Lahat ng Kabanata ng To Rule the Tsar Alpha's Heart: Kabanata 111 - Kabanata 120

(Ace’s POV)Hessa’s lie had a shape. It sat on my desk like a shadow.I’d replayed the breach a hundred times, the east-grid rune stuttering for exactly thirty-seven seconds, the sublayer sensors blinking dead as if they’d been sung to sleep, the rogue vampire slipping through our perimeter like a ghost in a red coat. It should’ve been impossible. It wasn’t. Someone had bled pack-only permissions on the inner ward.Hessa had those permissions.By the time Viktor traced the sabotage thread down to an admin token issued in her name, masked, bounced, laundered through a dead relay, I wasn’t surprised, just emptied out. Betrayal is never the knife you don’t see coming; it’s the knife you handed someone to cut bread.I told the guards to stand down, to let Hessa come to me. I didn’t want an audience. I wanted answers I could fit into my hands.Night folded itself over the mansion. I sat in my office with the lights low and the window open to the pine and the river, the city’s tin heartbeat

Ace’s POVWhen she vanished, she didn’t leave a trace, only the scent. That damn scent.It clung to the room like smoke that refused to fade. Roses and rain.And underneath it, the memory of something I couldn’t scrub out of my chest no matter how many times I’d tried.Dennise.I stood there long after she’d gone, the open window breathing cold air against the back of my neck. My wolf had stopped pacing, but he hadn’t sat down. He was watching me from inside, ears forward, eyes burning like coals in the dark.He wasn’t angry. He was… waiting.“Go after her. Follow the scent.She’s ours.”“But I couldn’t. Not this time.”Because the moment I moved, the questions would follow. And the one thing I didn’t have the strength to do right now was lie to my own people about what just walked out that window.I sank back into my chair. The desk was still skewed from when I’d nearly torn it apart earlier, papers scattered like the aftermath of a confession.The matchbox she’d left on the corner sa

Valentina’s POVIt began with a whisper. The warning, the failed control, the stubbornness. It's all the same, just like Erika, Vlad’s younger daughter. She revolted against me and Vlad sided with her. That revolt almost got me killed and now, am I repeating the history? No. I won’t allow it. I live long enough to know when to give up. Dennise will bow to me whether she likes it or not. All I need to do is wait and observe. Voices whispered to me to kill her or I’ll regret later. The voice didn’t come from outside, not the wind through the window, not Maria’s cautious steps in the corridor but inside me, right where the old hunger usually slept. It was faint at first, almost delicate, like the soft pull of silk against my ribs. Then it grew stronger.It was her. Dennise will destroy my plan if I can’t hold her neck tight. I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair, letting the sensation ripple through the bond. It shouldn’t have existed not like this. I’d designed it to fade, to

(Valentina’s POV)There are a dozen ways to move through a ruin and keep your dignity intact. I preferred the one that left no footprints on the dust.The carriage had been gone only an hour. The horses were returned to their stalls, their flanks glossy with sweat and old fear. I had left the crypt with the taste of my father’s breath still in my mouth, a fossilized thing, sour and ancient , and the echo of his words in my ears: When the sun rises inside the monster, it doesn’t burn the world. It burns you.I used the echo like an ornament. Let it hang there, ugly, and remind me of what I already knew: fear is a tool only the weak hide beneath. The strong wear it as armor and call it wisdom.The Bathory mansion rose from the river mist like an accusation. It looked the way our name sounded in the mouths of peasants, formidable, inevitable, carved from the kind of stone that remembers every atrocity. The courtyard was pristine; the staff had tended to it. That was the first calculation

Ace’s POVThe mountain wind was cruel tonight.It carried the scent of ash, fur, and the dying faith of a dozen tribes who once called themselves kings of the wild.I stood on the ridge overlooking the valley, the torchlight below flickering like embers struggling against the cold. The moon hung low, pale, indifferent, watching the last meeting of free shifters unfold beneath it.They were all here.What was left of them, anyway.Bears, wolves, panthers, hawks, the leaders who hadn’t yet been hunted or turned. Their ranks were thin. Too thin. Once, we would have filled an entire valley with our voices. Now, our council could fit inside a forgotten cavern.I pulled my cloak tighter around me and started down the slope. My men followed silent, disciplined, every movement precise. They knew the importance of tonight. They knew what was at stake.At the base of the valley, the entrance to the old temple gaped like a wound in the earth. The stone doors were carved with the sigils of our