Lahat ng Kabanata ng To Rule the Tsar Alpha's Heart: Kabanata 121 - Kabanata 130

Hessa's POVThe night I left Ace’s mansion, the moon was red.Not the soft kind of red, the kind that makes poets write about love or longing but a deep, rusted hue, like something that had bled too much and didn’t know how to stop.I didn’t plan to run. I told myself that. Over and over. I just needed space. Just a breath away from his cold stare, from the silence that had replaced his voice, from the weight of suspicion pressing on me like chains.But when I stood by the window, watching him from afar, Ace, pacing the meeting room, talking to his warriors, his wolf restless under his skin — I knew I couldn’t stay another night.Because every time he looked at me, I saw it.The doubt. The anger.The unspoken “What did you do?” that haunted his eyes.And the worst part was… he was right.I did betray him.Maybe not with intent. Maybe not with the whole truth. But the moment I let Valentina’s messenger in the moment I silenced the alarm in the east wing I’d sealed our fate.My wolf wh

Hessa's POVThe first rule of hiding is silence.The second is scent.The third is knowing when silence isn’t enough.I’d been living by those rules for weeks.The forest had taught me every bend of its spine, every hiss of its breath. I knew which branches cracked under a step, which rivers carried scent the farthest, which winds favored wolves and which betrayed them. I had learned how to vanish from the eyes of men, beasts, and gods.But not from her.I felt it before I saw it that crawling awareness at the back of my neck, the kind that doesn’t belong to hunger or fear but something colder. Watching. Measuring.The scent came next.Barely there. Barely human.Clean. Metallic.Like blood pretending to be perfume.At first, I thought it was a trick of memory. I’d smelled that once long ago, before she became what Valentina made her.Dennise.The name hit like a blade to the ribs.I froze, crouched near a stream, fingers gripping the hilt of my dagger. The air was still, heavy with t

Ace's Point of view“Bathory ruins are step three,” I said finally. “Not step one. But they are on the list. Before that, we weaken her. We make her spread herself thin. Force her to protect too many assets at once.”“Death by a thousand cuts,” Lucas said.“Exactly.”Nyra frowned. “And where does the Cross organization fit into this? They’re not just her puppets. They’ve got their own agenda. They’ve been hunting us long before she decided to play queen.”Alexander nodded slowly. “The human hunters. The virus. The policy side. The politicians who like having a monster under their bed that only eats who they point at.”I grunted. “Cross is a cancer that thinks it’s chemotherapy. They justify everything by calling us the disease.”“So we show their own people what the treatment actually does,” Lucas said. “We make their secrets public. Video, files, testimonies. Expose the labs, the torture, the deals with vampyres. Humans hate feeling like livestock.”Crispin grinned thinly. “Especiall

Dennise's POVMy hands were still trembling when I left the Archives.Not from fear.Not anymore.From clarity.Everything I’d uncovered up to this point, the facilities, the human trafficking, the blood farms, was horrifying. But human evil, even organized evil, was predictable.Valentina’s father, however…He was something else entirely.The idea that his curse was tied to me made bile rise in my throat.I wasn’t just another tool in Valentina’s arsenal.I was the key she needed.The piece she’d been waiting centuries for.The bloodline she’d been trying to restore.The heir she wanted to weaponize.I wiped my hands on my coat, grounding myself.I needed to keep moving.If Valentina sensed my panic, she’d dig into my mind and rip answers from my skull.I exhaled slowly, steadying the mask she believed in so much.And I continued investigating.Cross called this one Sector Nine.The older hunters called it The Garden,because everything inside grew out of metal.It was an underground

Dennise’s POVFlash: panther blood on my hands.Flash: cheetah eyes staring up at me, wide and dying.Flash: claws scraping against concrete, begging for mercy that never came.I swallowed hard.“The more you resist this, the more I wonder,” Valentina said softly. “You didn’t hesitate before. You enjoyed your missions. You were my favorite song of death.”Her words slithered under my skin.Old Dennise. The one who believed killing shifters was righteousness. The one who thought hunters were heroes.She didn’t exist anymore.But I had to pretend she did.I forced my lips to quirk in something like a smile. “I’m just calculating how best to do it.”“Ahh.” She relaxed again. “There she is. My little strategist.”She turned toward the tall windows, looking out at the night.“Tell me, Dennise,” she mused. “Do you ever regret it? What we’ve done?”“Yes,” I thought.“No,” I said.She smiled without turning. “Good. Regret is a human luxury. You’re beyond that now.”The beast inside me snarled