All Chapters of Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

KieranThe storm hadn't let up enough to fly, so Dex found us the closest thing to shelter this stretch of the border had to offer: an old ranger cabin, one room, a stove that still worked if you were patient with it. Kael was already asleep on the cot nearest the fire, wrapped in every blanket my men could find.Leah sat as far from me as the room allowed, knees pulled up, watching the stove like it might do something interesting if she stared long enough.I let the silence sit for a while. She'd earned the right to set the pace of this, whatever this was."You could sit closer to the fire," I said eventually. "I won't take it as surrender."She glanced at me, not quite a smile, but not the flat wall from the forest either. "I'm fine where I am.""You're shivering.""I've been shivering for two days. I've gotten used to it."I got up anyway and moved the second chair closer to hers, not touching, just close enough that the heat had a chance of reaching her. She watched me do it and

KieranNeither of us slept much. She sat curled in the chair by the stove, and I sat close enough to feel the warmth coming off her, and for most of the night that was the whole of it. No conversation. No distance closing further than it already had.Somewhere past midnight, the bandage on her palm had come loose. I noticed before she did, her fingers curling instinctively around the ache of it in her sleep, the wrap sliding toward her wrist.I reached for her hand without thinking too hard about whether I should.She woke the moment I touched her, eyes open and sharp, the old instinct to defend herself still faster than her recognition of who was in the room. It took her a second to place me. Then she let her hand stay where it was."It slipped," I said, nodding at the bandage."You could have just told me to fix it myself.""I could have."I didn't let go of her hand while I redid the wrap, and she didn't pull it back. I kept my eyes on the work, on the thin line of the cut, because

LeahThey put me in a guest wing of the Vorreth palace that was nicer than anywhere I'd slept in eight years of marriage to Cain, which felt like its own kind of insult. I hadn't asked for comfort. I'd asked to see Brody, and been told, gently, that it wasn't possible yet.I was standing at the window when the door opened without a knock.The woman who walked in matched every detail I'd built in my head from a single sentence a guard had once said to frighten me. Velvet Lattucinna, in pale blue instead of wedding white, composed in a way that made my own wrinkled borrowed clothes feel like an accusation."You're the reason my wedding stopped in the middle of a sentence," she said, closing the door behind her."I didn't ask him to leave the altar.""No," she agreed. "I don't imagine you did. That's almost the worst part."She crossed the room and took the chair by the window without being invited to sit, the same easy authority I'd once had to fake my way through in Ironveil's dining h

Leah"Alpha Cain Hargrove is at the gate," he said. "He's requesting an audience. He's not alone."I was on my feet before I fully understood why, some old instinct still wired to answer that name the way I'd answered it for eight years. Kieran was beside me a second later, his hand finding the small of my back, not holding me in place, just letting me know he was there."He brought someone," the guard added, hesitant. "A boy."My chest went tight before he finished the sentence.We walked to the main hall together, Kieran a half step behind me the whole way, close enough to be a presence and careful enough not to be a wall between me and whatever was waiting. When the doors opened, Cain stood just inside them, stiff, out of his element in another Alpha's territory, flanked by two guards who looked more nervous than he did.Brody stood beside him, small hand gripping the hem of his father's coat.He saw me before Cain finished any kind of formal greeting, and every careful thing I'd r

Leah The council dinner wasn't supposed to be anything formal. Kieran had called it a small gathering, a handful of senior wolves he trusted enough to introduce me to before word spread through the territory in whatever distorted version rumor always preferred over the truth. I'd worn the plainest dress I owned, on purpose, and still felt like I'd shown up in something borrowed from a life that wasn't mine. It was a comment from one of the elder wives, tossed off lightly enough that she probably didn't mean it to land the way it did, that undid the evening for me. Something about how refreshing it was that Kieran had chosen someone so unassuming after Velvet, no offense intended, of course, purebloods could be exhausting company. I understood, immediately and completely, that unassuming was the polite version of a word closer to lesser. I smiled through the rest of dinner. I'd had eight years of practice smiling through rooms that didn't want me in them. By the time we were alon