All Chapters of Sold to the Beast Alpha After My Rejection: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

Zayden POVThe northern territory smelled like ash.I have been riding since before the smoke cleared. Four hours through the outerperimeter with Garrett and two Obsidian soldiers checking the breach points and theridge positions and the eastern tree line where Kaelor's column had emerged from. Kaelor had not been found yet.That was the thing sitting at the bottom of everything else. Underneath the breachassessments and the ridge clearing and the body counts and the tactical inventory ofwhat the night had cost us. Kaelor ran through the northern breach and disappearedinto the dark outside and four hours later there was no trail that held longer than half amile before the forest swallowed it.He knew this territory.The game trails and the water routes and the places where the tree cover was denseenough to break a scent trail. He learned all of it as my head enforcer because a headenforcer who did not know the surrounding territory was a liability.I had made him

Nerissa POV"She's ready."Those two words from Edna changed the entire room.The way the world narrows to a single point when something enormous is arriving andyour body understands it before your mind catches up."Nerissa." Edna's voice. "When the next wave comes I need everything you have. Doyou hear me?""Yes," I said.My voice was almost gone. The last hour had taken most of it.Zayden's hand was still in mine. He had not moved from the left side of the bed sinceEdna positioned him there. Had not spoken unless I needed him to speak. Has simplybeen present in the way that only he knew how to be present.Harper was on my right shoulder. Her face was doing something complicated that shewas mostly managing to keep off her expression.Isolde and Elara held their positions.The room was still lit primarily by the Mark.Outside the single high window in the treatment room wall, something changed in thelast twenty minutes. The smoke from the western wing had thinne

Nerissa POVZayden was off the bed before the second howl finished."Stay here," he said."Zayden?""Nerissa." He turned at the door. "Please."I had never heard him use that word before.Please was not a word that lived comfortably in Zayden Crowe's vocabulary.The fact that it came out now told me everything about what he was feeling."Go," I said.The door closed behind him.Harper looked at me."Don't even say it," I said."I didn't say anything," she said."You were about to," I said.She closed her mouth.Aldric was awake again. The brief obedient sleep his father commanded had lastedapproximately four minutes before those eyes opened back up and resumed theirexamination of the world. He was looking at the door Zayden went through.Selene was still asleep against Isolde.I looked at the high window.The moon moved past the center of it. Still full. Still flooding the room with silver butfrom a different angle now. The light falling across the foot of the

Nerissa POVI was not supposed to be outside the fortress walls.Zayden said it clearly at the inner corridor entrance before the eastern road formationmoved out. Darius said it too. Even Edna said it.I was outside the fortress walls.I was at the northern boundary where Veil Forest pressed closest to the Obsidian Keepperimeter and the tree was near when the cold coming off the ancient trees reachedme clearly.The Mark pulled me here.That was the only way I could describe it. When the healing knew where to go insideZayden's wound without my eyes being open.The northern boundary was quiet.Belgors rogues moved into position along the forest edge an hour ago when theformations assembled. They were out there somewhere in the trees and theundergrowth.I stood at the boundary and waited.The Mark burned steady on my forearm. A frequency that had been building since Evander placed the second stone in Aldric'ssmall fist and the forest exhaled its three hundred year

Nerissa POVI heard Dorian Vane's voice from the eastern road.Carried on the cold morning air across the distance between the fortress and the battle.I was already moving. The Mark was burning white on my forearm and the twins were behind me inside thefortress with Evander and Isolde and Edna and every guard Darius had arranged and Imade my decision before Dorian finished saying Zayden's name.I ranThe eastern road was a different world from the planning room maps.Maps showed positions and distances and directional arrows. They did not show what ahundred soldiers and two hundred and thirty wolves actually looked like when theycommitted to each other on a narrow road with forest on one side and open territory onthe other.Blood on the ground. The evidence of wolves who had fallen and been moved ordragged themselves and kept fighting anyway.Bodies at the road edges.Three Obsidian wolves on the left side. One of Felix's Ironfang wolves face down nearthe tree