Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Alpha Who Rejected Me: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

ELENA’S POV The grand stone staircase felt smaller than it had five years ago. When the guards used to drag me up these steps by my hair, the obsidian pillars seemed to touch the sky, and the gold-leaf molding looked like an unassailable fortress of divine right. Now, draped in Nikolai’s black fur cloak, with twenty-five hundred northern shadow warriors ascending behind us in a suffocating tide, the palace looked exactly like what it was: a gilded cage built on stolen time. Our boots made no sound against the thick carpets of the royal residential tier. Any high-tier enforcer we encountered in the corridors was neutralized before they could draw a breath—pinned to the tapestries by the silent precision of our vanguard's ironwood spears. The communications lines were dead. The capital was blind. We reached the massive, double-winged doors of the Grand Throne Room. The heavy oak gates were carved with the golden visage of the howling Bloodmoon wolf, a symbol of a dynasty built on the

KAELEN' POV Elena. My fated mate. She stood at the apex of the grand obsidian dais, draped in the heavy black fur cloak of the Northern Pack. She was breathtaking. She was everything a Lunar Queen was supposed to be—and she was supposed to be mine. The Moon Goddess had written it into our souls. But as she lowered her glowing silver blade from my father's throat, her gaze didn't soften. She didn't look at me with the desperate, longing eyes of the girl I had rejected at my coronation. Instead, she turned her face toward him. Nikolai stepped fully in front of her, his iron greatsword raised in a flawless defensive guard, his towering frame cutting off my view of her face. Elena didn't flinch away from the Cursed Alpha. Instead, she casually placed her hand against his shoulder armor. It was an intimate, effortless gesture of absolute trust. A silent alignment of two souls who had survived the worst of the world together. Inside my chest, my inner wolf let out a shattered howl. No

ELENA'S POV The heavy obsidian throne room was finally quiet, but the air was still full of the metallic tang of fresh blood. I stood near the base of the grand dais, the ancient, blood-stamped treaty gripped tightly in my left hand. The centuries-old parchment felt cool against my skin, a physical reminder that the Western Territory had finally returned to the Eclipse lineage. The nightmare of my childhood was over. The thieves had been exposed. Nikolai stood just a foot away from me, his massive iron greatsword resting casually against his shoulder, his eyes sweeping the perimeter with a practiced intensity to ensure the remaining Bloodmoon guards wouldn't dare move. "We need to fortify the perimeter before dawn," Nikolai said, his deep voice vibrating through the stone floorboards. "The Bloodmoon pack is fractured, but they will try to regroup once Kaelen gets his father to safety. We need to secure the borders now." "Let them try," I murmured, my voice layered with the dangero

ELENA'S POV The scent of Kaelen's spilling blood filled the cramped, hot cavern, heavy and sweet with the underlying, inescapable pheromones of the fated bond we had once shared as children. My mind was completely buried under the thick, suffocating fog of the feral trance, trapped behind a wall of rage and utterly unable to voice the hatred I held for him. But my inner shadow wolf was an ancient, primitive beast driven purely by instinct, cellular memory, and scent. As I crouched over his trembling, depleted body, my raised obsidian claws twitched in the dim moonlight filtering through the cracked ceiling. The razor-sharp tips were mere inches from his throat, ready to slice through his jugular, bleed him into the dirt, and end the corrupt Bloodmoon bloodline once and for all. But the black smoke rolling off my skin began to mix with the metallic vapor of his blood. The heavy, synthetic weight of the forced bond pulsed deep within my chest cavity, sending a violent, profoundly conf

ELENA'S POV The suffocating darkness of the cavern faded into a soft, amber glow. When my eyes fluttered open, the brutal chill of the mountain was gone, replaced by the crackle of a warm hearth and the scent of pine and cedar. I was lying on a thick pile of furs inside a massive transit tent, my body feeling as though it had been thoroughly hollowed out. Every muscle ached, a lingering phantom sting from the violent snapping of the forced bond. A weight sat near my hip. I shifted slightly, wincing, and looked over. Nikolai was sitting on the edge of the low cot. His massive iron greatsword was propped against a wooden crate nearby, but his hands were occupied with a bowl of steaming water and a clean white cloth. The fearsome warlord of the North looked exhausted; his eyes were rimmed with red, and the tight line of his jaw showed the toll the last few hours had taken on him. "Don't move," he murmured, his voice a deep, rough rumble that vibrated right through the furs. "The toll