All Chapters of Rejected Once, Now Claimed By The Lycan : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Ava's POVI smiled at everything for the rest of the morning.At the window. At the corridor walls. At a vase of flowers outside the dining room that I passed on the way upstairs. Isabelle caught me smiling at my own reflection in a mirror and said nothing but her expression said everything."I know," I said."You have been smiling at inanimate objects for two hours," she said."I am aware.""It is very endearing.""Thank you.""It is also slightly concerning.""Isabelle.""I am just noting it," she said. "For the record."I was going to be a queen. I was going to be married. In one week, the life I had built inside this palace — the one that had been constructed out of chaos and poisoning attempts and falls down staircases and two months of fighting for my right to exist somewhere — was going to become permanent and official and real.I was allowed to smile at a vase.---We settled in the sitting room after lunch to talk through what the week would look like. Isabelle had opinions a

Ava's POVSebastian was already home when we got back, which I was beginning to understand was less about his workload and more about the fact that he did not particularly want to be away from the palace right now with the wedding less than a week out and Edgar somewhere in it.He was in his study with Edwin, a document spread between them on the desk, both of them with the slightly too-casual posture of men who had been working and did not want to appear to have been waiting."You are deliberately spending less time at the office," I said, walking in.He held out his hand.I sat on his lap without thinking about it, which told me something about how much had changed in two months."You are right," he said. "I do not want to be away from you.""You are both disgusting," Isabelle said from behind me, and Edwin pulled her into his side and pressed a kiss to her temple, which silenced her with remarkable efficiency."You left the office to come home and continue working," I said.Sebasti

Ava's POVThe designer was coming tomorrow.I sat with that fact in Sebastian's study after Isabelle and Edwin left and felt it settle into me like something real — a wedding dress being made for me, specifically, in a palace, for a ceremony that would make me queen of the Lycan Kingdom."You are smiling at the bookshelf," Sebastian said."I am allowed," I said."You are," he agreed. He pulled me slightly closer on his lap. "We should talk about your training.""My training," I repeated."Your wolf. We need to start working on bringing her forward."I turned to look at him properly. "I thought we agreed that you were going to figure out how to do that.""I have been thinking about it," he said. "One possibility is that physical training — pushing your body — might create the conditions she needs to emerge. She may need to see you fighting for yourself before she fights alongside you."I stared at him."You want me to put myself in pain," I said."That is one interpretation —""Sebasti

Author’s POVFour days before the wedding, the palace had the particular energy of a place that had been given a deadline and was running toward it.Flowers arrived in crates. Fabric samples were pinned to boards in the room set aside for wedding planning. Staff moved through corridors with lists and expressions of focused purpose. The kitchen had been working in extended shifts for two days.In the middle of all of it, Sandra stood outside the library with a mop she had not yet moved and a problem she could not solve.Edgar's instruction sat in her chest like a stone she had been carrying since he said it. She had turned it over every day since, looking for an angle, looking for a moment — and every time she looked at the reality of it, the same facts presented themselves.Ava was almost never alone.When she was not with Sebastian she was with Isabelle. When she was not with Isabelle she was in the palace with three bodyguards who had been assigned specifically after the last kidnap

Ava's POVThe afternoon in the garden had been satisfying in the quiet, specific way of small victories — Fiona and Tessy retreating to the fountain, Isabelle finishing her orange juice with an expression of deep contentment, the two of us sitting in comfortable silence while the palace prepared itself for Friday.It did not stay quiet for long.Sebastian found us an hour later with the look he wore when he had made a decision and was in the process of implementing it."Training," he said to me."Now?" I said."Now," he said.---We ended up in the courtyard behind the east wing — an open space the warriors used for drills that was empty in the late afternoon. Sebastian, me, Isabelle, Edwin, and the specific atmosphere of a plan that had not been fully explained to all participants."Your wolf needs to come forward," Sebastian said. "We have three days.""I am aware we have three days," I said. "The entire palace is aware we have three days.""One of the ways to trigger her," he said,