All Chapters of The Alpha's Rejected Mate: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

The first shots cut the dark under the ruined overhang.Sienna stayed on Lucas’s left as the forward team opened fire and the two shifting wolves came in low. The unit answered from the tree line. Harris took the right flank with the remaining pair. The space was too tight for clean lines—broken walls, scorched timber, the open loading platform where the crates sat half-unpacked.Lucas moved through the chaos with the same controlled economy he had used at the private-wing doors. The injuries slowed him. They did not stop him. Sienna covered the damaged side, knife work short and final, the bond guiding her when the muzzle flashes erased the shapes around them.One of the handlers tried to reach the radio again. Harris put him down before the second transmission could clear. The remaining human dropped his weapon and tried for the tree line. A scout intercepted him. The two shifted wolves died hard against the base of the platform, taking a loyal pair’s legs out from under them before

They cleared the upper approach with Merrick and Rylan under tight control.Harris met them at the junction, breathing hard, a dismantled charge pack already in the hands of one of his scouts. “Medical wing is clean. The device was under the main support beam—professional work, short timer, disrupted with less than a minute left. Stores are still dark on confirmation. Two teams inside. No find yet.”Lucas did not slow. “Take Merrick. Full restraint, separate holding, continuous watch. Rylan stays with us until the stores are clear. If this sequence has a third marker, I want the tools where I can see them.”Harris transferred Merrick without argument. The former senior went quietly, calculating eyes tracking every exit. Rylan offered no resistance either, only a thin smile that said he was still measuring outcomes.Sienna kept her grip on Rylan’s arm as the reduced group turned toward the stores corridor. The bond carried Lucas’s pain in hard, regular pulses—the thigh and ribs collect

They did not send the signal from the stores.Lucas had the transmitter moved to a secondary maintenance room on the eastern side of the main grounds—close enough to the boundary for a short-range return, far enough from the medical wing and the remaining wounded to limit the damage if the response came in force. Harris swept the room twice. Elena took the outer approaches with a reduced but reliable unit. The surviving handlers from the bay and the ruins were kept isolated and silent.Sienna stood with Lucas while the technician who had cleared the higher charge examined the device. Lucas’s weight was still wrong on the damaged leg. He refused the chair until the work was finished. The bond carried the continuous low drag of pain and the colder focus that had settled over him since the bay.“The frequency is clean,” the technician said. “No secondary trigger that I can find. When you key it, the source will hear whatever you send. If they reply, we will hear that too—on this band onl

Lucas did not give the order to follow at once.He stood at the rear threshold of the signal station and watched the hooded figure move down the coastal path until the bend of rock took it out of direct sight. The bond carried the calculation—risk, the pattern of every previous invitation, the thin strength of the unit still inside the station, the knowledge that the source preferred distance and priced every open road.Sienna waited on his left.“If we take the full unit, they vanish,” she said. “If we go alone, we walk into the same arithmetic they used at the training hall and the stores.”“Yes.” Lucas’s voice was quiet. “The difference is that this is the first time the voice has offered a name instead of another tool. That offer will not survive a heavy approach.”He turned to the senior scout still holding the station. “You stay. Hold the relay. If we are not back on this path by full light, you seal the station, return to Harris, and you do not send a second team after us. Clea

They reached the signal station with Elena between them and the sky already paling toward morning.The scout still holding the relay took one look at Lucas’s leg and Elena’s empty hands and said nothing. He fell in behind them for the walk back to the eastern boundary. No one spoke on the return. The bond carried Lucas’s pain in a low, continuous drag and the colder fact that the hunt for the internal source was over. What remained was the telling.Harris met them at the tree line with a reduced escort and a face that had already read the shape of the outcome. He took Elena under formal restraint without being asked. Sienna kept her place on Lucas’s left until they cleared the inner approaches and the main grounds opened in front of them.The pack knew something had returned before the formal call went out. Wolves gathered along the courtyard and the main hall steps in the thin early light—lower ranks, remaining seniors, the wounded who could still stand. They watched Lucas walk under