All Chapters of Married to the Alpha Who Killed My Father: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Elara Thorne turned thirteen on a bright autumn morning much like the one that had marked her birth, and Aria found herself standing at the edge of the same garden where so much of her own difficult history had unfolded, watching her daughter practice sword forms with Garrick's careful, patient instruction, and marveling at how thoroughly a decade could reshape even the most vivid, formative memories.The intervening years had passed with the particular swift blur that defined parenthood's middle stretch, Elara growing from curious toddler into thoughtful, increasingly capable young woman, Tobias and his younger sister Wren (named, Mira had explained with gentle sentiment, after the Frostbourne healer who'd attended Damion's final days) growing alongside her in the easy, inseparable friendship that had defined their childhood from its earliest days.Three territories' alliance had settled into a comfortable, lasting institution rather than carefully maintained political achievement, t

Three more years slipped by, and Elara turned sixteen with the quiet, unshowy confidence of someone who had already decided what kind of person she intended to be. She trained with Garrick at dawn, sat in on joint Council sessions beside her mother in the afternoons, and spent her evenings in the archive, the same low-ceilinged stone room where Aria had once found a crescent mark and begun unraveling a decade of lies.It was in that archive that Rurik collapsed.He had been showing her how the old records were cross-indexed, a lesson he'd insisted on giving personally despite the stiffness in his hands and the gray tinge that had crept into his face over the previous winter, when he simply stopped mid-sentence, reached for the edge of the table, and folded to the floor. Elara's shout brought Garrick running. Within the hour the healer had pronounced it his heart, and by nightfall the whole compound had gone quiet in the particular way a household does when it understands that somethin

They carried the little wooden bird up to Rurik's chamber, all of them, Ronan still in his mud-stained cloak because he refused to waste the time to change. The healer met them at the door with her arms folded and a protest ready. One look at Kade's face and she stepped aside.Rurik was sitting up when they came in. He had clearly heard the commotion and guessed that something had broken open. Elara crossed to the bed and put the slip of paper in his hand without a word.He read it once. Then he lowered it to the blanket and looked at nothing in particular for so long that Aria thought his heart had failed him again."Rurik," Kade said quietly."I told you I had been afraid to say one thing for six weeks." The old advisor's voice was dry as paper. "That was only half of it. The other half I've carried for sixteen years."No one moved. Outside the window the afternoon light was going thin and gold."The day Damion was judged," Rurik said, "wh

Aria found her at the low stone wall in the garden, where the dark had settled blue and the first stars were out. Elara had her back to the house and the wooden bird in her lap. She didn't turn when the gate creaked."You've already decided," Aria said."Since the braid." Elara still didn't turn. "I'm sorry. I know what it sounds like.""It sounds like courage." Aria sat beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched. "It also sounds exactly like me, the night I decided to carry a vial into my own wedding. I'd convinced myself the only way to settle the thing was to walk into it alone.""You walked into it alone because everyone who loved you was lying to you." Elara finally looked at her. In the dusk her eyes were Kade's, grey and steady. "I'm not lying to you. I'm telling you what I'm going to do while you can still help me do it properly."Aria's throat tightened. She had braced for a girl running toward danger. She had not braced for one asking for company.Her own mother h

Elara felt the men in the trees long before she saw them. Brennan's riders kept a quarter mile back and a little uphill, so quiet that the only sign of them was the way the birds went still and then began again behind her. She did not look round. Her mother had taught her that much.The Voss road wound up through the oaks into thin grey light. She had ridden it on the first of every month since she was twelve, and she knew where the frost lay longest and where the hill would open and show the valley her grandfather had once ruled. This morning the beauty of it felt like an insult. The silver pin in her braid was cold against her scalp, and the little wooden bird rode against her ribs, light as nothing.If Garrick's whistle sounds, drop to the floor and don't think.She came over the rise and saw the memorial garden spread out below her, the old headstones in their careful rows, the small stone chapel at its edge. A man was sitting on the low wall beside