her. I told her of the path I had taken through the Ironwood Forest, of how I had stripped off my boots and dived into the black water of the deep water when I realized the root grew not merely on the cliff but on a ledge accessible only from the water itse

LeahI shrugged, wincing as the motion pulled at the taut skin of my cheek. “Took a fall while gathering herbs. There’s a ball in two days I need to attend. I’ll be needing some poison ivy vine—enough to bring the swelling down quickly.”He was already moving, rummaging through the crates behind his stall with a haste that sent dried herbs scattering. “Poison ivy vine, poison ivy vine… I know I have it here somewhere… Ah!” He emerged triumphantly, a small bundle wrapped in brown paper clutched in his hands. “Here we are. Freshly dried, potent as they come.”He pressed it into my hands, but when I reached for my coin purse, he waved me off with an impatient gesture.“Keep your coin. This is nothing.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping conspiratorially. “I haven’t forgotten what you and that handsome fellow did for me last month. Those awful teenagers would have cleaned me out—my whole month’s earnings, gone. If you hadn’t stepped in…” He shook his head, the memory clearly still rankl

LeahConsciousness returned in fragments.First, the pain—a symphony of agony that played across every nerve ending, every broken bone, every inch of abused flesh. Then, the cold—damp stone beneath my cheek, the chill of a cell that had never known sunlight. Then, the smell—straw and rust and the accumulated misery of a hundred prisoners who had come before me.I tried to move and found I could not. My body had become a cage of suffering, each breath a labor, each thought a struggle through fog.But somewhere in the haze, I became aware of warmth.It crept into my awareness slowly, like dawn breaking over a battlefield. The cold stone beneath me shifted, softened. Something solid and strong curved around my back, my shoulders, drawing me up from the floor. I tried to open my eyes, but the left one would not obey, and the right could only manage a sliver of vision.Through that narrow window, I saw him.Black hair, da

LeahThe fire had burned down to embers, casting the small cabin in shades of amber and shadow. I should have been resting. I knew I should have been resting. Every rational part of me—the healer, the strategist, the woman who had spent years learning to control her wolf rather than be ruled by it—screamed that I needed stillness, needed recovery, needed time.But Kaelen was standing at the foot of the bed, his hands gripping the frame, his dark eyes fixed on me with an intensity that made rational thought impossible.“Let me go,” I said, and my voice was not as steady as I wished it to be. “You can’t keep me here.”“Watch me.”The challenge in his voice sent something sparking through my blood—something that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the bond that had been pulling us toward this moment since the first time I had laid eyes on him. I pushed myself upright, ignoring the scream of protest from my ribs, and swung my legs ove