All Chapters of The Rejected Plus-Size Mate: Chapter 141 - Chapter 149

Elara’s POV They gave him the seat of honor. Not the chair at the foot of the table where I'd been sitting for three days, but the one at Elias's father's right hand, the carved oak with the cushion, the one reserved for guests of rank. A servant pulled it out for him. Another poured his tea before he'd sat down. "Alpha Pierce," Elias's mother said warmly, patting the cloth beside her. "What a joy. What an honor. We had no idea you were coming, but you are always welcome in this house." "You're too kind, Lady." Nathan slid into the chair with that polished, easy smile of his, the one he used for councils and cameras and women he intended to disappoint. "I couldn't pass through the territory without paying my respects." "Of course, of course. Your father was a dear friend to this pack." "He spoke of you often." I sat very still with my hands folded in my lap, and watched the whole performance. I'd never seen Elias's mother so bright. She laughed at everything Nathan sai

Elara’s povClang!Steel rang against steel, so loud and so close that I felt the vibration in my teeth.The knife that had been streaking toward my heart spun away into the dark, and a second blade, long and gleaming, hung in the air where it had been. A broad shoulder blocked the torchlight. A cloak swept across my vision.I stared."Nathan?"He stood between me and the shadows with a sword in his fist, his chest heaving, his hair wild. He must have run the whole length of the corridor. There was a thin line of sweat at his temple and a fury in his eyes that I had never once seen aimed outward."Get behind me," he said hoarsely.Before I could answer, the alarm went off.It started low, a deep, bone-shaking bell somewhere in the heart of the house, and rose until it screamed through every stone. Doors slammed open. Boots pounded. A man's voice bellowed from the courtyard, raw and frantic: "Intruder! Intruder in the main house! The wards are broken! Seal the gates!"The figure in bla

Elias’s POV I watched Nathan eat breakfast, and I thought about all the ways I could kill him.It was a pleasant exercise. I'd been indulging it for three days. He sat at my father's right hand, buttering a roll with that insufferable calm, laughing at my mother's jokes, accepting second helpings from servants who bowed lower for him than they'd ever bowed for me. The Alpha of Goldstone, a guest of honor in my own house.Project, he'd said. Business.A child could have seen through it. Nathan Pierce had never once in his life left Goldstone for the sake of a contract. He had a dozen clerks for that. He hadn't ridden eight days north out of professional duty. He'd come because she was here.Because Elara was here.My hand tightened around my cup until the porcelain creaked.I knew him. I had known him for years. I knew that he never let a chance slip through his fingers, and that he had been staring at my wife across a ballroom for the better part of a month like a starving man at a b

Elias’s POV "Kidnapped."The word came out of me in a whisper, and then it came out again as a roar."*Kidnapped?*"The guard in front of me flinched. He was young, barely twenty, with a tremor in his hands and mud on his boots, and he'd run the length of the house to find me. He'd found me in my wife's empty room, on my knees, with a black glove crushed in my fist."Yes, my lord," he stammered. "A patrol came to the kitchen gate not an hour ago. They said they'd seen men take the lady through the lower village. Hooded men. They said she'd been carried off to the old health center, my lord. By force.""By *whom?*""They didn't know. They only said that the lady was taken, and that you were needed."I stood. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else.*The health center.* The place my parents had forbidden us to go. The place my wife had asked to see.*Taken.*It was impossible. She had locked her door from the inside. There had been no struggle, no noise. And yet the room was em

Elara’s povI didn't go back to the mansion that morning.Not at first. There was too much to do.Elias worked beside me through the dawn and well into the day. He didn't ask what to do. He simply watched me for a few minutes, learned the rhythm of the ward, and then began to move through it with the same quiet, grim efficiency he brought to everything. He hauled water. He scrubbed floors on his hands and knees with his sleeves pushed up past his elbows. He carried a boy twice his own weight in blankets from the cart that arrived, at his order, loaded with food and medicine from the pack's own stores.Nobody had ever seen the Alpha's son on his knees in a gutter. They stared. Then, slowly, one by one, they started to help.By midday, the hall smelled of lye instead of rot. By afternoon, a pair of local healers had arrived, summoned from villages up and down the ridge, with their own satchels and their own tired, hopeful faces. I handed my notes to the eldest and showed the younger one