All Chapters of Rejected By My Alpha, Chosen By His Ruthless Brother. : Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

The eyes moved.They came steady through the black space between the trees, unhurried, and the branches parted around whatever carried them without so much as a rustle, as though the forest itself understood better than to get in the way. Aurora's pulse hammered against her throat, some old animal instinct screaming at her to run even as her feet refused to obey it, rooted to the stone stairs like the pressure itself had nailed her boots in place. Beside her, she could hear Selene's breathing gone shallow and fast, and behind them both, the collective silence of five hundred kneeling wolves pressed down harder than the strange weight in the air ever could have on its own."Someone answer me," Kael said, louder this time, though his voice had lost every ounce of its usual command. "Who is that?"Nobody moved to answer him. Nobody could. The pressure bearing down on the clearing had pinned five hundred wolves to their knees, and Aurora, still upright only because some stubborn part

"You're really leaving tonight."Elder Bram's voice rasped from the narrow bed where he'd spent the better part of a year now, his body failing faster than any healer's remedy could slow. Aurora knelt beside him, one hand wrapped around his frail fingers, the small satchel she'd packed already slung over her shoulder."I don't have much choice," she said quietly. "It isn't safe for me here anymore, not after tonight.""It was never as safe as any of us pretended it was," he said. He coughed, a wet, rattling sound that made her chest ache to hear. "Your mother used to say the same thing. Right before she stopped saying much of anything at all."Aurora went still. "You knew my mother?" "Better than most. She trusted very few people in this pack, and for good reason, as it turned out." His eyes, milky with age but still sharp underneath it, found hers in the dim candlelight. "She trusted me enough to tell me things she never told anyone else. Things I promised to carry to my grave

"Close ranks," Darius said quietly, and the guards flanking them shifted formation without a word of question, moving as one body around a man they clearly obeyed on instinct rather than orders.Aurora had spent her whole life inside a single pack's walls, and had thought Moonfang's warriors were impressive in their discipline. Watching Darius's men move now, she understood for the first time how small her whole frame of reference had actually been.The road climbed steadily as they went, and when the trees finally broke open onto open hills, Aurora stopped walking entirely, breath catching in her throat.Kingswood rose out of the mountainside itself, not built beside it but carved into it, towers scraping clouds that had gathered low and heavy over the peaks. Torches lined walls too high to climb and too old to have been built by anyone still living, and even from this distance she could see guards posted at intervals that suggested a fortress prepared for war rather than a simple