Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 69

[Malik’s POV]

Dawn broke, and I became the weapon I was born to be.

The estate’s outer wall materialized through morning fog as Theron’s signal flare split the sky—green, confirming the perimeter sentries were down.

I didn’t wait for the light to fade before launching forward, my assault team at my back, moving at a dead sprint toward the gate with a fury that had been building for days and finally, mercifully, had somewhere to go.

The gate guards saw us coming. Two of them managed to draw weapons before my sword found the first throat—a clean, efficient strike that opened his neck from ear to collarbone and dropped him before his partner could process what was happening.

The second died mid-shout, my blade punching through his chest with enough force to pin him against the iron-reinforced wood behind him. I yanked the sword free and kicked the gate inward without breaking stride.

The courtyard erupted into violence.

Order soldiers poured from doorways and defensive positions, armed and organized, responding to the breach with the trained efficiency Theron had warned us about. Professional. Disciplined. Prepared for exactly this assault.

They weren’t prepared for me.

I moved through them with mechanical precision—no hesitation, no mercy, no wasted movement.

Every guard between me and Kira was simply something to destroy, an obstacle to be removed with the minimum effort required before advancing to the next.

My sword carved arcs through the dim morning air, each strike calculated for maximum damage and minimum time.

A throat. A hamstring. A gap between armor plates that my blade found with the instinct of a man who’d been training for combat since he was old enough to hold a weapon.

A cluster of guards formed a defensive line across the courtyard’s far entrance—the doorway leading to the interior, to the stairs, to wherever they’d built the dungeon that held my mate. Six of them, shields locked, spears braced.

I hit the line at full speed. The impact shattered the formation like glass, my shoulder driving through the center shield with enough force to send its bearer crashing into the two behind him. My sword took the left flank guard through the ribs before he could adjust.

The right flank swung at my head—I ducked, felt the blade whistle past my ear, and drove my sword upward through his jaw with a sound I’d remember for the rest of my life and wouldn’t regret for a second of it.

Behind me, Damon’s magic hit the estate’s ward structure like a battering ram. The sound it made was indescribable—a deep, resonant crack that vibrated through the stone walls and the ground beneath my feet, as though the building’s magical skeleton was being ripped apart from the outside.

Silver-black energy cascaded across the walls in visible waves, and the oppressive weight of the suppression field stuttered, flickered, destabilized.

“Wards are fracturing,” Damon’s voice carried across the courtyard, raw with exertion and fury. “Two minutes. Maybe less.”

Two minutes was more than I needed.

I pushed through the interior with three of my wolves at my back, clearing corridors with the brutal efficiency of a team that understood the only objective was speed.

Resistance crumbled—guards who saw what was coming through the hallways toward them made split-second calculations about whether their loyalty to the Order was worth dying for, and most decided it wasn’t. The ones who stood their ground died standing.

Theron’s wolves hit the eastern wing simultaneously, their howls echoing through the estate’s stone corridors as they overwhelmed reinforcement positions and cut off the routes that would have allowed defenders to regroup.

The coordinated assault collapsed the Order’s defensive structure from three directions at once, and within minutes the organized resistance devolved into scattered pockets of wolves fighting individually rather than as a unit.

The stairs to the dungeon were guarded by four wolves who didn’t run. Elite. Positioned specifically to be the last line of defense between the assault force and the prisoner.

They fought with the desperate ferocity of wolves who knew what they were protecting and understood that failure meant something worse than death.

I killed them in under thirty seconds. The first two fell to strikes they never saw—my blade moving faster than their eyes could track in the dim torchlight.

Her eyes opened. Barely—slits of silver beneath lashes heavy with fever and exhaustion. But she saw me.

I watched recognition arrive through the haze of pain and sedation, watched her cracked lips form a shape that was my name before the sound reached me.

“Malik.” A whisper. Broken, barely audible, but carrying more relief than any shout could have contained.

“I’m here.” My voice cracked on both words, the Commander’s composure finally, completely shattered by the sight of her in my arms, alive and ruined and looking at me like I was the only real thing in a world that had been trying to destroy her. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you both.”

Her hand moved—trembling, weak, finding my chest and pressing against it as though confirming I was solid. “The babies, Malik. Are they—please tell me they’re—”

“I have you both. All three of you. You’re safe now, Kira. Hold on for me. Just hold on.”

Her fingers curled into my shirt, and her eyes closed, and the trust in that gesture—the complete, absolute surrender of a woman placing her life and her children’s lives in my hands—was the most sacred thing I’d ever been given.

I carried her toward the stairs, toward the light, toward the exit where our wolves held the perimeter and the dawn was breaking over an estate that had been a prison and was now a ruin.

Behind us, battles raged—Theron’s wolves securing corridors, Malik’s team clearing the remaining resistance.

And deeper in the estate, Damon pushed forward with silver-black magic crackling around his hands, hunting the leadership, hunting the mind behind the cage.

I carried my mate toward freedom and didn’t look back.