Todos os capítulos de REJECTED ONCE, CLAIMED TWICE: Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

Closer Than the Wall The verdict on the timber came back four days later, and it wasn't the answer anyone wanted. "It's genuine," Farron said, laying his findings out on the council table with none of his usual dry humor. "The carving style matches confirmed southern pack work. Whoever made this mark knew exactly how to make it look authentic, because it is authentic. Someone with real access to that pack's tools and traditions carved it." "That doesn't mean the pack ordered the raid," Xavier said, though Ivy could hear the strain in how carefully he chose the words. "No. It means someone connected to that pack did. Which doesn't narrow things down as much as any of us would like." Ivy sat through the rest of the council session in careful stillness. But something had shifted since the last meeting. Fewer eyes lingered on her with open suspicion now. A few held something closer to respect. It wasn't enough to feel safe. But it was something. She found Xavier alone afterward, in

Questions for an Old WolfKestrel had been gone eight days before Damian noticed the pattern in it. It wasn't unusual, on its own, for the old advisor to disappear for stretches at a time, pack business took him to neighboring territories often enough that his absences rarely drew comment. But eight days was longer than his usual errands warranted, and when Damian finally asked after him directly, the answer he got from the household staff was vague in a way that struck him, in hindsight, as deliberately so."Trade business, he said. North, I believe."North.Damian stood in the corridor outside his father's study turning that single word over until it stopped feeling like a coincidence and started feeling like something else entirely.He found Kestrel in the advisor's own quarters that evening, newly returned, unpacking a travel bag with the unhurried calm of a man who had nothing to hide, which only made Damian more certain that he did."You've been gone a while," Damian said, closi

Something EarnedThree weeks passed without another attack, and the waiting, Ivy discovered, was its own particular kind of exhausting.The watchers Xavier had assigned never fully left her sight, though they'd grown skilled enough at their work that she often forgot they were there. She'd stopped arguing about it somewhere around the second week. There was, she'd come to understand, no version of arguing with Xavier's caution that actually won.The investigation into the trader had gone nowhere useful. Whoever had used Kestrel's likeness had done it well enough that no other witness could add anything beyond the same vague description Farron had already gathered."It doesn't mean we've lost it," Xavier told her, the two of them walking the training yard's perimeter in the last light of a long day. "It means whoever's behind this is more careful than most. That's not nothing to know.""It doesn't feel like knowing much.""No. It doesn't."They walked in silence for a while, comfortabl

A Word From the Old LawsXavier read the courier's message four times before he trusted himself to believe what it said.The study had gone dark around him while he sat with it, the candle burned low, and he hadn't noticed the hour passing the way he usually noticed everything, a small, uncomfortable sign of exactly how thoroughly the words on the page had taken hold of his attention.*Bloodline claim.* Two words he hadn't heard spoken aloud since he was young enough to still be learning pack law at his own mentor's knee, back when the old laws had felt like history rather than anything that might ever apply to him directly.A knock at the door pulled him up out of the reading. Farron, unsurprisingly, letting himself in without waiting for permission."You've been in here since dawn," Farron said. "Mara's threatened twice to send food in whether you ask for it or not.""Let her.""That bad."Xavier didn't answer right away, turning the parchment over in his hands as though a different

UninvitedThey were already in the courtyard by the time Ivy and Xavier reached it.Six riders, dismounted, standing in a loose formation that spoke of practiced discipline rather than chaos. Their banner was unfamiliar to Ivy, deep violet, marked with a symbol like a closed eye but the way Silver City's own defenders had gathered around them, wary and tense but not yet openly hostile, told her this wasn't an attack in the way the raid had been. Not yet.At the center of the group stood a woman Ivy's own age, dressed in dark traveling leathers, her bearing unmistakably that of someone used to command. She turned as Xavier approached, and something in her expression sharpened with interest the moment her gaze found Ivy standing at his side."You must be the Lycan King," the woman said. "I am Vesper, of the Nightglass Pack. We come under peace terms, though I understand your watch nearly mistook us for the opposite.""My watch doesn't generally miss riders crossing an active perimeter,