Nobela ni Peace

Aurora.A surge of fury roared through my veins as I stared at Victoria standing composed in the center of the armed squad.She looked entirely untouched by the night’s violence, her beige trench coat without a single speck of dust while Eleanor’s life was hanging in the balance somewhere across the city.The urge to storm forward and demand answers clawed at my throat, but the sudden, rigid tightness around her eyes stopped the sharp words before they could leave my lips. It wasn’t the cold triumph of a villain backing us into a corner; it was the quiet, hollow exhaustion of a woman who had been carrying a crushing weight for far too long.“Stand down,” Victoria ordered, her voice cutting through the hum of the garage with sharp, undeniable authority. “Lower your weapons.”For a long, agonizing beat, nobody moved in the bright glar

Roland.The pitch-black subterranean space swallowed every familiar reference point in an instant, leaving me blind, but my wolf didn’t need light to read a room.I could hear the rhythmic crunch of rubber soles against concrete... dozens of footsteps arranged far too evenly to be a chaotic ambush. They moved in synchronized intervals, spaced like a military tactical formation rather than a mob of rogue mercenaries.On pure instinct, before my eyes could even adapt to the gloom, I shoved Aurora squarely behind my back, using my frame to shield her from whatever was closing in from the shadows.“Roland, stay still,” my father’s voice cut through the dark from twenty feet behind us, low and urgent as his own boots shifted on the gravelly floor. “Don’t draw a weapon.”“Who is it?” I rasped, my ears tracking the subtle rustl

Aurora.The heavy, dead silence that followed Adrian’s brutal confession felt as though all the air had been sucked straight out of the service tunnel.Roland stood entirely frozen beside me, his jaw slack and his golden eyes staring at his father like the concrete floor had dissolved right out from under his boots. Everything he had believed about his duty, his family and the terrifying shadow of Magnus hunting us all season had just been exposed as a grotesque performance staged by his own blood.My phone vibrated violently against my palm a second time, the sharp buzzer cutting through the thick shock like a rusty blade.I looked down at the pale screen, reading the text twice before the words actually registered in my numb brain. It wasn’t a threat, nor was it another cold demand from Victoria’s usual contact number. It was a precise set of geographic coordinates followed by a t

Roland.The sharp, rhythmic beep of the disconnected line echoed in my ears louder than the words Victoria had just spoken.For the first time all night, the true threat facing us wasn’t a shadowy stranger hiding in a subterranean parking garage, nor was it a smooth-talking monster like Magnus making empty speeches in a service tunnel. It was the sickening possibility that my own father... the man who had built our territory, raised me to lead and dictated every law I lived by... was the monster we actually needed protection from.I slowly lowered the smartphone from my ear, my knuckles turning white as I turned my body around to face Adrian directly.“What did she mean, Dad?” I asked, my voice dropping into a raspy, dangerous register while my wolf growled low in my chest. “What have you been hiding from us?”I watched my father’s face closely

Roland.I snatched the phone straight out of Aurora’s hand before her fingers could press the answer icon. Some raw, primal instinct inside me refused to let Victoria’s voice reach her directly without me standing between them first.I took a deep breath, fighting down the hot rage surging beneath my ribs and slid my thumb across the screen. I put the caller on speaker, holding the device between Aurora and me while my father and Arthur closed in around us in absolute silence.“Victoria,” I said, keeping my tone smooth and even, forcing a quiet composure I didn't feel in the slightest.“Roland! Thank goodness you finally picked up,” Victoria’s voice floated through the small speaker, bright, warm, and entirely normal. “I’ve been trying to reach you and Aurora for twenty minutes. The media outlet just dropped a draft of the morning press release an

Aurora.I read the signature three times, half-expecting the blue ink to blur and rearrange itself into the name of a total stranger.Victoria.It made zero sense. Victoria was my literary agent and Roland’s senior publicist. She was the sharp woman who had spent the entire season orchestrating our fake relationship, standing right beside us through media leaks, press conferences, and endless scandal damage control.She had brought me hot coffee during three-in-the-morning deadline crunches and held my hand in the hospital waiting room when Roland got hurt during pre-season training. The image of her standing in a shadowy Council facility, issuing death threats against Roland’s mother, felt like a bizarre glitch in reality.“Victoria?” Roland repeated, his body going completely rigid beside me as if he had just been struck by lightning.