Semua Bab Stepbrother’s Obsession: Claimed By The Triplet Alphas: Bab 131 - Bab 140

Duskmere didn’t sleep that night.Again.We moved through the halls like ghosts who still remembered what it meant to be hunted. Every candle re-lit. Every ward checked. Reinforced. Etched again with bleeding hands and splintered will.I didn’t sleep either.Not with Kaia unconscious in one room, Aelira silent in another, and that voice—her voice—still crackling in the air like it had permission to breathe my name.“She’s escalating,” Asher muttered as he finished reinforcing the last mirror ward in the eastern stairwell. “Whatever’s coming—whatever she’s building—it’s almost done.”“She’s not building,” I said. “She’s remembering.”He turned to me. “What does that mean?”I held up the shard of obsidian from the catacombs. The same symbol from the parchment now carved into the stone, the glow still fresh like it hadn’t stopped breathing since I touched it.“She wasn’t waiting to win,” I whispered. “She was waiting to be remembered. That’s why she marked the children. That’s why she se

Rowan’s breath was shallow. Too shallow. The kind you didn’t hear—you felt it, if you were close enough to count ribs and time and prayers. Asher laid him down on the stone, blood trailing from his mouth in threads that didn’t match the wounds. I pressed my fingers to his neck. It's still warm. Still there. Barely. “He’s tether-sick,” Asher said. I nodded. “But not hers anymore.” “No,” he said quietly. “Yours.” I froze. Then, I looked down—and saw it. A thread. Thin. Crimson. Tied to Rowan’s wrist. The other end? Wrapped around mine. My breath caught. Not metaphor. Not vision. Real. Asher reached for it, and it burned him. Not me. I held still. Heart thundering. “She tied him to me?” “No,” he said slowly. “You did.” He was right. I didn’t know when. Or how. But something inside me had reacted—to the blast, to the rupture, to the echo of her voice—and it reached out. Anchored. Bound him back. “I didn’t mean to,” I whispered. “I know,” he said, but the tightnes

The Hollow didn’t breathe.It waited.And I didn’t know how to walk through a place that once knew me and now watched me like I was a trespasser. The halls that had once flared with sigils and memory now pulsed dull and slow—like veins on the verge of clotting.I passed the old threshold into the map room.Not war room. Not anymore.Because war had shape.This was something else.Corrin stood over the table, palms flat, spine like stone. The dagger lay between us all like a question we already knew the answer to. Everyone had gathered—Kaia, Aelira, Asher, even Demian. The old guards. The new marked.And Rowan.He didn’t stand.But he watched.And I felt it again—the ghost of the thread that used to bind us.Not severed.Dormant.He hadn’t forgiven me.And I hadn’t forgiven myself.But he still came.That mattered more than I wanted to admit.“Asher,” Corrin said, breaking the silence. “Tell them.”I turned to him, and he met my eyes like the blade knew both our names now.He spoke low

We didn’t crown a new leader.Didn’t build a throne.Didn’t bow.Instead, we got to work.And maybe that was better.Maybe that was what rebuilding meant—not replacing the center, but learning how to spin without one.There were questions, of course.There always are when the world forgets its shape.But no more prophecies. No omens. No pre-written maps.Only hands.And hands could be trusted, at least more than fate ever could.---I stood at the river’s edge the next morning, where the last of the Mirror Water had run dry.It hadn’t bled silver in weeks.Now, it was just water. Cold. Clean.Mortal.Aelira stood beside me, her hair pulled back in rough braids, wrists still faintly shimmering with the ghosts of burned threads. She looked older now. Not aged—weathered. Like a shoreline after storm season.“There’s a bend farther upstream,” she said quietly. “Good for building.”“For the city?”“For something. Doesn’t have to be a city. Could be a school. A sanctuary. A place where no o

The first storm hit on the fifty-seventh night.Not a metaphor. Not a myth.Rain like fists. Thunder-like warning. Wind that didn’t howl—it accused me.We didn’t panic. Not like before. There was no screaming, no scrambling. Just quick hands, faster thinking. Tarps pulled. Buckets placed. Children tucked close and cajoled with half-funny songs about frogs in boots and skies with leaky ceilings.I stood in the center of it all—barefoot, soaked to the ribs, laughing like I wasn’t scared.Because I was scared.But I wasn’t alone.Demian handed me a shawl that smelled like burnt sugar and lavender. I let him wrap it around my shoulders.“You’re still shivering,” he said.“I think I forgot how to be dry.”“Let me teach you again.”The way he said it—casual, easy—broke open something beneath my collarbone. Something I didn’t have words for yet.Maybe I’d never have them.Maybe that was okay.---The next morning, we rebuilt what washed away.The old bench by the river? Gone. Corrin carved a