บททั้งหมดของ Rejected by the Alpha Hockey Captain And Then Claimed By His: บทที่ 41 - บทที่ 50

Rosalie's POVI found Owen in the courtyard on one of my better afternoons, sitting on the low wall near the training yard fence, apparently taking a break between drills, and something about his easy, unbothered posture made me linger longer than I intended when he waved me over."You're the wife," he said, grinning, entirely without the careful, calculated weight most people in this packhouse attached to the word. "Rosalie, right? Elias mentioned you, though I'd already heard plenty before that.""I'm sure you have." I settled onto the wall a careful distance from him, wary out of habit more than any real sense of danger. "Most of what people have heard probably isn't flattering.""Some of it wasn't," he admitted, unbothered by the honesty. "But I try not to trust rumors over what I actually see, and what I've seen so far doesn't match half of what gets whispered about you." He shrugged, easy, genuine. "You held your ground in that hall the day you arrived. Didn't flinch once, from

Rosalie's POVThe smoke hit me before I'd even opened the door, thick and acrid, curling out from under the frame in a way that made my stomach drop before I registered the sound of Elias swearing quietly on the other side.I pushed inside to find him standing over the small stove, waving a dish towel frantically at a pan that had, by any reasonable definition, stopped being dinner several minutes ago and become something closer to a small, controlled disaster."Don't," he said, not even turning around, apparently sensing my presence by scent alone the way he sometimes did. "Whatever you're about to say, don't.""I wasn't going to say anything." I set my things down near the door, fighting to keep my expression neutral. "I was simply going to ask whether we're eating charcoal for dinner, or whether there's a backup plan.""There's no backup plan. This was the backup plan." He finally turned, smoke-smudged and faintly singed at one eyebrow, holding up the ruined pan like evidence in a

Rosalie's POVThe first headache hit without warning, sharp enough that I had to grip the edge of the washstand to keep my knees from buckling entirely.It came on a morning that had started ordinarily enough, Elias already gone for early training, the small quarters quiet around me, the memory of that charged silence over the ruined dinner still lingering uncomfortably close to the surface no matter how many times I'd told myself, over the past three days, that I needed to stop feeling whatever I'd let myself feel that night.I'd been standing at the washstand, replaying the sound of his voice saying my name, that low, careful weight it had carried, and I'd made myself stop. Deliberately. Forcefully, the same way I'd been forcing myself to stop for days now, burying the ache under practicality, reminding myself it was too soon, too dangerous, too much like repeating a mistake I'd promised myself I'd never make twice.The pain arrived the exact instant I shoved the feeling back down.

Rosalie's POVI woke to Elias's face hovering above mine, pale with worry, and the first thing I registered, before the pain in my jaw or the ache still radiating through my chest, was the presence.Still there. Warm and unmistakable, curled somewhere deep inside me like it had simply been waiting, all this time, for the door to finally open.Tears came before I'd even fully processed I was crying, spilling hot and fast down my temples, and I let out a sound that was half sob, half disbelieving laugh, my hands coming up instinctively to press against my own chest like I might physically feel whatever had taken up residence there."Rosalie." Elias's voice cracked on my name, his hands framing my face carefully, thumbs brushing away the tears as fast as they fell. "You're awake. You're actually, thank the Goddess, you're awake.""I felt it," I managed, my voice raw and wrecked, the words tumbling out faster than I could properly organize them. "Elias, I felt it. It's there. It's actuall

Elias's POVI waited until Rosalie finally slept, deep and exhausted after two sleepless nights, before I let myself do anything about the restless, unsatisfied certainty that had been building in my chest since the moment her wolf had surged forward and then vanished again.I didn't believe it was a dead end. I refused to believe it, watching her collapse into grief that had cut deeper than years of plain silence ever had, and some old, stubborn instinct in me, the same one that had kept me alive through six years of border skirmishes on nothing but persistence and refusal to accept easy defeats, insisted there was an explanation buried somewhere in this clan's history, if I was willing to dig deeply enough to find it.I started with the genealogical archives the following afternoon, while Rosalie rested and the excuse of extra training gave me a plausible reason to be away from our quarters for several hours at a stretch.The archive room sat in a rarely visited corner of the packho