All Chapters of Rejected by the Alpha princess : Chapter 21 - Chapter 25

The dust from the collapsing cavern had barely settled before the High Council called an emergency tribunal. The war had shifted from the battlefield back to the surface, inside the stone chambers of the Crescent Pack’s ancestral estate.My uncle, the current regent of the Crescent Pack, sat at the head of the long obsidian table. He was a stern, pragmatic man who had spent the last decade trying to keep our bloodline from fading into obscurity. Now, he looked between Kaelen, who stood like a dark wall at my right flank, and the party that had just entered the chamber.Derek walked in, supported by two elders from the Blackwood Ridge pack. His right arm was bound tightly in a medical sling, his face pale. The black ink had receded from his eyes, leaving him looking human again and entirely pathetic."Lord Regent," Derek began, his voice cracking with a calculated tremor of pain. He didn't look at me; he kept his eyes locked on my uncle. "I know what happened in the sanctum looked like

The ash of the fake Shaman still lingered in the air, but the true stench in the council chamber was Derek’s desperation.With his political play shattered and the illusion of my "obsession" exposed as a cheap glamour, he scrambled backward against the wall. The elders stared at him with disgust. Even his father, Alpha Richard, looked at his son with a mix of fury and profound embarrassment."You absolute fool," Richard hissed, gripping Derek’s good shoulder so hard he nearly tore the fabric. "You dragged our pack into a treasonous lie based on a forged diary? You embarrassed our bloodline in front of the High Council!""It’s not a lie, Father!" Derek shouted, looking around the room for any ally left. He couldn't use the fake diary anymore, so he played his final card. He pointed a trembling finger at me. "She can't marry the Northern Warlord. She can't! Because she is my fated mate!"The chamber went dead silent. A fated mate bond was a biological decree, an match that even the High

The sun hadn’t even cleared the eastern tree line when the bleachers surrounding the obsidian track filled to capacity. Half the territory had driven through the night to witness the proxy war. The obsidian track a massive three-mile loop composed of crushed volcanic glass glinted like a black mirror under the gray dawn light.I stood by the iron railing near the starting line, the cold wind whipping the hem of my leather jacket against my boots.Kaelen arrived first, accompanied by four of his Northern guards. He wore only simple black athletic trousers and a thin shirt that did little to hide the jagged scars cutting across his torso. He looked entirely unaffected by the early morning freeze, his icy blue eyes scanning the crowd with bored detachment.When Derek appeared, a low murmur rippled through the spectators.He had discarded his sling, his right arm braced with a tight compression wrap beneath his tank top. His skin looked sickly pale, almost translucent under the stadium li