All Chapters of Rejected by My Alpha, Claimed by the Lycan King: Chapter 71 - Chapter 79

Lyra's POVNobody spoke for a long time after Elowen's words.Mira sat motionless on the edge of the bed, staring at her own hands as though they belonged to a stranger. The silver glow beneath her sleeve had faded, but I couldn't stop seeing it."Say that again," she whispered at last. "Please. Slowly.""The Dominion kept a line of royal healers," Elowen said, her voice unsteady. "Women whose touch could mend what ordinary medicine could not. They served the queen, and some say the Heart itself chose them.""And one of them disappeared.""On the night of the fall. She was never found." Elowen lowered herself back into the chair, as if her legs had given out. "Most believed she died with the rest.""Maybe she didn't," Rowan said quietly. "Maybe she hid a child."Mira let out a thin, helpless laugh. "I'm not a princess, Rowan. I'm a girl who talks to dying plants.""Dying plants?" I asked.She flinched, as if she'd said too much."It's nothing," she said. "It's a silly thing.""Mira."

Cassian's POVBy the third morning, the outpost's great hall had become a battlefield with no blades.I stood at the head of the long table and watched the Alphas decide who they were willing to lose. Some argued in low, urgent voices. Others sat apart, staring into the fire, weighing the oaths they'd sworn against the families they'd sworn to protect.War did that. It didn't begin with armies. It began with people doing arithmetic."Two more riders left before dawn," Rowan murmured beside me. "Both headed for the capital.""To pledge to the Council?""Or to beg for terms. Hard to tell the difference.""It never is." I rubbed the back of my neck. "How many remain?""Six at the table, if you count Kael's one voice as a pack. Two of them favor us. Two lean toward the Council. The rest are watching which way the wind blows.""Then we have to make the wind blow."Rowan studied me. "You have a plan.""I have evidence." I glanced across the hall to where Lyra sat with Mira and Elowen, the

Lyra's POVWithin a week, the border outpost no longer looked like an outpost.Tents sprawled across the hillside in crooked rows. Smoke curled from a dozen cookfires, and the clang of hammers on steel rang from dawn until dusk. Banners I had never seen before snapped in the wind, Mooncrest silver, the two Alphas who'd stood with us, and the green of Cassian's loyalists, who had slipped out of the capital in twos and threes.By my count, we had nearly nine hundred warriors. Malachar had thousands.I tried not to think about that as I crossed the training yard."Again," Darius barked. "And this time, hold your guard like you actually want to keep your head."A row of recruits stumbled through the drill, farm boys and grandmothers, a baker still dusted with flour. Their wooden swords clacked clumsily against one another."You're not looking at your opponent's feet," Darius told a lanky boy of sixteen. "Feet tell you where the sword is going before the sword does.""Yes, sir.""Don't ca

Cassian's POVOn the sixth day of waiting, I stopped pretending I wasn't counting hours.I stood on the northern rampart at dawn, a map weighted open beneath my hands, and tried to concentrate on the watchtowers. Three along the ridge. Two more in the river valley. A line of palisades running east to west, still raw and yellow where the timber had been cut.It wasn't much to hold a border with. It would have to be."The east tower can be manned by Thursday," Rowan said, joining me at the parapet. "Mooncrest's archers are already on the way.""And the river crossing?""Darius wants to flood the ford. Slow any cavalry that tries to approach.""Good." I rubbed my eyes. "What about the fallback line?""Two miles back, along the old trade road. Not pretty, but defensible." Rowan studied my face. "You haven't slept.""Neither have you.""I'm not the one who looks like a ghost." He leaned against the stone beside me. "She'll write, Cassian. Seven days. That's what we agreed.""I know.""The