Rejected Once, Now Claimed By The Lycan のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

Author's POVSandra didn't move from her position on Sebastian's desk even after he dismissed her.She sat there for a long moment, fingers curled around the edge of the wood, smile still perfectly in place even though there was no one left to perform it for."Ava," she said quietly, to the empty room. Testing the name. Deciding what she thought of it.Her grip on the desk tightened.She had known Sebastian since they were children. Her father had positioned her carefully, patiently, with the quiet certainty that a king without a fated mate would eventually choose the woman who had always been there. Sandra had waited. She had been available and loyal and everything a king could want in a companion.And then a wolfless werewolf from a mid-rate pack had walked into a ballroom and undone twenty years of proximity in one evening.Sandra slid off the desk and straightened her dress.*She won't last,* she told herself. *She has no wolf, no power, no idea what kind of world she has walked i

Ava's POVI walked out of the portrait hall feeling like the walls were closing in.Sebastian had told me I would be his only mate. That he wanted only me. That he would find a way around the tradition.But every painting on that wall told a different story — decades, centuries of Lycan kings, all of them surrounded by women they had been bound to whether they chose it or not.*What happens when the moon goddess decides?*I didn't have an answer. I wasn't sure Sebastian did either.I was still turning it over in my head when I heard her."Look who it is."Sandra.She was leaning against the wall a few metres from my room door, arms folded, wearing an expression that told me she had been waiting.I kept walking.Her leg shot out and blocked my path."Going somewhere, future queen?" The title dripped with mockery. Her eyes moved over me slowly — assessing, cataloguing — and I watched the slight tightening around her mouth that told me she hadn't found what she was hoping for."I still c

Ava's POVThree hours in and I had completely forgotten that it was four in the morning.Florence was patient in the way that good teachers are — never making me feel stupid for asking the same question twice, never rushing past something I hadn't fully grasped. By hour five I was leaning forward in my chair, asking questions she hadn't even gotten to yet, and somewhere in the middle of a breakdown of seating arrangements and colour theory I realised I was genuinely enjoying myself."That will be all, Miss Ava." Florence closed her final folder at nine o'clock with a satisfied smile. "You know more than enough to handle this evening. You'll do beautifully.""I think I might actually love this," I said, half to myself. "Like — as a career. Is that strange?"Florence laughed. "It means I did my job well. Now go — you have ten hours and a party to build."I found the black card on my pillow.A note beside it, written in handwriting that was precise and slightly aggressive, the way everyt

Ava's POVEdgar Reynolds looked at me like I was something on a menu."I didn't know your mate was such a beautiful young woman," he said, the smile on his face carrying a warmth that had nothing fatherly about it.I kept my expression perfectly pleasant and thought very hard about not visibly recoiling.This man had four mates standing behind him like furniture, was old enough to be my father, and was currently looking at me in a way that made my skin want to relocate. Sebastian went very still beside me in the specific way of someone exerting significant restraint.I glanced at the women behind Edgar.Three of them stood with their eyes down, shoulders curved inward — the posture of people who had learned to make themselves smaller over a very long time. The fourth stood differently. Head up. Eyes forward. Grey eyes, I noticed, and something in the line of her jaw that I recognised immediately.Sebastian's mother.She looked at me across the short distance between us and gave the sm

Ava's POVI stayed exactly where I was.Sebastian crossed the dance floor in long, controlled strides — the kind of controlled that meant the opposite of calm — and reached for my arm.I pulled it back.Stepped closer to Michael instead.The collective intake of breath from the room was almost audible."I'm not your mate, Sebastian," I said, keeping my voice even. "You don't have any right to pull me away from anyone."Someone in the crowd made a sound that might have been a gasp and might have been a prayer.From the corner of my eye I caught Edgar Reynolds watching the whole thing from his seat with the delighted expression of a man watching excellent theatre.Sebastian's eyes dropped to Michael's hand at my waist.Something shifted in his face."Come here," he said quietly. "Now. Before I do something neither of us will enjoy."I raised an eyebrow.And shifted half a step closer to Michael, who had gone the particular shade of pale that meant he was rapidly assembling a picture he