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CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE: The Heart that Howls
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2025-09-22 21:01:27
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Beast Billionaire Claim CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE: The Heart that Howls
The moon hung low and swollen, a molten disc over the scarred Vale. Its light spilled across the fractured city like silver water, softening the black skeletons of broken towers. Zara stood at the edge of the crater that had once been the Hollow’s temple and felt the restless pull of magic threading through the ground. The wind carried the faint tang of ash, but beneath it she smelled something older—rich earth and the sharp musk of wolf. The world was trying to knit itself back together, but the wound was deep.Maxim waited behind her, his heavy steps a quiet drumbeat in the hush. “The council wants an answer by dawn,” he said. His voice held the weight of stone, but she heard the rasp beneath. Even now, he hid pain behind command.“They want a treaty,” Zara murmured. “And a savior to sign it.”“They want a Vale that doesn’t bleed into nightmare,” Maxim replied. “And they think my claws can hold the seams.”She turned, studying him in the moonlight. Scars patterned his face like pale
Beast Billionaire Claim CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR: Bloodlines And Bargains
The council chamber smelled of stone dust and smoke. Moonlight poured through the cracked roof in pale streams, illuminating the rubble that had once been the Vale’s throne room. The great seat of power was gone, its marble pillars shattered and burned, but tonight it had been reborn as a place of uneasy diplomacy.Maxim stood at the center of the broken hall, a figure of shadow and silver. The Beast inside him prowled just beneath the surface, restless at the scent of so many rival alphas. Their eyes followed his every breath—measuring, weighing, hunting for weakness. The scars across their faces and necks spoke of wars too long fought, of grudges carved into bone.Zara’s presence at his side steadied him. Her hand brushed his wrist, a fleeting touch that grounded him against the storm of politics and the darker growl that pressed against his ribs. She smelled of pine and magic, the scent of earth after rain.“Remember,” she whispered, low enough only he could hear. “Leadership isn’t
Beast Billionaire Claim CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE: Echoes of the Hollow
The night smelled of damp stone and scorched metal, a reminder that even after weeks of rebuilding, the Vale still bled in places no magic could seal. Maxim walked the fractured courtyard where the Hollow’s fortress once stood, boots sinking slightly into ash-soft earth. Moonlight slid through jagged beams of half-toppled walls, silvering the debris like frost. Every breath he drew carried the ghost of the war—blood, smoke, the faint iron tang of things that refused to die.Zara walked beside him, her coat brushing the soot with each step. Her presence grounded him, but it did not quiet the hum beneath his skin. The Beast stirred, restless. Tonight the air itself felt alive, thick with a charge that didn’t belong to moon or earth.“Do you hear that?” she asked, voice low.Maxim stopped. At first there was only the echo of their footsteps fading into the ruins. Then it came: a faint whisper threading the cracks in the stone. Not words, not quite, more like breath curling against the ed
Beast Billionaire Claim CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY TWO: The Weight of Crowns
The council chamber had no ceiling anymore. Moonlight poured through the gaping hole where a crystal dome once glittered, washing the cracked marble floor in silver and ash. Smoke still rose from the far edges of the Vale, curling against the night like ghosts refusing to leave.Maxim stood at the center of the ruined hall, boots planted on a mosaic of his family crest now shattered into a thousand fractured fangs. Around him, the survivors of war gathered in a rough circle—pack alphas with soot-stained coats, witches with weary eyes, human allies still smelling of burned iron. They had come to speak of rebuilding, but their voices carried the weight of something heavier.A crown.“We need a leader,” said Elder Thane of the Northfangs, his fur-lined cloak singed from the last siege. “Not a warlord. Not a savior. A ruler who can bind the packs before we tear each other apart.” His gaze settled on Maxim like a hammer striking stone. “You.”The word hung in the smoke like a curse. Maxim
Beast Billionaire Claim CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY ONE: Ashes Remember
The Vale smelled of wet stone and cinders. Smoke still drifted in slow, bitter curls from the shattered spires, carrying the sting of a war that refused to end even in silence. Maxim stepped across a blackened courtyard, his boots sinking into soot that once paved the grand approach to the palace. Each step left a print, a brief shape before wind and ash swallowed it whole. The Beast inside him prowled at the edges of his thoughts, restless but subdued, as if the ruins themselves demanded a quieter kind of rage.Zara walked beside him, her cloak brushing against fallen beams streaked with moonlight. She kept her hand near his, not clinging, just close enough for warmth. Neither spoke for a long while. Words felt too small for the ghosts that lingered here.A cracked archway opened into the palace’s central hall—or what remained of it. The marble floor was fractured like a spider’s web. Light from the waning moon poured through a hole in the ceiling, silvering the wreckage. Maxim pause
Beast Billionaire Claim CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY: Crown of Flame, Crown of Fang
The Vale no longer had a heart. Where the palace once towered in arrogant splendor, only a crater of blackened stone remained. Ash drifted across the dawn like tired snow, soft enough to make the ruins seem peaceful if one didn’t look too closely at the splintered bones beneath. Maxim Vale stood at the rim of the hollow and breathed in the smoke of a kingdom’s ending.The wind carried faint sparks from dying fires. Each ember burned his lungs with the memory of Ruby’s last scream, the Hollow’s poison burning out of her in a spiral of crimson flame. She was gone—truly gone—but her ruin lingered in the air, in the cracks of the earth, in the eyes of those who had survived. Victory had no taste except ash.Behind him, the survivors gathered in hesitant clusters. Blood-bound warriors, witches, merchants, children who had hidden through the night—they looked to him as if he were both savior and threat. Some had swords drawn though the battle was finished, their fear sharper than steel. Oth
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