All Chapters of The Mate Who Marked Me : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Chapter 11: WREN'S POV The hours between the training yard and whatever waited for me that evening stretched out longer than I knew what to do with, my body sore in ways that felt almost good, a clean ache instead of the hollow, grief-soaked exhaustion I'd carried through most of the last eight months. I washed the sweat and dirt from the morning off in the small stone basin in my quarters, changed into the one other set of clothes Silas had packed for me, and sat on the edge of the bed for a long while, not quite ready to face the rest of the day. Hunger eventually won out over reluctance. I hadn't eaten more than a few bites since the tray left outside my door the day before, and my stomach had started making its displeasure known loudly enough that I couldn't ignore it any longer. I made my way toward what I remembered of the packhouse's main hall, following the low hum of voices and the smell of something roasting that made my mouth water despite everything else sitting unreso

Chapter 13: KADE'S POVI left the training yard that morning with more questions than I'd carried into it.She'd fought well, better than her frustration let her admit, but it wasn't the training that stayed lodged in my mind through the rest of the day. It was the promise I'd made her the night before, sitting across from her in my study with the candles burning low, watching her absorb pieces of a truth I'd only partially given her. I'd told her what I knew about the invasion, about the chaos of that night, about the fact that her mother hadn't died the way the official pack accounts claimed. What I hadn't told her, because I still didn't fully understand it myself, was why the official accounts existed at all, carefully constructed, deliberately incomplete, in a way that felt less like the natural confusion of war and more like something built on purpose to obscure a specific truth.I owed her the rest of it. And before I gave her anything more, I needed to be certain of what I ac

WREN'S POVI found out about the restriction from Bram, of all people, three days after the archive revelations had settled into something heavier than grief — something closer to purpose. I'd asked him, casually, where the nearest town was, thinking I might walk the distance and post a letter to Silas myself instead of trusting it to supply runners who might read it before it ever left the territory.He'd gone quiet in a way that wasn't like him at all."You can't leave the packhouse grounds without an escort," he said finally, not meeting my eyes. "Alpha's order. Been in place since you arrived.""An escort. For walking to a town.""For walking anywhere past the training yard, actually." He winced, like he could feel how that landed before I even said anything. "There's a boundary. Guards know it. You're not supposed to cross it without someone cleared to go with you."I didn't wait to hear the rest of his explanation. I found Kade in the study an hour later, standing over a map wit

KADE'S POVI kept my word to Selwyn the morning after the elders' meal, though it cost me more than I expected to descend those archive stairs a second time, the memory of what I'd found there before still sitting unresolved and heavy in my chest. Torrin had the records waiting when I arrived, the same thick ledgers pulled from their shelves, though he'd added several more to the pile this time, older ones I hadn't thought to request during my first pass through the invasion files."Figured you'd be back," he said, by way of greeting. "And figured the elders wouldn't be satisfied with half the picture, not after last night. Word travels fast in a hall full of wolves pretending not to listen.""How much of it reached you already?""Enough." He set the last ledger down with more care than the others, an older, more weathered binding that looked like it predated most of what we'd already gone through. "This one's the original strategic planning file. Predates the invasion itself by sever

WREN'S POVI found her three days later, near the same covered walkway where I'd first overheard the rumor of the last hybrid, the herbs strung along the stone archways filling the narrow space with the same faint, dry scent that had accompanied that first cold shock of understanding what the pack was already whispering about me. Ivy stood with two other wolves I didn't recognize, her back half turned toward the garden entrance, her voice pitched low but not quite low enough, the particular carelessness of someone who'd grown comfortable enough in her cruelty to stop checking carefully for an audience."...and you have to wonder what he's actually protecting the pack from, keeping her so close instead of letting the elders handle it the way tradition says they should. My grandmother used to say a wolf who breaks his own laws for one exception usually has a reason he's not saying out loud.""Maybe he just wants her," one of the other wolves offered, uncertain, clearly less invested in