Lahat ng Kabanata ng My Mate's Father Claimed Me: Kabanata 141 - Kabanata 150

 POV: Kenny“The world feels like it’s waiting for me to blink.”I do not know how long I have been awake before I realize that I am awake.There is no sharp moment where sleep ends and day begins. It is more like floating to the surface of water, slowly, carefully, until the air touches my face and I remember how to breathe again. My eyes open, but I do not move, I listen first.The house is quiet, not empty, not dead just holding its breath.I can hear the fire settling in the hearth down the hall. I can hear the walls creak the way old houses do when they are thinking.Somewhere outside, an owl calls once and then falls silent, like it remembered something important and decided not to say it out loud.My chest rises and falls, my heart is steady. That surprises me.Everyone keeps waiting for something to go wrong. I can feel it in the way they look at me

 POV: Jake“The trouble was not that people believed in the child. It was that belief was spreading faster than truth.”“Say it again,” I said, my voice echoing against the cold stone walls of the command center, the torches flickered, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to mock the stillness of the room.The scout swallowed, his throat moving convulsively, he looked like he hadn't slept in three days. “The fields healed overnight, alpha. It wasn't a gradual thing, and there was no rain, no tilling, no miracle of nature.”“That is not what I asked,” I replied leaning my weight onto the scarred wooden table, the map of the territories felt smaller today, cramped and inadequate.“They were dead land, beta,” he said, his voice rising in pitch. “Salted, ruined by old wars. Nothing grows there but this morning, the entire valley was green.”&ld

 Pov: kael“Why did he say you left him to die?” lyra asked, her voice sharp but quiet.i leaned against the table, rubbing my temples. “Because it was the truth but I did not leave him; he made his choice like he always did.”“He chose wrong,” she whispered. “and yet you carried it for him.”“I carried it because I could,” I said. “Someone had to, someone had to survive what he could not.”she moved closer, her eyes searching mine. “and me? Do I get the truth or only the lies I already guessed?”I took a deep breath. “you get the truth, everything i feared, everything i failed at, you get to see it all.”her hand brushed mine. “You are terrifying, kael.”“And you are relentless,” I replied.for a moment, nothing moved except our breathing then her lips were on mine, hot, demanding, and des

 POV: The VoidThe child does not push against me, he listens but I expected resistance.I expected the familiar tightening, the instinctive recoil that living things perform when they sense me near. It is a universal constant of biology: the flinch comes first, then the denial, then the desperate, frantic reaching for names and prayers and weapons. He does none of it.“You’re not loud,” he says, glancing around the grey expanse. “Just… wide.”I pull closer, compressing my presence so I do not crush him or touch him, not yet. “You should not be able to speak here. The pressure alone usually silences the living.”He shrugs, small and careless. The motion is impossibly casual for where we are. “You’re talking to me. It would be rude not to answer.”That is true but truth rarely survives in this place.“You don’t oppose me,” I say.He

 “I have learned that refusal does not need to be loud, Kenny. A mountain doesn’t scream at the climber; it simply remains a mountain.”Lyra didn’t look up from the table. Her fingers moved with a rhythmic, clinical precision, grinding dried star-thistle into a fine, silver dust. The kitchen smelled of ozone and bitter herbs“But they’re coming, aren't they?” Kenny sat on a high stool, his legs swinging, though his eyes were far too old for his small frame. “The men with the grey eyes. You’re making the walls heavy again.”“I am making the walls honest,” Lyra corrected softly. She swept the dust into a small silk pouch. “Violence is a frantic language, my love. It’s what people use when they’ve run out of ideas. We aren't going to run out of ideas.”She set the pouch down and finally looked at him. The world wanted him—she felt it in the marrow of her bones. They wanted the spark inside him, the raw potential of a boy born betwee