All Chapters of Rejected By My Alpha Mate, Claimed By The Cursed Lycan King : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Ryker's POVThe great hall of the Ashwood pack house felt smaller than it used to, and I couldn't figure out if that was because of the crowd gathered for the evening meal or because something inside my own chest had shrunk since the night of the ceremony, tightening a little more every time someone looked at me with a question they were too polite to ask out loud.My father sat across the table, working through a plate of roasted meat like nothing about the last few days had shaken him at all, though I'd learned a long time ago that his calm surface rarely matched whatever was actually turning over in his head, and tonight was no different, because every so often his eyes would flick toward me, measuring, like he was waiting for me to say something he already expected to hear."You've barely touched your food," he said finally, setting down his fork with the kind of deliberate patience that always meant a conversation was coming whether I wanted it or not."I'm not hungry.""You have

Elara's POVThe room Kael led me to sat at the end of a long hallway on the castle's third floor, tall windows overlooking a courtyard garden below, and when he pushed the door open and stepped back to let me enter first, I stopped just inside the threshold, momentarily overwhelmed by how much care had clearly gone into preparing it."This is too much," I said, taking in the soft blue and silver of the bedding, the shelves already lined with books that looked recently added, the small vase of wildflowers sitting on the windowsill that someone must have picked that very morning. "Kael, I don't need all this.""You needed something that felt like yours," he said simply, standing in the doorway rather than following me fully inside, like he was giving me space to claim the room without him crowding it. "I asked the staff to prepare it a few days ago, before we decided to bring you here properly. I wanted you to have somewhere that felt like more than a place you were hiding."Something

Elara's POVLady Vesna arrived on a gray afternoon with a procession large enough that I heard the commotion from my window before Soren ever came to fetch me, a line of dark carriages winding up the stone road toward the castle, banners snapping in the wind that carried the western kingdom's colors, silver and deep violet, unfamiliar against the black and gray I'd grown used to seeing around Nightfall Hollow."She travels like a queen already," Nyra muttered, standing beside me at the window, arms crossed as she watched the procession draw closer. "Subtlety has never been one of Vesna's strengths.""Should I be down there to greet her?""Kael will greet her first, as is proper. You'll be introduced once the formal welcome is finished." Nyra glanced at me, taking in the deep blue dress Freya had helped me choose that morning, simple but well made, nothing like the elaborate gowns I imagined a woman like Vesna traveled with. "You look every bit the part, whatever that's worth to you ri

Elara's POVThe full moon rose two nights later, and I felt the change in Kael before I ever saw it, a restlessness that crept into him over the course of the afternoon, His hands flexing at his sides during a meeting with visiting border guards, his voice growing shorter and more clipped as the hours wore on toward evening."You should stay in the castle tonight," he told me, finding me in the library where I'd been trying and failing to focus on the text Nyra had left for me. "I don't know what tonight will look like yet, not with everything Nyra's been testing these past weeks. I won't risk you being anywhere near me if it goes wrong.""I'm not hiding in my room while you go through this alone," I said, closing the book and standing to face him. "You said yourself the bond responds to intention. If there's a chance being near me helps, even a little, doesn't it make sense for me to be there?""And if it doesn't help? If I lose control the way I have every full moon for the past d

Elara's POVLady Vesna requested a private audience with me on the morning of her departure, and though every instinct told me to decline, curiosity and something like stubborn courage won out instead, so I met her in the small sitting room off the eastern courtyard, where sunlight fell warm across the stone floor and made the whole conversation feel almost deceptively peaceful."I wasn't certain you'd agree to see me alone," she said, settling into the chair across from mine with the same effortless grace she carried into every room. "Most people in your position would want witnesses, given how our first conversation went.""I decided I'd rather hear whatever you actually came here to say without an audience watching us both perform for it," I said. "You didn't travel this far just to warn me about bonds burning too bright. That felt like an opening line, not the real point."Something shifted in Vesna's expression, surprise again, the same flicker I'd caught at dinner, like I kept f