Share

Chapter 60

Author: Brandi Rae
last update publish date: 2026-05-19 23:43:48

The house grew quieter after midnight.

Not truly quiet, Nightfall never managed that anymore, but quieter in the way storms sometimes paused before breaking again.

Elara sat at the long kitchen island with both hands wrapped around a mug of tea that had gone cold nearly twenty minutes earlier. Across the room, muted territorial feeds continued rolling beneath the mounted televisions while rain drifted steadily against the dark windows surrounding the compound.

Most of the headlines still carrie
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Locked Chapter

Latest chapter

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha   Chapter 93

    The study became a war room by noon.Not officially.No one said it aloud, and Darius would have probably objected to the word if they had. But the room changed shape around the problem anyway. Maps were pulled from drawers. Legal files appeared in stacks on the desk and the low table near the hearth. Mara claimed the armchair closest to the window and surrounded herself with enough notes to suggest she planned to insult every council tradition in writing personally.Elara sat near the corner of the desk with a cup of tea gone cold between her hands.She had tried reading the summons twice.Both attempts ended in the same place.Blackwater Authority.Council supervisionJurisdictional review.The words were clean and orderly on the page. That made them worse. There was no claw mark in the paper. No raised voice. No hand around her wrist. Just formal language arranging itself into a cageDarius stood near the window, phone pressed to his ear, his injured shoulder held too still beneath

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha   Chapter 92

    The summons arrived the next morning with no drama at all.That was what made Elara dislike it immediately.No alarms. No rushing footsteps. No wolves bursting through doors with urgent voices. Just a black vehicle moving slowly up the snow-cleared drive shortly after breakfast, its tires whispering over packed ice, its windows dark against the white morning.Elara saw it from the library.She had been pretending to read.That had become a concerning habit.The book lay open in her lap, but her attention had wandered somewhere between the lemon tree in the greenhouse and the way Darius had looked across the table the day before, when he admitted he had not wanted to be alone either.Neither did I.Two words.They had followed her into sleep and waited for her when she woke.Now the vehicle rolled to a stop outside the lodge, and the quiet warmth those words had left behind thinned at the edges.A council crest glinted on the door.Elara sat up slowly.Across the room, Mara stopped mid

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha    Chapter 91

    Elara woke to the sound of snow sliding off the roof.For several seconds, she had no idea where she was.The room was dim, washed in the pale gray light of early morning. The fire had burned low in the hearth, leaving a faint orange glow beneath ash. Somewhere outside, wind moved through the trees with a soft, steady hush.She blinked.Then remembered.Darius’s room.The couch beneath her.The blanket was pulled up to her chin.Her neck ached faintly, but not as badly as it would have if she had fallen asleep in the chair. That, she decided, counted as a victory.Across the room, Darius was still asleep.That held her still more than anything else.She had seen him tired before. Exhausted, even. She had seen him with one hand braced against a table, eyes shadowed from too many hours spent carrying problems other people handed him.But this was different.Asleep, he looked younger.Not harmless. Never that. Even half-buried beneath blankets with one shoulder bandaged, there was still

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha   Chapter 90

    Nothing happened.That was the first thing Elara told herself.Nothing dramatic. Nothing reckless. Nothing that would deserve Mara’s eyebrows in the morning, though Mara would probably use them anyway.Darius entered his room first and moved toward the chair near the hearth with the careful stiffness of a man trying to pretend his shoulder did not object to every step. Elara followed more slowly, pausing just inside the door.She had been in his room before, only in passing.Once, when Mara had insisted on delivering reports while Darius was halfway through changing his bandage after an old training injury. Another time, when an urgent message had dragged half the household upstairs during a storm. Never like this.Never because he had asked her to stay.The room was larger than hers, but not ostentatious. Dark wood beams crossed the ceiling. A fire had already been lit, casting low gold light over a wide bed, a desk near the window, and shelves filled with books that looked more used

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha   Chapter 88

    Darius came back from the western patrol just after dusk, and for once, Elara noticed him before he noticed her.That rarely happened.He entered through the side corridor near the mudroom rather than the main hall, speaking quietly with one of the patrol captains as snow melted from the shoulders of his coat. His hair was wind-tousled, his boots wet, his expression composed as it always was when other wolves were watching.Controlled.Functional.Alpha.Elara had been sitting at the long table near the kitchen with Mara, half-listening to a story about a disastrous council dinner from ten years ago while pretending not to sketch the curve of the windows in the margin of an old receipt.She looked up when the door opened.At first, nothing seemed wrong.Darius nodded to the captain. The captain answered. Someone laughed in the kitchen behind her. A kettle hissed on the stove.Then Darius shifted his weight.Barely.A small adjustment, gone almost as soon as it happened.Elara’s pencil

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha   Chapter 87

    The question stayed with Elara after the greenhouse. Where would she have gone first? The coast, she’d said, because the answer had come faster than she expected. Not from careful thought or some buried plan. It had simply risen out of her before she could make it smaller.The coast. A place she had never seen.A place that existed in her mind through stolen books, old atlases, and travel journals left forgotten in the back shelves of the Blackwater library. The authors had described tides, salt air, and endless horizons as if they were ordinary things. Like anyone could wake up one morning and decide to go stand at the edge of the world.Elara had read those passages so many times that certain lines still lived in her memory.She thought about them that evening while sitting near the library fire with her sketchbook open on her knees.Outside, snow fell slowly through the dark. Inside, the lodge was warm and quiet, the kind of quiet that made thoughts louder if she wasn’t careful.S

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha   Chapter 48

    The sanctuary wolves were settled in the west wing by evening. Not guarded like prisoners.Protected like guests.Elara noticed the difference immediately. So did they.Riven stood just inside the doorway of her room, clutching a folded blanket tightly against her chest while one of Nightfall’s ser

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha   Chapter 47

    The atmosphere inside Nightfall shifted before sunrise. Elara felt it the moment she stepped into the main corridor. More guards. More movement. Tension humming beneath the walls, as if the territory itself understood something dangerous had begun.Blackwater's closing of its borders changed everyt

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha   Chapter 45

    The rumors reached Blackwater’s lower ranks before the elders could stop them. That was the problem with fear. It spread faster than authority ever could.Elara learned that two days later when one of Nightfall’s outer patrol wolves arrived carrying reports from neutral trade routes.Darius listene

  • Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha   Chapter 44

    Kael had not slept. Again. The hidden archive beneath Blackwater’s ritual hall remained open around him, ancient texts spread across the stone table while candlelight flickered violently through the underground chamber. Dust coated the air. Old ink. Older secrets. Kael stared at the same passage fo

More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status