All Chapters of HE CHOSE HER LIES OVER ME: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

A Name That Wasn't Mine"Aurora."Kael said her name like a word he had forgotten how to pronounce, the kind of stunned disbelief that needed no further explanation. I felt his hand tighten around mine before it went slack entirely, and something in my chest understood, before my mind caught up, that the worst day of my life had just begun.She collapsed before she reached us, dropping to her knees on the stone floor as if her legs had given out from exhaustion rather than performance. Bruises mapped her arms in shades of purple and yellow. Her hair, once perfectly kept, hung in matted clumps around her face."Someone help her," an elder called, and three warriors rushed forward.Kael was already moving, releasing me without a second glance, and I told myself it was instinct, the same instinct that made him stop bullies from hurting me when we were children. I told myself it meant nothing."Aurora, what happened to you?" Kael knelt beside her, his voice rough with something I recogniz

The Bread I Didn't Eat;I didn't sleep again after that note, not properly. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my father's face the way I remembered it from childhood, the way he used to swing me onto his shoulders after training, before any of this began.I kept turning the note over and over in the privacy of my mind, where no guard could take it from me. Whoever had written it, whoever had risked everything to slip it beneath my bread, believed there was something about my father's death still worth protecting, even now, even after nineteen years."You look terrible," Kael said, and I startled so badly I nearly knocked over the basin beside me.I hadn't heard the cell door open. He stood just inside it, dressed plainly, none of the formal robes from the ceremony two days earlier. The dark circles beneath his eyes matched the ones I felt forming beneath my own."What do you want?" I asked, and I heard how cold my voice sounded, how unlike the woman who had laughed with him through a

Chapter Six: What My Father KnewThe first page was dated nearly two years before his execution, and his handwriting only grew more rushed with every entry after that, as though he had known, even then, that time was running short.I traced my finger over the ink, half expecting it to smear after nineteen years, half expecting the entire journal to dissolve into nothing the way good things always seemed to in my life. It didn't.The pages held steady beneath my hands, solid proof that the story I had been told since childhood had never been the whole truth."He suspected something was wrong long before anyone branded him a traitor," I said, my voice barely above a whisper."He suspected it because he found proof," Ronan said. "Keep reading."I turned the page, and the next entry described a meeting my father had witnessed by accident, three Alphas from neighboring territories gathered with a group of rogue wolves no pack should ever have welcomed within its borders. He had written d

Chapter Eight: The Distance Between UsWe were halfway to the horses when Dane stepped into the path and blocked it."I changed my mind," he said.Ronan stopped. I stopped. The morning light was still thin and cold, and nobody in the settlement had begun their day yet, which meant there were no witnesses to whatever was about to happen in this narrow space between the storage building and the gate."Dane," Ronan said, with the particular patience of a man who had been leading people through difficult decisions for a long time. "We discussed this.""You discussed it. You told us what was happening, and then you decided. That's not the same thing." He looked at me, and the anger I had seen the day before had not softened overnight. If anything, sleep has made it sharper. "I've been awake all night thinking. If we ride out with her and Kael's party tracks us, we lead them straight back to this settlement. To the children. To Vessa. To everyone who is too old or too injured to run a sec

Chapter Ten: What He Said Without SpeakingI did not turn around immediately.I closed my fingers around the metal box, set it carefully on the table in front of me, and then turned, because I refused to let Kael Draven see me startled.He stood in the doorway with two warriors behind him, still in his travel gear, dust from the road across his shoulders, and an expression on his face that I had never seen there before, not quite anger, not quite relief, something that lived painfully between the two and seemed to be tearing him apart from the inside."How did you find this place?" I asked."You always underestimate how well I know you." His voice was rough. "You were looking for a witness. The only witnesses to anything connected to your father's case who aren't already dead are either in Magnus's pocket or running from it. The eastern valley was the next logical place to look.""Then you haven't actually caught me. You followed my logic.""I followed you because I need to talk to y