All Chapters of Rejected Mate: Rise of the Lycan Princess : Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Atreus POV The meeting was already in progress when I entered. No one announced my arrival. Every conversation in the room died the moment I crossed the threshold. The silence wasn't respect. Not entirely. Fear played a role. Fear usually did. I walked past the long obsidian table without acknowledging anyone. The chamber was carved beneath an old theater abandoned decades ago. Humans believed the building had been condemned after a fire. The truth was considerably more interesting. The theater sat on top of one of the largest Vampire strongholds in North America. And everyone in this room answered to me. At least officially. Unofficially was another matter. Power never eliminated ambition. If anything, it attracted it. Twenty-one vampires occupied seats around the table. Some ancient. Some relatively young. All dangerous. A few were openly hostile. I recognized the expressions immediately. Most of them had been wearing those same expressions for decades. I too

Hannah POV The text message stayed with me. Not because it was threatening. Because it wasn't. That would have been easier. People threatening me made sense. The supernatural world seemed full of individuals who preferred violence over conversation. No. What unsettled me was how casual the message had been. Two words. We heard. Nothing else. No demands. No warnings. Just confirmation. Someone knew. Someone was watching. And they wanted me to know it. I spent the next two days trying not to think about it. Unfortunately, trying not to think about something usually guaranteed the opposite. Work helped. At least during office hours. Emails, meetings, deadlines, and spreadsheets occupied enough of my attention to keep my mind from spiraling. The moment I left the office, however, my thoughts inevitably returned to the same question. Who was looking for me? The answer remained frustratingly unclear. Anton had increased his patrols aroun

Hannah's POV The last few days had been exhausting. Not physically. Emotionally. There was a difference. Physical exhaustion could be solved with sleep. The other kind followed you around. It sat beside you while you worked. It lingered during meals. It waited patiently in the quiet moments. Ever since the attack, my mind refused to settle. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the man on the rooftop. The rifle. The shattered glass. The chaos. And then Atreus. The memory of that fight still felt unreal. I'd known he was dangerous. You didn't survive centuries in the supernatural world by being harmless. But knowing something intellectually and witnessing it firsthand were two entirely different experiences. The man had crossed an entire rooftop in the time it took me to blink. The attacker hadn't even stood a chance. What unsettled me most wasn't the violence. It was how effortless it had looked. Like he'd barely been trying. I sat outside the apartment buildin

Atreus POV I hated elder meetings. That wasn't a recent development. It wasn't even a century-old development. I had hated them for so long that I honestly couldn't remember a time when I hadn't. Nothing useful ever came from gathering the oldest and most stubborn vampires in existence into a single room. They called it governance. I called it organized frustration. The meeting chamber sat beneath one of Los Angeles' oldest buildings, hidden far below human eyes. Thick stone walls surrounded a circular room illuminated by chandeliers that predated electricity. Most of the elders preferred it that way. Ancient creatures had a tendency to cling to ancient habits. Personally, I liked modern lighting. It worked more reliably. I stepped through the carved doors and immediately regretted coming. The entire council was present. Great! That usually meant someone was about to suggest something idiotic. The chamber fell quiet as I entered. Several heads tur

Hannah's POV By the time I finished packing my overnight bag, I had already started regretting agreeing to this. Not because I didn't want answers. I did. Desperately. The lead connected to the Veil was the first real breakthrough we'd had since learning the organization existed. One of Atreus' contacts had intercepted information about a safe house two states away. According to the source, the location had recently been used to track supernatural movements along the West Coast. Including mine. Which meant we couldn't ignore it. The problem wasn't the trip itself. The problem was spending ten hours trapped in a car with Anton and Atreus. Together. In close quarters. Without an escape route. Neither of them had objected when I insisted on coming. Anton because he knew there was no point arguing with me. Atreus because he never seemed interested in telling me what to do. That didn't mean they were happy about the arrangement. Especially Anton. He stood beside the SUV