All Chapters of The Alpha Rejected Me, His Father Claimed Me: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Dawn came grey and cold. Mist pooled in the valley below the ridge as Aeloria stood at the treeline, watching the fortress walls fade from black to stone beneath the growing light.She hadn't slept, and it showed in the way her hands wouldn't quite settle, fire sparking faint and unbidden at her fingertips every few minutes despite her best efforts to keep it banked. Somewhere beyond those walls, Calista was waiting for a rescue that might not come in time. Two days back along the road they'd traveled, Kaelen was probably still awake too, and probably still furious with her."Positions," Corvin said quietly, and the small group around him moved without a word, twenty of Valthor's soldiers peeling off toward the main road while the rest of them circled wide toward the eastern gap.Nyra moved among the small group heading for the gap, checking bandages, checking blades, offering quiet words to anyone whose hands shook too visibly. She paused longest beside Aeloria, pressing something

Two hundred soldiers thundered across the last stretch of open ground before the ridge, and Kaelen rode at their head with Aeloria's note still folded inside his coat, worn soft at the creases from three days of being read and reread for a fifth meaning that never appeared.He'd found it before dawn on the first morning, wound still aching, temper already fraying past anything reasonable. Thessaly had said the only thing that mattered, standing in his study doorway with her arms wrapped tight around herself: *bring her home.* Wystan had found the fortress on a map so old its ink had faded to brown, tapping the spot with a scholar's quiet certainty. Elga had refused to be left behind and ridden with them as far as the border anyway, her stubbornness the only thing keeping Kaelen's temper from fraying apart entirely on the worst stretches of the ride. None of it had felt fast enough. Every hour of it had felt, to Kaelen, like a personal accounting of everything he hadn't done in time.

"Then tell me," Aeloria said, fire still burning bright and ready in her palms. "If you're so certain I don't understand what I am, prove it. Tell me."Voss hesitated, calculation working behind his expression, weighing what telling her might cost against what silence had cost him tonight."Why tell me at all? You could simply say nothing and walk away, the same as you've done every time before.""Because I am tired, Aeloria, in a way I suspect you're only beginning to understand yourself. Thirty years of careful silence wears on a person eventually, however necessary that silence seemed at the time." His composure slipped, just for a breath, something worn and human showing through before he smoothed it away again. "And because I rather think you'll hate me more thoroughly with the truth than with your guesses. I find I would prefer to be hated accurately.""Very well. You've earned that much, at least, for tracking me this far." He straightened, ignoring the blood soaking throug

"Stay with me." Aeloria's hands pressed hard against the wound, fire gathering beneath her palms though exhaustion still lived deep in her bones from the last time she'd done this. "You don't get to do this. Not after everything.""Funny." Valthor's voice came out thin, wet, terrible to hear. "I always thought if I finally did something worth remembering, I'd get to enjoy the credit for it.""You'll enjoy it plenty once you stop dying long enough to hear people say it.""I'll hold you to that."His eyes fluttered closed, and Aeloria pushed harder, fire pouring into the wound the same way it had for Kaelen, chasing after whatever cruel magic Voss's weapon had left behind. It fought her differently this time; colder, deeper, built specifically to resist exactly what she was trying to do.Somewhere behind her, stone ground against stone. A growl rolled through the chamber, low and wrong, and Aeloria didn't look up. She couldn't afford to. Whatever was happening at the platform, Valthor's

It took three days for Valthor to speak a full sentence, and another two before he could sit upright without help, and through all of it Aeloria watched him change in ways that had nothing to do with the visible scar spreading dark across his chest.Silver Hollow's household had ridden out to meet them halfway home, alerted by riders sent ahead the morning after the stronghold fell, and Thessaly had thrown herself at Aeloria so hard they'd both nearly gone over, sobbing with relief before she'd even fully processed that everyone she'd been afraid for had actually survived. Wystan had immediately commandeered a wagon bed for Valthor's care, refusing to let the journey home jostle him more than absolutely necessary, and Elga had ridden the last stretch beside the wagon in near silence, her old eyes never quite leaving his face.On the fourth morning, back at Silver Hollow and strong enough by his own reckoning to manage without help, Valthor tried to stand on his own for the first time