All Chapters of Betrayed By My Alpha Mate, Claimed By The Lycan Prince : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Sierra"Let me see it.""Sierra—""Let me see the letter, Kairo." I was already crossing the room toward Varek before either of them could stop me, my heart slamming so hard against my ribs I could feel it in my throat. "If it references a daughter, I need to know whose."Varek glanced at Kairo, who gave a small, tight nod, and handed the dispatch over without argument. My hands were shaking badly enough that the parchment trembled as I unfolded it, my eyes scanning the recovered fragments too fast to properly read at first.It wasn't my hand.The relief hit before the words fully registered different phrasing, a different name signed at the bottom, a reference to a daughter's wedding dowry that had nothing to do with anything I'd written. Some merchant's private business, tangled up in a robbery that had nothing to do with me, a coincidence cruel enough to stop my heart for a full minute over nothing at all."This isn't mine," I said, and my voice came out unsteady with the aftershoc

SierraI noticed the change before I could name it. Kairo lingering too long in doorways. Watching me cross a room like he was checking for something. A question asked twice, worded differently the second time.I finally cornered him about it in his study."You've been strange with me," I said."Strange how.""Watchful. Like you're waiting for me to slip up.""I've had a lot on my mind. The investigation. The border reports.""It feels like it's about me."He didn't answer that. I decided if something had shifted between us, I might as well say the thing I'd been holding back."There's something I need to tell you. About Liriel."His expression closed off. "What about her.""I don't think she's the friend she pretends to be. I think she's dangerous, and I think you're too close to her to see it.""That's a serious accusation.""I know how it sounds.""Do you? Because it sounds like jealousy." His voice stayed level, but there was an edge under it. "I've known Liriel since we were chil

SierraI spread everything out on the floor of my chamber at midnight. Every scrap I'd gathered in six months, laid out in candlelight, refusing to form a plan no matter how many times I moved the pieces around.The rough map of Glendale's northern estate, drawn from memory and Dennet's descriptions. The guard rotation. The ten-minute gap between midnight and dawn. A route out I'd sketched a dozen times and trusted less each time I looked at it.I sat back and made myself look at it honestly.It wasn't enough.A gap in a rotation that might not even exist anymore. No confirmed way out once I was inside with a screaming infant in my arms. Training that let me land a hit on Fenris in a controlled ring, and no idea if that would mean anything against real wolves hunting me in the dark.I could get myself killed. Worse, I could get Aurora killed.I sat with that a long time before I made myself face what I'd been avoiding. I needed help. Real help, not scraps gathered in secret. And there

KairoElara brought the broth again that evening, setting it down with a small, apologetic smile that had become its own kind of ritual over the past two weeks."Sierra's occupied," she said. "She asked me to bring this instead.""Occupied with what?""I'm not sure, my Prince. She didn't say."I nodded and let it go, the way I'd let it go every evening since the stables, since I'd stood in that study and watched her refuse to explain a single thing about a man I'd never heard of before Liriel mentioned him. Elara left, and I sat alone with a bowl of broth I didn't touch, the same way Sierra used to scold me for not touching it, except now there was no one across the table to scold me at all.I told myself this was fine. I told myself a great many things were fine, most evenings, and believed roughly half of them.I found her in the corridor the next morning, and the conversation that followed lasted less than a minute."You're up early," I said."Training.""Fenris mentioned you've pr

SierraI collapsed during morning training, and I didn't even see it coming.One moment I was moving through a evasion drill Fenris had run me through a dozen times before, my feet finding the pattern automatically, and the next the world tilted sideways and the ground rushed up to meet me before I'd even registered the dizziness building behind my eyes."Sierra!" Fenris was at my side before I'd fully hit the dirt, his hands steadying my shoulders, his voice sharp with alarm in a way I'd never heard from him before. "Sierra, look at me.""I'm fine," I managed, though the words came out thin and unconvincing even to my own ears. "I just—""You're not fine. You're grey." He was already lifting me, ignoring my protest, calling for someone to fetch the healer before I could argue him out of it.The healer's examination room felt smaller than it had the last time I'd been there, right after the poisoning, the memory of that night pressing uncomfortably close as she checked my pulse, my br