All Chapters of The Mate They Rejected: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

[MARA]"Stop trying to peek.""I'm not peeking.""Your eyebrows are doing the thing."I didn't know my eyebrows had a thing, but I pressed the blindfold tighter just to end that particular conversation. Rhys's hands stayed warm on my shoulders, steering me down the corridor with more patience than he usually had. From ahead, I caught Caine's low voice and Zane telling someone to move.The carpet changed. Then stairs. Rhys's grip shifted to my elbow."Three more steps," he said.I counted them. A door opened. Warmth hit me—amber, lamp-warm.Rhys pulled the blindfold free.Streamers were everywhere. Red and gold. A banner across the far wall in Zane's neat handwriting: Happy Birthday, Mara. Balloons pressed at the window like they were trying to get out. A low table held my favorite pastries—honey walnut, from the bakery in town I'd mentioned once, months ago. And Caine stood in the middle of everything with his arms folded, looking like he absolutely had not spent an hour blowing up ba

[MARA]The bond snapped.Not slowly. Not fading. It broke all at once, violent and complete, like a structural collapse from the inside out. The pain tore through my chest and radiated in every direction simultaneously.My knees hit the floor.I pressed a palm flat against the stone just to stay upright. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.Eira screamed.Not a howl. A scream—the kind that only existed inside your own skull, the kind that was worse for that. It went on for three seconds and then cut off completely.The quiet that followed was worse than the pain.Nobody moved.I lifted my head and looked around.Some pack members looked away when I found them. Some didn't bother.My dad was across the room.Still. Arms folded. Face exactly as it had been when he arrived. He was looking directly at me.I kept thinking he would move. I kept waiting for the part where my dad crossed the room and stood between me and the rest of it.He didn't move.I found their faces.Caine. Rhys. Zane.Non

[SLOANE]The envelope hadn't moved overnight.I checked.First thing, before coffee, before anything. Still on the corner of the desk, the Interpack Medical Council seal facing up, entirely unimpressed with its own significance.I'd worked around it for four consecutive nights without opening it. At some point that had stopped being discipline and become something I didn't want to examine closely.'It's been there since Tuesday,' Eira observed.It was Friday.I put the coffee on.Seven-fifteen was when the house stopped being quiet.Not gradually.All at once.Specifically through the kitchen doorway, in the form of my youngest arriving with a notebook already open and a question already forming."I've been thinking about the bone density question.""Good morning, Kai.""You said after school.""I meant after a full night's sleep."He considered this with the expression of a child who had found a loophole. "I slept. That technically constitutes the night."I handed him his orange juic

[SLOANE] I sent the reply at six-fifteen, between setting the table and the after-dinner conversation, which was shorter than I'd braced for. Mostly because Kai had located a pack registry in my bookshelf while I was in the kitchen and arrived at dinner with it already open to the relevant page, which meant his questions were more specific than I had prepared for and suggested he'd read considerably further than I'd intended to give him access to yet. "The Blackthorn Alphas are triplets," he announced to the table. "Yes." Remy looked up. "Three of them." "That's what triplets mean." "Three dads," he said, like he was doing arithmetic. "Yes." Oliver was watching me. "Did you know them? Before?" I answered what I could answer. I left the rest for later, for the version of later that had more shape to it. The council's confirmation came three days after. Temple Residency—Neutral Jurisdiction Classification. Full access to medical records across all registered packs. Unrestr

[SLOANE]Packing the boys' rooms took an afternoon, whereas packing the clinic took three days.I called Mrs. Adina myself because she'd sent me referrals for two years and deserved better than a note taped to her door. She was quiet on the phone for a moment."The council," she answered finally. "Well. Of course they'd want you.""I'll still take calls. Just not walk-ins.""That's something." A pause. "You've done more for this street than you know, Dr. Davis."I didn't know what to do with that, so I thanked her and hung up before I had to figure it out.The butcher's wife cried a little when I told her, which surprised me more than it should have. I transferred the standing patient files to Dr. Hale two blocks over—competent, unremarkable, exactly what a general practice needed, and exactly what he'd been doing for a decade without complaint. He took the boxes without asking questions.Nobody asked about before.They never had. That was the whole point of five years.Ms. Evelyn pac