All Chapters of Rejected, Bound to the Ruthless Alpha: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

“Because Damon isn't your brother by blood.”The words hung in the suffocating air, heavy and jagged, shattering the last remaining illusion Athena had of her past.She stared dumbly at her father, her mind refusing to process the sentence. She looked toward her mother, whose tear-streaked face offered a silent, agonizing confirmation. Then, her eyes snapped across the ruined chamber to where Gerard Kane stood framed in the smoke, a victorious, sadistic smile curling his lips.“No,” Athena whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the chamber. “No, that's not true.”Her father took a tentative step toward her, his hands raised palms-up in a gesture of plea. “Athena, please—”“Don't come near me,” she hissed, backing away sharply until her spine hit the solid, reassuring warmth of Buck’s chest.“You're lying,” she choked out, her breath hitching. “You have to be lying.”“I wish to the moon I were,” her father murmured, pain etching deep lines into his face.Athena shook her h

> “Take back what belongs to you?”> My entire body went completely cold.I stared at the woman standing in the silver light, her stark white hair catching the dim glow, her eyes mirroring the exact same terrifying shade of silver as my own.My father stood heavily behind me. Buck hovered protectively at my side. Damon was still fighting for breath on the stone floor, while Ravi and Hen watched every twitch of the stranger's fingers. But I couldn't hear them over the deafening, frantic rhythm of my own heart.The woman smiled—a cold, beautiful, merciless expression.“You have your mother's eyes,” she whispered.I tightened my white-knuckled grip on the hilt of my sword. “Who are you?”She didn't answer immediately. Instead, her silver gaze slid past me to my father.“You failed,” she accused.My father's jaw hardened into stone. “I protected my daughter.”“You hid her.”“Yes.”“You lied to her.”“To keep her alive.”The woman's eyes snapped back to mine. “And now look at what your pro

“My daughter.”The two words echoed across the ruined courtyard, heavy with a weight that seemed to bend the very air around us.I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even blink.My mother stood only a few meters away. Alive.After twenty-two agonizing years of believing she was nothing more than ash and memory, she was standing in front of me as if time had simply paused, waiting for the exact right moment to return. Her silver eyes were fixed on mine—the identical silver eyes I stared at every morning in the mirror, the same eyes I had spent a lifetime wondering if I had inherited from a woman who died taking a blade for me.My lips trembled, barely able to form the sound. “Mom?”She smiled—a small, heartbreaking smile that cracked through her regal composure. “Yes, Athena.”My knees buckled.Buck’s hand instantly shot out, catching my arm to hold me upright, but I instinctively pulled away from him. Not because I didn't want his touch, but because my reality was fracturin

The entire ruined courtyard plunged into pitch blackness.Not a dim shadow. Not the soft dusk of nightfall.Darkness.It was a suffocating, unnatural void that swallowed the moonlight whole, blinding us instantly. For one terrifying heartbeat, my senses spun out of control—I couldn't see Buck, Eddie, my mother, or the crumbling archways.Around me, the frantic ring of steel leaving leather echoed through the black."Hold your ground! Form a circle!" Ravi’s voice boomed through the gloom."Athena!" Buck called out, his deep voice laced with sudden panic from somewhere to my left."I’m right here!" I yelled back, extending my arm into the void.SWISH.Something heavy and cold brushed past my linen sleeve. I spun around on instinct, swinging my ancestral dagger in a tight arc.Nothing. My blade sliced through empty air.Then, deep within my soul, Nyx let out a low, vibrating growl."Hold your strike, Little Star," my wolf commanded, her voice steadying my frantic pulse. "Listen."I froze

The earth fractured violently open.I stumbled two steps backward as a brutal tremor ripped through the stone courtyard floor. Deep fissures spider-webbed through the granite beneath my boots, releasing thick plumes of sulfurous subterranean mist.The silver double-crescent mark etched into the earth burned with blinding intensity, its radiant light spreading across the dirt like glowing, divine veins."Athena!" Buck shouted, his voice desperate over the groaning earth.I barely heard him.Something immense was shifting in the dark depths beneath our feet. Something ancient. Something terrifyingly alive.A hand emerged from the yawning abyss.It was neither human nor wolf. Its fingers were long, regal, and covered in shimmering silver runes that pulsed with a rhythm that matched my own pounding heart.I froze in place.Within my soul, Nyx was dead silent. For the first time since my wolf had shattered her dark bindings, she wasn't growling. She wasn't preparing to kill.She was bowing