All Chapters of Bound by Fate: The Plus-Sized Fated Mate: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Chapter 52: Kale's POVThe cottage had vanished behind the ridge an hour ago, and Aneira still hadn't looked back once.I watched her from half a step behind, the way I'd been watching her most of the morning, not out of distrust, simply because some part of me needed to keep confirming she was still upright, still moving, still choosing to put one foot in front of the other despite everything the night had cost her. Hex rode against her chest in a sling fashioned from an old shawl, unhappy about the arrangement in the particular, vocal way only a cat could manage, and every so often he'd twist enough to sink a claw through the fabric and into whatever skin happened to be nearest."He's going to draw blood before midday," I said."He's already drawn blood." She didn't slow her pace. "Twice.""You could let him walk.""He'd wander into a ravine out of spite within the hour, purely to make a point." She adjusted the sling with one hand, wincing as Hex objected to the movement with a low

Chapter 54: Aneira"I can manage it," I said, before he could offer."I know you can." He was already rolling his sleeves back regardless, studying the water for the safest line across. "That isn't the same as needing to prove it to me on a crossing this cold.""You say that like carrying me across is a simple matter." I crossed my arms, more defensive than I meant to sound. "I'm not a small woman, Kale. That current looks too dangerous and I'd rather not be the reason you end up face first in freezing water halfway across."Something in his expression shifted, patient in a way that made the worry feel almost foolish to have said aloud. "You think that concerns me.""I think it should.""I've carried wounded wolves off battlefields with considerably worse footing than this." He held his hand out, unbothered. "You are not a burden I need to brace myself against, Aneira. You're simply someone I'd rather not watch struggle through water cold enough to stop her heart, when I have a perfec

Chapter 56: Aneira's POVHeat first. Then cold. Then heat again, arriving faster than my mind could keep pace with, like the world had decided to stop agreeing on a single temperature and simply argue about it across my skin instead.Kale's voice came and went. Close, then far, then close again."Aneira. Stay with me."I meant to answer. What came out instead felt like it belonged to someone else, some old shape of a word I didn't recognize, and beneath my palms, pressed flat against frozen ground I didn't remember kneeling on, something answered back. A pull. The pale plants ringing the spring bent toward my hands without wind to explain it, and I watched my own fingers curl toward them like they'd been given an order I hadn't given."That isn't you," I heard myself say, or maybe I only thought it.‘It is,’ something answered, low and strange, wearing a voice that sounded like mine from very far away. ‘It has always been you. You've simply never let it speak before.’I didn't remembe

Chapter 58: Aneira’s POV I didn't have much to work with, once I actually considered it. My travel dress had seen better days, worn thin and patched at one elbow, but I brushed the worst of the road dust from it and worked my hair loose from its knot, letting it fall the way it had that morning at the spring, silver threaded through dark waves however plainly it wanted to sit. I simply wanted, for one evening, to look like a woman choosing her own reflection rather than one shaped entirely by circumstance.Kale, for his part, had borrowed a clean shirt from the innkeeper's son, and looked entirely too pleased with himself when I told him so.We went out once the sun had properly set, the village settling into the particular hush that came over small places after dark, lanterns swinging gold from doorframes, smoke curling thick against a sky gone black and heavily starred. Hex declined to accompany us, unwilling to abandon the warmth of the bed for anything as trivial as an evening ou

Chapter 60: Lyra's POVAshfang had started to feel wrong these past few weeks. It wasn't grief exactly, or not only grief. Grief had a shape people recognized and made room for. This was quieter than that. This was the sound of a pack slowly, carefully, learning how to stop waiting for someone.The Beta had stepped into the silence without ever once saying the word Alpha aloud in reference to himself. He settled disputes the council used to bring straight to Alpha Kale. He organized the border patrols after the last of the skirmish scares, personally, walking the lines himself. When a well ran low in the southern quarter, he was the one who found the coin to fix it. People were grateful, and gratitude, I was learning, made for a very short memory."He's done well, all things considered," I heard a woman say outside the butcher’s house, to no one in particular. "Ashfang needs someone steady right now.""If the Alpha truly isn't coming back," someone else offered, "perhaps it's time the