Rejected by my Alpha, Claimed by the King의 모든 챕터: 챕터 21 - 챕터 30

Word reaches the palace before they arrive. I'm in the healer's wing when I hear it, a stable hand running through the courtyard shouting for someone to fetch the healers, that riders are coming in fast, that there are wounded.I don't remember deciding to run. I just find myself at the gate, breathless, watching torches move through the dark toward the palace walls.They come in slower than they left. That's the first thing I notice, the horses tired, the formation looser, men slumped in their saddles. I count them without meaning to.Then I see him.He's upright. Moving on his own. But there's blood on him, dark and dried along one sleeve, more of it streaked across his jaw like he wiped his face with the back of a hand that wasn't clean."Kane."His name comes out of me before I remember I'm not supposed address him that way. He hears it anyway, and his head turns, and for one long second across the torchlit courtyard, something in his face changes.He dismounts and I'm moving befo

There are two guards outside the healer's wing the next morning instead of one.I notice it the way I've learned to notice everything in this palace. But by midafternoon there's a third posted near the storerooms, and a fourth pretending to check the courtyard gate every time I step near a window, and for a guard he was really bad at his job. I noticed his act almost immediately."Greta.""Mm." She doesn't look up from the herbs she's sorting."Why are there suddenly guards everywhere I go?"Her hands still for just a second. "For security. That's all I know.""That's not much of an answer, Greta." I sigh tiredly."It's the only one I have to give you." She finally meets my eyes, careful. "Ask him yourself, if it bothers you that much."It sure did. I can't have so many guards watching my every move.I find him in the training yard near evening, running drills with two of his men, and I wait at the edge of it until he calls a break and crosses over to me on his own."Little stray." He

Kane's POV,Briar is off her horse before the stable hands even reach her, already walking toward me across the courtyard like she owns it more than I do."You look terrible," she says, by way of greeting."And good day to you too Briar.""Yeah, sure whatever." She stops in front of me, hands on her hips, studying my face with the particular exhausting scrutiny only she ever bothers with. "What's wrong brother? You look like you just fought two wars and about to fight the third."A stable hand leads her horse away, and she doesn't so much as glance after it. She never has cared much for these things as much as she was supposed to.""I've had a difficult week.""I'm sure you've been through worse" She narrows her eyes. "Soren wrote me. Weeks ago. Something about a woman in the dungeons who unsettled Vaelor." I frown at that."Soren talks too much.""Nope. He talks exactly the right amount. Unlike you who never tells me anything." She grins, and for a moment the whole courtyard feels li

The kitchens are empty this late, just embers glowing in the hearth and a pot of something left simmering for the morning. Briar hops up onto a table like she's done it a hundred times before and pats the space beside her."Sit. Talk.""There's really nothing to talk about." I answer, knowing where she's headed."You said that already. It wasn't convincing the first time either." She swipes a piece of bread off a cooling rack and tears it in half, handing me the bigger piece. "He kissed you. I want details.""How do you even know that?""Your mouth is still swollen. And you keep touching it when you think no one's looking." She grins around a bite of bread. "Also you're terrible at lying. Consider that a warning for the future."Heat crawls up my neck. "It's complicated.""Everything seems to be complicated around here. Even a kiss. That's not an answer." She leans forward, elbows on her knees. "Was it good?""Briar.""That's a yes."I throw the bread at her. She catches it out of the

Briar's mid-story about some disastrous hunting trip from her childhood when the kitchen door opens wider.Kane stands in the doorway, and something about the way he's standing tells me before he says a word that whatever's happened tonight isn't good."There you are," Briar says, unbothered. "Come sit. I'm telling her the one about the boar.""Not tonight."That gets even Briar's attention. She straightens off the table, some of the easy warmth draining out of her face."What happened?"He doesn't answer her. He looks at me instead, and something in his eyes is harder than it was an hour ago, colder in a way that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with fear he's trying not to show."We found the mole," he says.The kitchen goes very quiet."Who?" I ask."A stable hand. Corin. Four months on staff, working nights, no family anyone can trace." His voice stays level, controlled, though I've learned enough about him by now to hear the strain underneath it. "Soren's bringin