Semua Bab I Rejected My Mate On Purpose: Bab 11 - Bab 20

I found Mirela in a small garden near the eastern wall, tending a row of herbs with hands that shook slightly but hadn't lost their certainty of movement. She didn't look up when I approached, though I was fairly sure she'd heard me coming long before my shadow fell across her row of plants."I wondered how long it would take you," she said, not unkindly. "Sit, if your legs will let you. Standing over an old woman makes her nervous."I sat on the low stone bench beside her, watching her hands work through the dirt, and found I didn't know how to start the conversation I'd come here for. Eight years of planning had prepared me for confrontations, interrogations, careful lies told to careful people. It hadn't prepared me for this, sitting quietly beside someone who'd actually known my mother as a person instead of a name carved into my grief."You knew Selene was my aunt," I said finally. "Last night, when you named me in the council chamber. You knew, and you didn't say it."Mirela's h

The northern outpost was burning by the time we reached it, flames licking up the side of the watchtower, smoke thick enough to sting even before we crossed the tree line. Ronan didn't slow down. He shifted mid-stride, the rest of the guard following his lead, and I went with them, the mate bond pulling taut and urgent in my chest as we broke into the clearing.The attackers moved like a unit, not a mob, disciplined in a way that told me instantly this wasn't some desperate raid thrown together in a hurry. They fought in pairs, covering each other's blind spots, retreating and regrouping with the kind of coordination I'd only ever seen in wolves trained specifically for it. Eight years of my own training recognized the shape of it immediately, and it made my blood run cold.Ronan tore into the nearest pair without hesitation, and I moved to cover his flank on instinct, catching a blade meant for his back before it landed, twisting the attacker's arm hard enough to hear it break. He ba

Selene looked older than she had in the council chamber, the composed elegance from that first night worn thin by whatever the last few days had cost her. She sat across from us in the healer's tent, hands folded tightly in her lap, and for the first time since I'd met her, she didn't look like a woman in control of the room."I owe you both an explanation," she said, "and I don't have the luxury of time to give it gently.""Start with why you ran," Ronan said, arms crossed, none of the warmth from an hour ago still visible in his posture. "And why an assassin died in my holding cells the same night.""I didn't order that." Selene's voice cracked slightly, the first real emotion I'd seen from her. "I found out he'd been poisoned before he could talk, and I understood immediately that whoever arranged it already suspected I was getting close to answers I wasn't supposed to have. I ran because staying meant becoming the next loose end someone needed to tie off.""That's convenient timin

Kael didn't take long to decide. "I'm not dragging either of you back inside those walls," he said, finally lowering his arms. "Not when I think you're probably right that this is the only version of the next six days that doesn't end in half the pack dead." His eyes moved to Selene, something unreadable passing between them. "But I'm coming with you. Both of you. If we're doing this, we're doing it with someone watching all our backs, not just Wren's." "Ronan trusted you to guard this pack," I said. "Not to help me disappear from it." "Ronan trusted me to protect what matters most to this pack," Kael said. "Right now, that's not a wall or a war council. It's you making it to Thornecrest alive, and it's him not losing everything trying to stop you from getting there." I didn't have an answer for that, so I nodded instead, and the three of us moved into the tree line together, putting distance between ourselves and the walls of Blackthorn territory as quickly as the dark allowed.

We carried Kael two miles before Selene called a stop at an old hunting waystation half swallowed by ivy, a single stone room with a collapsed roof that at least broke the wind. Ronan laid him down carefully on a bed of cloaks while the healer worked, and I stood at the doorway watching the tree line, half convinced every shadow was about to produce another wave of wolves wearing my nightmare's symbol on their arms."He's stable," the healer said eventually, sitting back on her heels. "For now. But that mark isn't just decorative scarring. It's woven into him somehow, deeper than skin. I don't have the knowledge to touch it safely.""I do," Selene said quietly, from where she'd been sitting apart from the rest of us, staring at her own hands like she was working up the courage to say something she'd been avoiding for a long time. "Or at least, I know someone did once. My grandmother. Your great-grandmother, Wren, on the Ravenwood side.""What kind of knowledge?" Ronan asked."A severa