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Chapter 27: The Traitor

작가: TheRunesmith
last update 게시일: 2026-06-10 10:24:34

The betrayal didn't come from the shadows; it came from the heart of Ironveil.

Kael was the one who found the letter.

He had the sharpened instincts of a man who had spent three years managing a slow-motion collapse, and he'd been tracking the pack's internal rhythms with the cold focus of a hawk since Vex's exile. He knew the first strike was rarely the last.

He dropped the parchment onto the war room table at midnight. The candle flames flickered in the draft.

He said only one word.

"Reva."
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    Aldric walked into the war room, looked at our faces, and knew immediately.There was no guilt, no flinch, no sudden hesitation, no frantic attempt to construct a mask. He was simply a very old man reading a room and understanding in three seconds what had taken us three hours of agonizing over ciphers to piece together. He sat down in the nearest heavy oak chair with the exhausted certainty of someone who had been waiting for a specific, dreaded conversation for a very long time."The advisor," he said, his voice raspy. "In Zoran's household. The silver eyes.""Yes," Caius said, his voice like grinding stones."His name is Vel," Aldric said, staring at the scarred surface of the table. "He is my brother."The war room went dead silent. The only sound was the faint hiss of a torch in the corridor."Your brother," Caius repeated."Half-brother. We share a mother. He is six years my senior. He has been with Zoran for fourteen years, not ten. Your source is slightly off on the timeline."

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    Eating in the Great Hall with the pack was a different kind of warfare.Nobody touched me. Nobody had to. Warfare in a wolf pack rarely required physical contact once you had mastered the full arsenal of predatory looks, pointed silences, and strategic positioning.I was given a seat at the far end

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