Todos los capítulos de MY MATE REJECTED ME ON OUR WEDDING NIGHT. NINE MONTHS...: Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 40

Roman left before dawn, and I stood at the edge of the training field watching the combined force assemble in the gray half-light, Ashwood and Cade wolves standing shoulder to shoulder for the first time in generations, uneasy but unified, at least for now, at least against the threat big enough to demand it.Kane found me there, dressed for battle, something steadier in his bearing than I'd seen from him since he arrived."I wanted to see them before I left," he said. "In case—""Don't," I said, quiet. "Don't finish that sentence. Go see them. Come back and finish it properly."He almost smiled, tired and grateful. "Fair enough."I watched him go into the house, and a few minutes later Roman found me instead, already armored, already carrying the particular stillness he wore before violence, the one that made him feel like a stranger even after everything between us."I meant what I said," he told me. "The moment you're needed, I send for you.""I know.""I need you to actually belie

I held the command as long as I could, every wolf in that valley frozen mid-motion, muscles straining against a will they couldn't overpower, and felt the cost of it settle into me like a physical weight, something enormous pressing against the inside of my skull.Be careful, my wolf said, it sounded urgent now,and there was no softness left in it. This isn't free. You can't hold this forever.I know, I told her, gritting through it. I just need enough time.Roman was still pinned beneath Draven, both of them frozen in the exact position the command had caught them, and I forced myself down the ridge toward them, my legs unsteady beneath a body that had never carried this kind of power before, every step costing more than the last."Release him," I said, my voice carrying strangely in the suspended silence, no longer entirely my own, something older and heavier moving underneath it. "Now."Draven's jaws remained locked around Roman's shoulder, straining, fighting the command with a wi

The first day passed in exhausted silence, both camps holding position across the valley, wolves on both sides watching each other with the wary stillness of people who'd nearly died an hour into what might still become a war.Ivy kept me in bed through sheer force of will, and I let her, my body too drained to argue even when my mind kept circling back to Draven's words, kept circling back to the wolves in that valley who'd had no say in what their bodies did for the better part of an hour.Be very careful, my wolf said, quiet now, none of her usual sharpness left in it. He wasn't wrong. That's what's eating at you, isn't it. Not that he threatened us. That he had a point.I know, I told her. I don't know what to do with that yet.Roman visited twice that first day, his shoulder bandaged, his expression carefully composed in front of me even though I could see the exhaustion underneath it. Kane visited once, briefer, awkward in a way that told me he still hadn't found solid footing i

Cade territory felt strange in the days after the valley emptied, too quiet in a way that unsettled me more than the tension leading up to the battle ever had. Wolves who had been ready to die for each other now moved through the pack house like the whole thing had been a fever dream, exhausted and subdued, uncertain how to fold what had happened back into the shape of ordinary life.Roman spent most of those first days in council with his own elders, working through the practical aftermath, wounded to tend, alliances to formalize properly now that the crisis had passed, supply lines to rebuild after weeks of preparation had drained resources meant for the coming winter. I saw him only in fragments, tired and distracted, though he never once let a day pass without finding me for at least a few minutes, however briefly.Kane stayed longer than I expected him to, longer, I suspected, than his own council was entirely comfortable with, splitting his time between careful visits with the t

Kane arrived unannounced eight days after Corinne's letters went out, dust still on his boots, urgency written across every line of his posture in a way that pulled me out of the nursery before Ivy had even finished announcing him. "I found something," he said, before I'd fully closed the door behind me. "In Ashwood's own archive. Something Bertrand never showed me, something buried deeper than the page my council used to justify the rejection." "Show me." He produced a leather folio, worn soft with age, and laid it open on the table between us with careful, reverent hands. "It's a journal," he said. "Or what's left of one. Belonged to an Ashwood Alpha four generations back, the one who presided over the war Corinne and Ferris both described, though from wildly different angles. I found it wedged behind a false panel in the old records hall, the same room where I found the page that started all of this." I leaned over the fragile pages, the handwriting cramped and faded, decades