All Chapters of Rejected By My Alpha Mate, Claimed By The Cursed Lycan King : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Elara's POVThe hooded figure disappeared into the tree line before anyone in the courtyard could give chase. For a few long, chaotic seconds, nobody seemed to know whether to pursue him or tend to Bram. He had gone down hard against the stone, blood soaking fast through the shoulder of his leathers."Someone get Nyra," Kael shouted, still gripping my arm. He positioned himself between me and the scattering riders even as his eyes tracked every movement in the courtyard for a second attack. "Soren, get the gates secured. Nobody leaves until we understand what just happened."Soren was already moving, barking orders at the guards. Within moments the courtyard shifted from chaos into something more controlled, the riders were held at the edges under careful watch. Bram was carried inside by two of his own men. Nyra arrived fast enough that her healer's satchel was already open before she reached him."He'll live," Nyra said after a tense few minutes of work. She pressed a cloth hard

Elara's POVI found Kael and Nyra still bent over the old text when I came looking for them. The fire had burned low in the hearth, and something about the careful, grim way they both looked up when I entered told me whatever they'd discovered wasn't going to let me sleep easily that night either."Tell me," I said, sitting down across from them and bracing myself for whatever came next.Kael explained it slowly. Mathis's confession about the hooded stranger. The phrase _the old cause_. And Nyra's discovery that the same words appeared in the records detailing Wren's story, tied to a group that had apparently believed the Moon Heir's bloodline was dangerous enough to be sealed away rather than restored, whatever the cost to the cursed Lycans who might have found their cure through it."They think I shouldn't exist," I said slowly. The weight of it settled strange and heavy in my chest. It was different from Mathis's fear of losing influence. Different even from rival kingdoms wanti

Ryker's POVThe letter arrived at a time when I'd stopped expecting to hear from Elara at all, and I read it twice through before the full weight of what she was asking settled properly into my chest, questions about my mother's arrival in the pack, about a ring with dark stone and silver, about whether my father's ties to Elder Mathis went back further than either of us had first understood.I hadn't told anyone about the letter I'd found, the one that started this whole unraveling, though the memory of it sat with me every day since, my father's calm, unbothered explanation that sentiment didn't protect a pack, that difficult choices rarely felt good in the moment they were made, words I'd once believed carried real wisdom and now recognized as simply a man justifying whatever cruelty served his purposes.Finding answers to Elara's questions meant going somewhere I'd avoided since that conversation in his study, back into the older records our pack kept in the small archive beneath

Elara's POVRyker's second letter arrived three days later, and I read it standing in the library with Kael beside me, the fire crackling low in the hearth while the weight of every revelation settled heavier with each line, my mother's decades of being watched.The arrangement passed down through generations of Ashwood Alphas, and finally, the location of a chapel ruin two days' ride north, where Ryker believed the old cause gathered whenever their decisions required more than a single voice."He's giving us everything," I said, lowering the letter once I'd finished, still trying to absorb the full shape of what it meant. "His father's confession, the arrangement, even the location of their meeting place. He's risking everything to make this right.""He is," Kael agreed, though I could hear the careful caution underneath his voice. "Which is either exactly what it appears to be, a genuine attempt at redemption, or precisely the kind of information someone might feed us if they wante

Elara's POVNyra emerged from the archive two days later with dark circles under her eyes and a stack of brittle pages balanced carefully in her arms, and the moment she set them down on the library table, I could tell from her expression that whatever she'd found wasn't going to make any of us feel more settled about the wedding drawing closer."I found it," she said, smoothing the oldest page flat with careful fingers. "Buried behind the same false panel where I first found Wren's records. Someone clearly didn't want this discovered easily, which tells me it's exactly as significant as I feared."Kael leaned over the table, and I moved to stand beside him, both of us studying the faded script while Nyra explained what she'd pieced together."The old cause didn't kill Wren's Lycan lord to end the bond," she said. "They didn't need to. According to this, a mate bond can be severed before the vows complete through a ritual requiring the blood of someone from the heir's own bloodline,