All Chapters of Rejected For My Curves. Desired By The War Alpha : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

We kept to the higher line until the trees forced us down.Sable raised a closed fist near a narrow break in the slope. “Tracks again. Same group. They adjusted after the watching line failed. Still moving north. Still not hiding it well.”Ronan crouched beside the marks. “Two sets of heavier prints. Prisoners are still walking. The spacing is tighter than before. They are pushing the pace.”One of the trackers spoke quietly. “Blood on the leaves ahead. Not enough for a full body. Enough for a wound that is not being treated.”“Show me,” I said.He pointed. Dark spots marked a short stretch of ground where someone had been forced forward while bleeding.Sable’s jaw tightened. “They are leaving a trail on purpose now. Either they want us angry enough to rush, or they are already close to the ground where they stop caring if we follow.”“We do not rush,” I said. “We keep the same rule. No marked centers. No clean funnels.”The wounded Ironback between two of our fighters gave a short, p

The light was already failing when the trees thinned again.Sable raised a fist. We stopped.“Final marks match,” she said quietly. “This is the ground from Garrick’s notes. Whatever they were walking the taken toward, it is just ahead.”Ronan moved up beside me. The bond sat tight and alert. “There are more of them than the last group. I can feel the weight of it.”“How many.”“Enough to make a straight fight ugly. They have had time to set the ground.”One of the remaining trackers spoke. “Smoke again. Thicker this time. And there is stone work through the trees. Old. Not a temporary camp.”I looked at what little light we had left. “We do not wait for full dark. We use what we have. Same rule as before. We take the living if they are still here and we do not let ourselves be pulled into a long hold.”Sable nodded. “Two on the left. Two on the right. The rest with me up the center. Quiet until the first contact, then hard and fast.”We split for the last approach.The stone work res

We made better time in the dark than we had any right to.Sable kept the line tight and quiet. No one wasted breath on anything that was not the path or the next sound in the trees. The interruption marks Garrick had given us sat in my inner pocket like a second pulse.Ronan walked on my right. The bond stayed sharp the whole way, closer to the surface than it had been on the first trip.“You feel it too,” he said under his breath at one point.“Yes. Stronger than before.”“Whatever started when the light rose is still climbing. The ground is not the same.”Sable lifted a fist near the old warning cut where we had found the second cloth strip. “We are close. From here we assume they know we are coming back. No clean approach left.”One of the trackers spoke quietly. “Do we use the same high line as last time?”“No,” I said. “They will have watched that. We take the longer western fold and come at the stonework from the broken side. It costs time. It costs less than walking into a prep

Garrick finished the mark near the turn of the night.He looked worse for the effort, but his hand was steady when he pushed the scrap across to me. “This is the best the fragments give. A secondary point west of the main ring. If the circuit is still open and the bloodline stands there with intent, it can force the work to draw wrong. I cannot promise more than that.”I took the scrap. “It is enough to try.”Asher stood at the foot of the cot with his arms folded. “Group size.”“Four,” I said. “Sable if she can stand on that leg. Ronan. One tracker. Me. Any larger and the walls lose too much.”Sable spoke from the next cot, already pulling her boots closer with her good leg. “I can stand. I cannot run full distance without slowing you. Take the tracker and one of the Ironbacks who already knows how the site feels. I stay and keep the outer lines from folding while you are gone.”Asher nodded once. “That is the cleaner version. I will not pretend I like it.”Wren leaned in the doorway

The reading party left before the maps were even fully reset. Three wolves. Fresh legs. No extra gear. Asher gave the order twice so no one could claim they had heard it wrong. Learn the destination. Take no contact if they can avoid it. Return. The camp tried to work while they were gone. It did a poor job of it. People kept glancing northeast as if the trees might send the answer first. I stayed in the command space with Wren and Garrick. Ronan sat near the wall because the healers had given up arguing with him. Sable came and went with outer-line reports that never changed enough to matter. Wren broke the quiet first. “If those tracks lead to another ring, you are going.” “If they can seat the pattern there, someone has to deal with it.” “It does not have to keep being you.” Garrick shifted on the cot, grimacing. “The fragments do not offer a substitute line. They want the one that already answered. Twice.” Ronan’s voice was low. “Then the reading party is not only bringing