All Chapters of Mated To My Enemy's Rival: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

I sat in the frost, my back pressed against the execution post, and stared up at Jasper through the haze of pain stinging my eyes. My ears were still ringing from the sheer volume of his Alpha-Beta pressure, but his words hung in the freezing morning air, completely refusing to make any sense."What... what are you talking about?" My voice came out raspy, barely a dry whisper against the whistling wind.Jasper didn't answer immediately. His eyes flicked past me, tracking the four guards Jarek had left stationed at the edge of the treeline. They were watching us like hawks, their hands still resting nervously on the pommels of their sheathed swords."Not here," Jasper murmured, his tone dropping low. He reached down, wrapping one large, warm hand around my arm, and helped me pull myself off the frozen dirt. "We're going back."My knees wobbled violently the second I tried to stand, the silver burns around my waist screaming with every small twitch of my muscles. But Jasper

The cold morning air felt like broken glass sliding down my throat with every breath I drew.The thunder of twenty pairs of hooves echoed through the fog-drenched forest, a steady rhythmic sound that should have brought me the usual cold focus of a deployment. But my mind wasn't on the eastern frontier. It was stuck three miles back, locked inside the high arched window of the East Wing, where I had caught the fleeting image of Cassandra looking down at me as we rode out.'You're going to bleed in that mud, Dominic. You're going to die right there on the Blood Eclipse.'Her voice vibrated inside my skull like a tolling bell, refusing to die down.I gripped the leather reins tighter, my gloved knuckles going numb against the frost. It was absurd. It was a weak-willed, dramatic tale spun by a girl who had barely survived three months inside my walls. And yet, the name she had spat at me across my desk while in my study still sent shudders down my spine… Blood Eclipse.There wa

Dying, I had decided, was a surprisingly quiet affair. But coming back from the edge of it felt like being dragged backward through jagged glass.My heart slammed against my ribs so violently it felt like it was trying to break out of my chest. I pressed my back as flat as I could against the damp stone wall of the cell, my lungs gasping for air that tasted like old mildew, iron, and fresh, hot copper.The assassin lay in an unconscious, bleeding heap in the dirt at my feet, his wrist shattered into useless splinters. And standing over him—towering, broad-shouldered, and soaked in dark, frozen mud—was a ghost.A man who was supposed to be lying in a mass grave on Blood Eclipse Ridge.His name left my throat more as a whisper than anything else. As though speaking it out loud might shatter this dream I was currently having and leave me alone in the dark again.He didn't move for what I'd term as a very long second. Instead, he stood there in the flickering orange torchlight

I leaned my head back against the leather chair, staring up at the dark wood beams of the ceiling, and gave him the truth. I told him how I’d heeded Cassandra's warning at the last second, how I'd unhooked my royal cloak and forced Kylian to wear it at the front of the column while I fell back into the treeline to watch. I told him about the shifters, the sudden swarm of dark, hooded figures, the green poison that turned skin black in seconds, and the assassin who stepped out of the watchtower to put a silver bolt through Kylian's back.I omitted only one thing: the blinding, divine light in the northern snow, and the voice of the Moon Goddess thundering inside my soul. That was a burden I wasn't ready to share with anyone yet.Jasper listened in absolute silence, his jaw tightening more and more with every word I spoke."So she was right," Jasper whispered, a look of grim awe settling over his features. "Cassandra saw the whole damn ambush.""Down to the last detail," I adm

The chamber fell quiet again, except for the crackle of the fireplace. Delphine hovered near the foot of the bed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, watching me with a look that was entirely too obvious."What?" I asked, pulling the heavy blankets up over my legs."Nothing," she said quickly, then paused, her mouth twitching. "I was just wondering... are you hungry, my lady? You haven't had a proper meal in three days."At the mention of food, my stomach let out a ferocious, hollow growl that echoed across the room. Delphine chuckled, and I couldn't help the small, sheepish smile that pulled at my lips."I'm starving," I admitted."I'll be right back," she said, practically flying toward the door. "I'll raid the pantry and bring you up something fit for an actual person."She was gone for twenty minutes. When the door finally swung open again, she carried a heavy silver tray laden with roasted chicken, warm buttered bread, a bowl of rich vegetable stew, and a