All Chapters of Rejected, Then Wanted by My Triplet Alphas: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Lucian's POVI requested the council chamber before dawn, before I could talk myself out of it, before Dorian could catch wind of what I meant to do and stop me the way he had stopped me the first time.The elders filed in slowly, robes still creased from sleep, and I stood in the center of the chamber with my heart hammering against my ribs and waited for all six of them to settle before I spoke."I am formally naming myself father of the child carried by Neva Frost," I said. "Before this council. On the record."Barrow's pen stopped moving. Nobody else made a sound."I understand the law says an unmated Alpha cannot claim an heir," I continued, before anyone could interrupt me with the argument I already knew was coming. "I am asking this council to make an exception. I am the father. My name should be on that claim. Not my father's. Mine.""Lucian." Elder Barrow set his pen down carefully, the way a man sets down something he does not want to accidentally break. "We discussed this

Neva's POVRourke's punishment came dressed as chores, the way it always had. Clear the old pantry by nightfall, his message said, delivered through a maid too nervous to look at me while she repeated it. No explanation. None was ever needed. I had refused his son's contract, and this was how this family answered refusal, with a broom and a task nobody else wanted.I did not mind the work. I minded what the work meant, and I went anyway, because there was nothing left to gain by refusing that too.The old pantry sat at the far end of the servants' corridor, a narrow room I had passed a thousand times in nine years without ever once being sent inside it. Shelves lined three walls, thick with dust and cobwebs and the particular staleness of air that has not moved in a very long time. I started at the near end, working steadily, boxes and broken crockery and jars gone cloudy with age.It was slow going. My back ached from the awkward crouching, my stomach heavier now than it had any righ

Dorian's POVI found my father in his study an hour after the council session, expecting to walk into the aftermath of fury, glass broken against a wall, some target found for his temper before the night was through.Instead I found him pouring a drink with a hand that was not quite steady."You should have crushed that challenge before it ever reached the floor," I said, closing the door behind me. "You had the standing to dismiss it outright. Instead you let Barrow confirm the date in front of two hundred witnesses.""I could not dismiss it without confirming exactly what she accused me of," he said, not looking up from the glass. "Refusing to examine evidence in open session is its own confession, Dorian. You know that as well as I do.""Then why does it look like you are afraid of a servant girl's trial."His hand stilled on the decanter.I had asked the question half in frustration, expecting some sharp correction about respect and standing the way he usually answered anything th

Neva's POVI buried Barrow's note in the lining of my coat, the same hidden seam that had once held nine years of stolen coins, and I did not sleep that night at all. I lay awake with two words turning over and over in my mind, Silver Hollow, until the phrase stopped sounding like a name and started sounding like a warning.By morning I had a plan. If Barrow had died the night before he meant to testify, and if the last thing he had written was a place name pressed into a scrap of paper with a shaking hand, then whatever Silver Hollow was, it mattered enough to kill for. I intended to find out exactly what.The pack library sat two floors above the archive, a long quiet room lined floor to ceiling with histories nobody but Barrow and I had ever bothered to actually read. I started at the shelf marked with the pack's founding records, working my way carefully through volume after volume, searching for any mention of a place I had never once heard spoken aloud in nine years under this r

Neva's POV The great hall had never held this many people, not even at the ascension. Word of a servant girl challenging the ruling family's ledger before the full Council had traveled far beyond Nightpine's borders, and every seat, every inch of standing room along the walls, had filled long before the Council took their places at the head table. I could feel the weight of every stare pressing against my back as I walked the center aisle, the same aisle I had walked in a borrowed blue dress the night three brothers destroyed me in three sentences. I told myself that if I had survived that night, I could survive this one too. "The Council will hear the challenge of Neva Frost," announced Thane, Barrow's replacement, a younger elder who had clearly inherited the seat far sooner than anyone had prepared him for, "regarding the validity of the debt bond currently held against her by the Kane family." I laid it out exactly as I had rehearsed with Barrow, my voice steady even as my