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Chapter 71
publish date:
2026-05-24 05:10:34
Latest chapter
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 86
Three days later, Elara found herself thinking about the photograph again. Not intentionally. That was the annoying part. She'd be reading and suddenly remember the lake. She'd be walking through the lodge and think about the expression on Darius's face.Not the smile itself. The ease of it. The complete absence of responsibility. The version of Darius that had existed before territory politics, council disputes, and endless reports became permanent fixtures in his life.By the third day, she was beginning to suspect the photograph wasn't actually the problem. Curiosity was.The greenhouse was quiet that afternoon. Snow drifted steadily beyond the glass, softening the mountains into pale shapes beneath a gray winter sky. The warmth inside fogged portions of the windows while the scent of damp earth lingered comfortably in the air. Elara sat at one of the worktables with a sketchbook open in front of her. The page remained mostly blank. Every time she started drawing, her thoughts wan
Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha Chapter 83
The problem with realizing something was impossible to ignore was that it remained impossible to ignore afterward. Elara discovered this the next morning while standing in the kitchen pretending to make tea.The tea had been finished for almost five minutes. Elara was still standing there. thinking
Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha Chapter 81
Elara found the greenhouse three days later. Not because Darius showed it to her, but because she got lost. Technically.The lodge was larger than it looked from the outside, connected to several older structures built into the mountainside over decades of territorial expansion. Most of them weren'
Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha Chapter 80
The lodge stayed quiet long after dinner.Most of the Nightfall wolves had drifted toward their own routines by then. Some disappeared into the game room downstairs. Others settled near the television in one of the common lounges. A few remained outside despite the cold, taking advantage of the cle
Rejected by the Prince, Claimed by the Alpha Chapter 79
The next morning, Elara finally opened one of the sketchbooks.Not because she'd gathered courage.Mostly because she was tired of losing arguments with an inanimate object.She sat cross-legged at the desk in her room, staring at the blank page while sunlight spilled across the snow-covered mounta
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