All Chapters of The Mate Who KIlled Her Family: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Chapter 41ELENAHe left without another word.I heard the door close softly behind him. I heard his footsteps go down the hall, slow and heavy. I felt him through the bond, moving farther away, until he stopped somewhere on the other side of the house and stayed there.And then I was alone with the vial in my hand.I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it. It was so small. No longer than my finger. The glass was still warm from his skin. Inside, his blood looked almost black in the candlelight.Under it, my palm throbbed. The same cut as his. Same length. Same place. A thin line of red.I didn't move for a long time.I had planned for everything. I had planned how to smile at him. How to touch his hand at dinner. How to laugh in the training yard. How to sit beside him on the wall in the evenings and ask him about his childhood, so his wolf would grow calm and soft and trusting. I had planned how I would get his blood on the night of the blood moon. A small cut while training, m

Chapter 43 ELENAI didn't run.I wanted to. Every part of me wanted to turn and fly down those stairs and lock myself in my room. But I knew that's what he wanted. To see me run. To see me afraid.So I stood there and looked back at him.Silas walked toward me slowly. He stopped close. Too close. I could smell him. Cedar and smoke and something sweet underneath, like rotting fruit."Did you hear what you needed to hear?" he asked softly.I didn't answer."Good." He smiled. "Then you know the truth now. You know what kind of man you're tied to." He reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I flinched. His smile only grew. "Go on with your little ritual, Luna. I won't stop you either. Break the bond. Break his heart. Break your own." He leaned closer. "It saves me a lot of work."Then he stepped past me and walked down the stairs, humming.I stood there in the empty hallway with my hand pressed against the hidden vial in my hem. My whole body was shaking.Behind the

Chapter 45KADEThe hut burned for a long time.Warriors came running with buckets from the stream. They threw water on the flames, and the flames hissed and spat and kept burning. By the time the fire died down, there was nothing left but four black stone walls and a pile of smoking ash in the middle.I didn't help them.I walked the edge of the clearing with my head down, breathing in slow and deep. Smoke. Burnt herbs. Burnt wood. Lamp oil, poured over the garden rows on purpose. And under all of it, faint and broken, I found what I was looking for.Krystal.His scent was there. Weak, but there. And mixed into it was something that made my stomach turn.Blood."Kade?" Elena was standing behind me. Her face was black with soot. Her eyes were red. "What is it?""He was here," I said. "He was hurt. And he wasn't alone."There were other smells too. Three. Maybe four. Wolves. But I couldn't tell who. They had rolled in the ashes of the garden, or rubbed something bitter on their fur. So

Chapter 47ELENA "Ghost root," Krystal said.He was sitting up in bed, his ribs wrapped tight, his face still yellow and purple with fading bruises. It had been five days since Kade pulled him out of the river. He could talk now without wincing. He could almost smile."The last of mine burned with the hut," he said. "Everything did. But I've already made most of the mix. I kept it in a jar by the river, buried under a rock, where nobody would find it." He looked at me. "Except the ghost root. Without it, nothing else will work.""Where do I find it?""It only grows under the oldest oaks. Trees that were already old when my grandmother's grandmother was born." He nodded toward the window, where the mountain rose up gray and huge behind the pine forest. "There's a grove of them on the north side of the mountain. Near the top. I've only been there once.""How long to get there?""A day up. A day down. If the weather holds." He paused. "And it has to be dug on a night with no moon. That'

Chapter 49 KADEWe came down off the mountain two days later.Elena had what she needed. On the second night, the night with no moon, I stood guard in the dark while she knelt under the oldest oak tree I had ever seen and dug into the cold earth with her bare hands. I didn't help. I didn't watch. I just stood with my back to her and listened to the sound of the dirt being moved, and every scrape of it felt like a nail going into my chest.When she was done, she wrapped the pale twisted root in a cloth and put it in her pack. She didn't say anything. Neither did I.We didn't talk about the cave. About the fire. About the kiss.I carried the ledger inside my shirt, against my skin, the whole way down.The moment we got home, I locked myself in my study and opened it on my desk.I read every page. Twice. Then a third time.Forty-one payments. Over three months. To eleven different men in Ashford. Hunters, farmers, a blacksmith's apprentice. Some of them were paid to burn barns. Some to