Approved for Her Rejected for Me novel Chapter 40

Chapter 7

Wayne went rigid as pain ripped through his gut without warning. He doubled over, one hand pressed to his

stomach, the color draining from his face.

The curse was back. No medicine ever touched it. Nothing ever had, except the medicinal brew I used to

make for him by hand.

Fighting through the pain, he reached for his phone and called my number. A recorded voice came on the

line, flat and impersonal. “We’re sorry. This number has been disconnected.”

Wayne stared at the screen for a long moment. Then he called Ethan, his voice leaving no room for

argument.

“Pull her bank records and find out where she is. Then send someone to bring her back. I don’t care how.”

Half an hour later, Ethan arrived at the packhouse, his expression carefully composed.

“Alpha, something’s come up. Every account under the Luna’s name, not a single transaction in seven years. Every transfer you ever sent her is still sitting there, untouched.”

“And Silver Moon’s records office has already been contacted. Elise Anderson’s pack registry has been permanently erased and her territory rights revoked on the direct order of the Alpha King of the Northern

Pack.”

Wayne shoved back from the table so hard that the chair behind him crashed to the floor.

His vision swam, his pulse pounding against his ribs. No financial trail. Pack ties severed. Twelve Northern

Pack Rolls-Royces.

Each fact hit like a blow he hadn’t seen coming. He had always thought of me as someone who existed only

because he allowed it, a stray with nowhere else to go.

But I hadn’t just left. I’d left without leaving him a single thread to pull.

Kaven came down the stairs in a dress that had been taken in at the waist, Elise’s dress cut to fit someone

else, with the Moonstone Necklace hanging at her throat.

“Wayne, I think it still needs to be taken in a little more. Can you have someone fix it again?”

Wayne’s eyes went from the necklace to the dress, both of them Elise’s, both of them wrong on someone else’s body. Nausea surged up his throat.

He crossed the room in three strides, ripped the necklace from Kaven’s neck, and rounded on her. “Who told you you could touch her things? Take it off. Now.”

Kaven’s legs buckled under the weight of his aura and she crumpled to the floor.

One month later. Every chandelier in the top-floor ballroom of The Obsidian Grand Hotel blazed against the night beyond the windows.

Chapter 7

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The Northern Pack had taken over the entire floor for the occasion, a Royal Presentation Gala grand enough to make every Alpha and Luna in the Northern Alliance take notice.

Wayne arrived at the ballroom entrance with Kaven on his arm, despite not being invited.

In the month since I left, Silver Moon had been hemorrhaging, stripped from the Northern Alliance, every trade and defense treaty severed, losses mounting faster than the pack could absorb them.

Pack members were walking out. The warriors were barely holding the line. Border territory was slipping away week by week.

Through all of it, he had never stopped looking for me. But every lead went nowhere, as if something were deliberately keeping him out.

Sleep had abandoned him weeks ago. The council of elders had issued an ultimatum, if he couldn’t pull Silver Moon back from the edge, they would strip him of his title and remove him from the pack.

Tonight was his last remaining move, but beneath the calculation, there was something else driving him here. A certainty he couldn’t explain. I would be there.

He made it into the hall without anyone turning him away and didn’t immediately go looking for the Alpha King. Instead, he scanned the entrance and the edges of the room, his eyes moving over every server’s face, certain he’d find mine among them.

He still believed it, that I had nowhere to go, that I was out there somewhere scraping by on the edges of Silver Moon City.

Kaven tugged at his arm. “Wayne, what are you looking at? Can we please just go find the Alpha King?”

Wayne pulled his arm free. “Be quiet and don’t move.”

At exactly eight o’clock, the whole room fell silent as a single spotlight found the spiral staircase on the

upper floor.

Victor appeared at the top of the staircase in a black custom suit and paused, then turned and held out his

hand with the kind of deliberate grace that commanded every eye in the room.

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