All Chapters of Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

KieranHer body felt too light in my arms, lighter than it should. The ice-water chill on her skin bled straight through my shirt. That wasn't what set my wolf howling.The scent of her blood, throat, wrist, hit me first. Sharp, immediate. It demanded something my instincts recognized on sight: a slaughter, owed and overdue.Against me she felt fragile, her heartbeat thin and uneven behind her ribs. She'd torn her own body apart to save a child who belonged to the man who'd thrown her away."Mate?" Cain's voice caught, like the word refused to leave his throat. "What nonsense is this, Kieran? She's crippled. She has no wolf. You're insane if you think I'll let you take the woman who tried to kill..."I turned toward him slowly. My eyes found Cain Hargrove, still puffing his chest out, still clinging to the illusion that this room answered to him.The man was pitiful. Eight years he held the rarest thing he would ever own, and threw it into the mud for a piece of dirt now cowering behi

KieranMy father didn't waste time. In one clean motion, he set the Obsidian Chalice on the bedside table and tipped a single drop of black liquid into it. The chalice began to shudder, radiating cold that cut straight to bone."Do it now, Kieran," he said. "Your blood. Through the chalice, into her."My hand shook as I drew the silver blade from my belt. I didn't hesitate. I cut across my own palm and let the blood run into the chalice, hot and red. My blood — pure Alpha King blood — met the old energy inside and turned the liquid molten gold.This was the most honest thing I had ever given anyone. My strength, my future, everything I had, traded for one working heartbeat.I leaned over the bed and lifted Leah's head with care. Her face, calm in sleep, was an accusation I couldn't answer. I drew one long breath and pressed my mouth to her throat, over the fading mark the poison had left there.I bit down.Not to hurt her. A bond, not a wound. My teeth broke skin, and I fed the gold

LEAHMy tears had dried, leaving behind a numbness that gripped my whole face. I still sat on the wooden floor, cold as a block of ice, staring blankly at the fireplace in the corner. The fire inside it was dying, down to red embers fighting the freeze pushing in from the storm outside. Same as me.For eight years I lived by a principle I believed was right. I accepted my place as an ordinary human in a wolf clan. I swallowed every insult, every condescending look, every whisper calling me the "Broken Luna." I served Cain with absolute obedience, ran his household, and above all, gave everything I had to raising Brody — a son who wasn't even my own blood.I thought if I was good enough, if I sacrificed enough, I'd earn my place. At the very least, some respect.What did I get instead?Cain Hargrove threw me out into the street that night, all because a pureblood woman offered him a fertile womb. He took my position, took my son, and let me get taken without a single real attempt to fi

LeahMy hand closed around the sharp ceramic shard until my knuckles went white. My eyes locked on the small window across from the fireplace. The scrape of metal against brick was growing rougher, cutting through the roar of the storm outside.A mechanical click sounded as the lock gave way. The solid iron bars, the ones no human strength should have been able to move, swung slowly outward. Someone had oiled the hinges beforehand; they opened without a sound.Freezing wind tore straight into the cabin, carrying snow that swallowed the last warmth from the fireplace. A face wrapped in a worn scarf appeared behind the window frame. It was him. The limping Omega boy from earlier.His brown eyes went wide with panic when they found me. His shaking hand reached through the frame."Hurry!" he whispered, his voice nearly lost in the wind.Before I could take a single step toward the window, my hearing caught something else. Footsteps, unusually light, too light for a camp guard, who normall

VelvetI did not move when Kieran walked away from me. That was the first rule my mother ever taught me. A Lattucinna does not flinch in front of an audience, whatever is happening behind her eyes."I need a moment," he'd said, and then he was gone, out through the side doors of the hall, and every guest in that room understood exactly what they'd just watched. A king had walked out on his own wedding for a woman shipped off to freeze in the north.The elder cleared his throat and offered something about a brief recess. I smiled at him the way I'd been trained to smile at men who apologized for things that weren't their fault, and told him it was no trouble at all.It was considerable trouble.I walked from the altar with my spine straight and my chin level, the same pace I would have used walking toward it, and let the whispers build behind me instead of turning to face them. Whispers I could use later. Whispers meant witnesses.By the time I reached my private chambers, the calm I'd