Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the King のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 31 - チャプター 32

Kael's arms tightened around me, the warmth of him doing little to chase away the chill that had settled deep in my chest."Explain," he said. "Slowly. I need to understand exactly what you felt.""The presence has been watching since the valley," I said, working through it as I spoke, piecing together three days of half-understood signals into something that finally made a terrible kind of sense. "Waiting, Elder Mara said. For a choice. But what if the choice was never something I was going to make with words at all? What if the Reckoning was always waiting for this — for the binding to produce something it considers significant enough to finally act?""Then the Reckoning isn't a test of what you're willing to sacrifice," Kael said slowly, the tactical mind working alongside the fear now instead of fighting it. "It's a test of what you're willing to protect.""Or it's not a test at all," I said. "Maybe it's just old. Maybe it's simply what happens automatically when something rare en