All Chapters of Bound To My Father’s Foe: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

ELAINAI didn’t think. I attacked.My knife slashed toward Valdis’s throat. Fast. Deadly. The blade whistled through the air.He caught my wrist.Just caught it. Like swatting a fly.His grip was iron. Cold. Impossibly strong. He twisted my arm and I felt bones grind together. The knife fell from my numb fingers.“Is that really how you want to greet your brother?” His voice was calm. Almost amused.I shifted.Bones cracked and reformed. Fur sprouted across my skin. My wolf form burst out in seconds. I lunged for his throat with teeth bared.Valdis shifted too.His transformation was smooth. Practiced. A massive black wolf with those glowing green eyes. He was bigger than me. Stronger. Faster.We crashed together in a tangle of fur and fangs.I bit down on his shoulder. Tasted blood. Hot and metallic. It filled my mouth.He threw me off like I weighed nothing. I slammed into a tree. Bark bit into my back. The air left my lungs in a rush.Raven’s sleeping body lay on the ground where I

ELAINAThe castle hallways smelled like lavender and old stone.My chains clinked with each step. The silver burned my wrists. Left red marks on my skin. Raven clutched my hand with her small fingers. Her other hand touched the collar around her neck. She kept pulling at it but it wouldn’t come off.Melissa walked ahead of us. Her black dress swept across the marble floor. She didn’t look back. Didn’t need to. Valdis walked behind us. Making sure we didn’t run.Servants lined the hallways. Hybrids with glowing eyes. Vampires with pale skin. Even some wolves in human form. They all bowed as Melissa passed.“My lady,” they murmured.They looked… happy. Healthy. Not like prisoners or slaves.This confused me. Weren’t they supposed to be suffering? Wasn’t this supposed to be a place of darkness and evil?But the servants smiled. Chatted with each other. One vampire woman even winked at Raven as we passed.“Your home is beautiful,” the woman said to Melissa.“Thank you, Vera,” Melissa repl

ELAINAThe purple light hurt my eyes.I opened them slowly, one at a time, like I used to do when I was little and didn’t want to wake up for school. The ceiling above me was white and smooth, with pretty patterns carved into it that looked like flowers and vines. For a second, I forgot where I was. Then I remembered everything, and my stomach felt like it dropped down to my toes.This wasn’t my room. This was Melissa’s castle. This was my prison.I turned my head on the soft pillow and looked at the window. The light coming through wasn’t yellow like normal sunlight. It was purple, like someone had painted the sky with grape juice. That’s just how it was in the Shadowlands. Nothing was normal here. Even the sun was wrong.My body felt heavy, like someone had filled my arms and legs with sand. I tried to sit up, but it took three tries before I could do it. My head swam, making the room spin around me. I put my hand on my forehead and waited for everything to stop moving.The black ve

ELAINAThe garden smelled like flowers I’d never seen before.Purple ones with petals that glowed softly, like they had tiny lights inside them. Black roses that weren’t scary like they should be, but somehow beautiful. White flowers that chimed like little bells when the wind touched them. The air was sweet and thick, almost too sweet, like walking through a candy store.I was sitting on a stone bench with Raven on one side and Ryker on the other. Both of them were chattering away about something—a game they wanted to play, I think—but I wasn’t really listening to their words. I was just listening to their voices. The sound of them. The way Raven’s voice went up high when she got excited. The way Ryker stumbled over bigger words.I wanted to remember it forever.The morning sun—if you could call that purple light “sun”—felt warm on my face, but not in a normal way. It was warm like bathwater that had been sitting too long. Comfortable but wrong. Everything in the Shadowlands was like

VALDISI couldn’t close my eyes.Every time I tried, I saw Elaina’s face. The way she’d looked at me last night when she agreed to Mother’s deal. Not angry. Not scared. Just… accepting. Like she’d already given up. Like she knew she was going to die and had made peace with it.I hated that look.I sat on the edge of my bed, watching the purple light from my window slowly get brighter as morning came to the Shadowlands. My room was cold—it was always cold in the castle—but I barely felt it. I’d been sitting here for hours, still wearing the same clothes from the feast, my mind going in circles.Mother was going to kill Elaina tonight.She was going to drain every drop of magic from her body, use her as an anchor for the spell, and create a new timeline where Aiden had never existed. Where I’d never been born. Where everything would be different.And I’d agreed to help her.I stood up suddenly, unable to sit still anymore. My legs felt shaky from lack of sleep, but I started pacing anyw