The Alpha Who was Rejected by His Mate
Halda arrived at midday, unarmed, unaccompanied except for a single younger woman who kept close to her elbow the entire walk from the gate—not the woman who'd died in the servants' passage, but another face with the same sharp features, another branch of a family that had apparently learned to carry its grief in twos and threes across generations.
She stood at the foot of the long table where visiting alphas usually sat, and Kael did not make her wait the way pride might once have insisted.
"Sit," he said, and pulled out the chair himself.
Halda studied him for a long moment before she did, something unreadable moving behind her sharp old eyes, and when she finally lowered herself into the