All Chapters of Beneath the cursed moon:The Alpha Rejected Mate : Chapter 21 - Chapter 25

Three maids came at sunset they were , carrying dresses and pins and small pots of things that smelled like flowers and warm oil. They came into the room Sera and I were sharing like they owned it and immediately started pulling things out and laying them on the bed and talking over each other in fast cheerful voices.Sera sat up from where she had been lying and looked at everything spread across the bed and her face broke into the first real smile I had seen from her since she arrived."Oh," she said. Simply. Like that one word was enough.I understood completely.The dress they picked for me was deep blue. Simple but the fabric was soft in a way I had never felt before, then I touched it just to make sure it was real. One of the maids did my hair with quick practiced fingers and pinned it up in a way that left small pieces falling around my face and I stood in front of the small mirror when she was done and barely recognised myself.Sera appeared beside me in deep green, her dark

LYRA'S POVAfter a while I wandered to the playground.I don't know what pulled me there exactly. Maybe I just needed somewhere quiet that wasn't actually quiet — the kind of place where noise existed but none of it was about me.I sat on a low stone wall at the edge of the yard and watched the children running around. Chasing each other. Tumbling. Laughing at things that didn't need to be funny to anyone else. A little girl was trying to get her younger brother to stop eating grass and he was absolutely refusing and she looked so frustrated and so devoted at the same time that I had to press my lips together to stop smiling too wide.I wondered what that felt like.Growing up with space to run. With other children to chase. With grass under your feet and nobody telling you to be smaller or quieter or less.I had grown up with a curtain between my bed and my mother's and the sound of the tin bath being filled on the stove. I had never had a playground. I had never had siblings to be fr

ELIAS'S POVDraven found me just before midday.He came quickly which meant what he had found was not small. He handed me a folded document without a word and I read it standing in the corridor outside Kael's office.By the third line I already knew.Maren. Real name is Maren Voss. No relation to Damien by blood but connected to Ironveil pack for seven years as a covert operative. Trained specifically for infiltration. Three confirmed assignments in that time — all of them involving extracting information from rival packs without detection. Never failed a single one.The dissolved northern pack story was completely fabricated. There was no dissolved northern pack.I folded the document.Draven was watching me with that steady expression of his that meant he had already drawn his own conclusions and was waiting to see if mine matched."Where is she now?" I said."That is the thing," Draven said. "We cannot find her."I was already moving toward Kael's door.KAEL'S POVI read the docume