Chapter 16 The Shadow Matriarch

Chapter Sixteen

The Shadow Matriarch

The heavy, iron-reinforced doors of the Bloodmoon Pack manor slammed shut with a finality that echoed like a death knell through the silent corridors.

True to his absolute alpha word, Dimitrius Mortaga had not let Emmy speak a single word of defense on the agonizing, three-day forced journey back from Caliana’s neutral sanctuary.

The moment they crossed the threshold, Emmy was marched up the winding stone stairs to her old bedchamber.

The shattered oak frame from her previous escape had been entirely replaced with thick, reinforced ash-wood.

“Lock it,” Dimitrius’s gravelly voice commanded down the hallway.

Outside her door, the heavy thud of two purebred elite warriors stepping into position signaled her isolation.

When Emmy rushed to the high arched windows, her vampire sight immediately picked up the silver heat signatures of four more armed scouts stationed on the balcony and the terrace directly below her glass.

The perimeter was entirely airtight.

There was no escaping this house—not with vampire speed, not with her inner wolf’s raw strength.

The low, agonizing throb of Ignisvath’s distant dragon heart resonated through the soul-tether inside her chest, a low hum of distress mirroring her own panic.

Dawn was only a few hours away.

At first light, the elder council would begin the forced severance ritual in the sacred clearing to violently tear the dragon’s claim out of her soul.

I have to talk him out of it, Emmy thought, her jaw tightening as she gripped the cold violet face of the Agatha amulet.

If they perform that ritual, it will kill my spirit.

Using her vampire stealth, Emmy moved silently to her door.

Her delicate fingers reached out, channeling a subtle, careful stream of her grandmother Caliana’s bloodline magic through the lock mechanism.

With a soft, metallic click that bypassed the guards’ enhanced hearing, the heavy latch slid back.

She cracked the door just a fraction of an inch, slipping into the dark shadows of the corridor like a phantom.

She glided toward the master wing of the manor, determined to find her father and force him to look past his stubborn, protective blindness.

But as she approached the heavy double doors of Dimitrius’s private chambers, the latch clicked open ahead of her.

Emmy instinctively melted into the deep shadows behind a towering stone pillar, her crimson-tinted vision sharpening.

A woman stepped out of the Alpha’s room, closing the door behind her with a quiet, heartbreaking care.

Emmy’s breath caught.

She wasn’t a member of the Bloodmoon Pack; her scent was entirely unique—soft, like crushed clover and early morning dew, completely distinct from the heavy, aggressive pine-scents of the local wolves.

The woman had long, cascading waves of rich brown hair that caught the dim candlelight of the hallway, and as she lifted her head, Emmy saw eyes of a striking, brilliant blue—twin pools of profound, unspoken sorrow.

“Who are you?” Emmy whispered, stepping out of the shadows, her voice a low murmur that barely carried across the stone floor.

The woman gasped slightly, her small, delicate hand instantly flying to press flat against her lower abdomen in a sudden, fiercely protective instinct.

She looked at Emmy, her blue eyes wide as she recognized the rare, hybrid traits of the Alpha’s daughter.

“I am Elena,” the woman answered, her voice soft, melodic, and carrying a fragile tremor that pulled at Emmy’s heart.

Emmy took a slow step closer, her vampire senses hyper-focusing on the air between them.

“You were in my father’s room. I’ve never seen you in the territory before. Why are you here?”

Elena let out a ragged, trembling breath, her shoulders sagging under a heavy, invisible weight.

She looked back at the closed double doors of Dimitrius’s chamber, a look of profound, agonizing love crossing her features before she turned back to Emmy.

“Because your father is my true mate, Emmy.”

Emmy froze, her mind spinning into immediate disbelief.

“What? My father… he doesn’t have a mate. He loved my mother, Jasmine. He has spent the last twenty years grieving her. He refuses to ever look at another woman.”

“I know,” Elena whispered, a single, hot tear spilling down her cheek, glittering like silver in the twilight.

“The Moon Goddess paired our souls two years ago, when the pack borders first shifted near my old territory. The moment our skin met, the bond sparked.

“I tried… oh, Goddess, Emmy, I tried so hard to get him to love me. I cooked for his warriors, I tended to his old battle wounds, and I stayed by his side in the dark when his blind Lycan vision grew too heavy for his mind to bear.”

Elena’s voice cracked with a devastating vulnerability.

“But he doesn’t want a mate. He looks at me through his black-and-white vision, and all he sees is a threat to the memory of your mother.

“He wants me to leave. Every single day, he tells me to pack my things and go.

“No matter how hard I fight for him, no matter how much of my own soul I give to this bond, he won’t yield.

“He treats his own fated mate like an intruder.”

A profound wave of empathy washed over Emmy’s chest.

She looked at Elena, seeing the exact same tragedy mirrored in this woman’s life that she was currently fighting on her own.

Her father wasn’t just blind in his eyes; his grief had entirely blinded his heart.

He was trying to force Emmy to break her dragon bond because he had spent two years successfully breaking his own fated connection with Elena.

“He’s forcing me into a severance ritual at dawn,” Emmy said softly, her hand drifting to her own chest. “He thinks cutting a soul-bond is the only way to save a life.”

“He thinks he is protecting you because he couldn’t protect Jasmine,” Elena murmured gently, taking a step toward Emmy.

She reached out, her fingers hovering near Emmy’s arm before she hesitated, drawing back.

“But he is wrong.

“Breaking a bond leaves a void that rots the spirit from the inside out. He thinks he is strong for rejecting me, but it is killing his wolf.

“And it is killing me.”

Elena paused, her hand drifting back down to press flat against her abdomen once more.

A sudden, deep shift occurred in the air, and Emmy’s advanced hybrid senses picked up something miraculous.

Beneath Elena’s soft wolf aura, there was a second, tiny heartbeat—fast, vibrant, and carrying the unmistakable, heavy baseline rhythm of the Mortaga Alpha bloodline.

Elena looked up, her blue eyes wide with a terrifying, beautiful secret.

“There is something else, Emmy. A secret that not even your father knows.

“I am pregnant.

“I am carrying his son.”

Emmy’s breath caught completely in her throat, her eyes widening as she stared at Elena’s stomach.

“A son… a true Lycan heir. Why haven’t you told him? If he knew he had a son—”

“If I tell him now, in the state his wolf is in, he will think I am using the child as a shackle to force his hand,” Elena said, her tears flowing freely now.

“He wants me gone by tomorrow’s sunrise. He told me tonight that if I do not leave the territory after your ritual, he will have the guards escort me to the borders himself.

“He won’t look at the child, Emmy.

“His heart is completely locked in stone.”

The absolute cruelty of her father’s stubbornness hit Emmy like a physical blow.

Dimitrius was prepared to dismantle his own family, exile his pregnant fated mate, and violently tear Emmy’s soul apart at dawn, all under the delusion of keeping them safe.

“I won’t let him do this,” Emmy whispered, her amber eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce hybrid resolve that made the Agatha amulet against her chest pulse with a bright, defiant violet light.

“He thinks he can control the tides of the soul because he is the Alpha.

“But he is wrong.

“Elena, do not leave this manor tonight. Stay hidden in the servant’s quarters.”

“Emmy, what are you going to do?” Elena asked, terror and a faint, desperate spark of hope rising in her blue eyes.

“I am going to face him,” Emmy said, her jaw setting into a deadly line as she turned toward the heavy double doors of her father’s room.

“And if he refuses to listen to his daughter, I will force him to listen to the magic of his own bloodlines.”