All Chapters of To Rule the Tsar Alpha's Heart: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Ace Point of ViewThe forest was thick with the scent of iron and smoke. My claws dug deep into the cold soil, blood dripping from my muzzle as the vampire before me laughed, rasping, broken, but still defiant.Even torn and bleeding, he smiled. His mouth glistened with black blood, his fangs flashing like blades under the faint moonlight.“You… think you’ve won?” he hissed between coughs. His voice was old, too old and heavy with something almost regal. “You beasts never learn. You can kill me… but you can’t kill what’s coming.”I growled low in my throat, the sound vibrating through the ground. His words carried no fear, only the arrogance of one who already saw himself avenged.“The Progenitor,” he rasped again, head lolling back, crimson eyes half-lidded. “She’s around… she walks under your sun now. Her children are growing stronger. The blood moon rises again, Tsar of Wolves.”The sound of that name, Tsar, rolled from his tongue like mockery.My jaw clenched.He grinned wider, bl

Hessa's Point of ViewThe old house stood at the edge of the woods, half-swallowed by vines, its windows black as if the glass itself refused to remember sunlight. I used to come here as a girl, before I understood what kind of monsters met behind those doors. Back then, it had been called The Sanctuary.Now I know better. It wasn’t a sanctuary. It was a coffin dressed as a home, a place where Valentina and I made a deal. Be a use to her and her leaving my pack alone. Mom was against it and I don’t have use to someone who wants death rather than to be safe. I know, I messed up. I let Valentina kill her by using her best assassin, Dennise and then blamed her before Ace. I need to meet with her. It’s important. I had told Ace I was going to visit my father. I even forced a smile when he asked how long I’d be gone.He didn’t question me. Not after the distance he’d been keeping.He simply nodded and told Stan to assign two men to escort me to the border.“Stay safe,” he said.Those wer

Valentina’s POVDennise moved like a wind through the corridors of the estate quiet, graceful, unassuming. Every morning she woke when the sun was still lazy on the horizon, made her tea the same way, and always greeted me with that polite half-smile that had fooled men far older and wiser than she.I watched her from the balcony of my study, chin resting lightly on my hand, eyes following the rhythm of her steps. The girl thought she was healing. She thought the wounds on her side, the ones my blood had mended, were a sign of my mercy. She thought I had forgiven her for the failure with Ace Andreev, the Tsar of Wolves, the beast who had dared to put his mark where mine should have remained.I smiled, slowed down and practiced. Let her believe it. Ah, the nature of making a great weapon is pissing me off but I invested patience.There was no need to confront her.I had learned of it days ago. Hessa’s confession still rang in my ears, the trembling defiance in her voice when she had sp

Valentina’s Point of ViewIn the mirror-room, blood does what mirrors do: it reflects backward first. The body stands and thinks it sees itself; the blood knows it sees its grandmother. That’s metaphysics. The biologic is simpler: controlled hypoxia, gentle vasodilation, a permeability of the membranes that separate what the pamphlets call human from what the archives call ours.But before Stage-II I required a political securement: the Cross council must accept that I name their Elite. The weapon, awake and hungry for spectacle, must accept that I am making a daughter to suit her epoch and my domestic quiet. And the shifters must feel enough threatened that their Tsar attends to his borders and not to the woman in my house. The vampire who taunted him near his gate did his part, bolder than I would have preferred (they always get theatrical at the edge of sunlight), but effective. And Hessa’s confession, Dennise as mate, spurred the final alignment of my calculus.Jealousy is a solve

Dennise’s point of ViewI dreamed of running.It was not the kind of running that burns your lungs or makes your knees ache, this was silent, liquid, endless. The air was cold and metallic, like moonlight turned into breath. I ran through trees that didn’t sway, under a sky without stars, chasing something I couldn’t name. Every time I almost caught it, a flicker of silver hair, a whisper of laughter, the ground would shift, and I’d stumble, sinking into shadows that felt warm and soft, like they wanted to keep me.Then the voice came. A woman’s. Velvet over glass.“Do not fight the dark, little one. It remembers you.”When I tried to turn toward it, the trees vanished. A single mirror stood in the clearing, taller than me, framed in gold that pulsed faintly like veins under skin. My reflection blinked once… and smiled.But it wasn’t my smile.It was sharper.And when I opened my mouth to speak, she whispered first.“Wake up.”I jolted upright, gasping. My chest rose and fell too fa