Rejected by Her Mate Claimed by Four Alphas novel Chapter 209

CHAPTER 196-1

Clara’s POV

I sat on that bench for a long time after Lucien left. My hands had stopped shaking, but I could still taste

him on my lips. Still feel the way my body had responded to his touch without my permission.

The worst part wasn’t that he’d kissed me. The worst part was that I’d kissed him back and I loved every

second of it.

Oh goddess! Why must I be in this dilemma?

When Darius finally found me, I was staring at the fountain like it held all the answers to my problems. The

sound of his footsteps on the gravel made my heart race with guilt,

“There you are,” he said, settling beside me on the bench. “I was starting to worry.”

“Just needed some air,” I said, not looking at him. My voice sounded hollow even to my own ears.

“How did it go with Lucien?”

I could feel his eyes on me, studying my face in the moonlight. Something in his voice told me he already suspected. The way he asked wasn’t casual curiosity. It was the tone of someone who already knew the

answer but wanted to hear it anyway.

The silence stretched between us while I tried to find words that wouldn’t destroy everything. But there were no safe words for what had happened.

“Fine. Just business stuff,” I finally managed.

“Business stuff that required a private meeting in the gardens?” His voice was controlled, but I caught the edge underneath. The careful way he was speaking, like he was holding back something much bigger.

I finally looked at him, and immediately regretted it. His blue eyes were watching me with that intense focus that missed nothing. He could read me like an open book, and I knew my guilt was written all over my face.

“It was nothing important.”

But Darius knew me too well. I could see he wasn’t buying my weak excuse. The way he was reading the tension in my shoulders, the careful way I was holding myself, the guilt I was trying so hard to hide. His jaw was tight, his posture rigid. He was already putting the pieces together.

“Clara.” His voice was firm now, demanding. Not asking anymore. “What happened?”

My stomach twisted into knots. I opened my mouth to lie again, but something in his eyes stopped me. The hurt that was already there. The disappointment. He deserved the truth, even if it would hurt us both.

Even if it would destroy us.

“He kissed me,” I said quietly.

S CLAFTERI******

The words hung in the air between us like a death sentence. I watched Darius’s face change, saw the

moment when my confession hit him like a physical blow. His eyes went wide, then narrowed. His hands

clenched into fists on his knees.

“He what?” His voice was dangerously low.

“He kissed me. And he said…” I took a shaky breath, knowing this would make it worse. “He said I was his

mate.”

Darius went completely still. The kind of stillness that came right before an explosion. When he spoke again, his voice had turned cold in a way that made my blood freeze.

“And what did you do?”

The question I’d been dreading. The one that would change everything between us. The one that would either save us or destroy us completely.

“I kissed him back,” I whispered.

Silence. Heavy and suffocating. I watched emotions flash across Darius’s face like lightning. Shock. Hurt. Anger. Disappointment. And underneath it all, something that looked like betrayal.

“You kissed him back,” he repeated, like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard. Like he was testing the words to see if they would make sense.

“Yes.”

“Why?” The single word came out harsh, raw. Like it had been ripped from his throat.

“I don’t know. Something about him, about the way he touched me…” I looked down at my hands, unable to meet his eyes. Unable to face the devastation I knew would be there. “It felt like my body wasn’t entirely

under my control.”

“Bullshit.”

My head snapped up. Darius was staring at me with an expression I’d never seen before. Cold fury mixed with something that looked like betrayal. The man who had always looked at me with love and pride now looked at me like I was a stranger.

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