SOLD TO THE WEREWOLF KING のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 31 - チャプター 38

The image of Kaelen carving that desperate, sacrificial rune into his prison wall burned behind my eyes, a silent scream that drowned out the argument erupting around Vorian. A bomb. He was turning himself into a bomb, a final, catastrophic act to shatter the wellspring from within if we failed. The love that swelled in my chest was immediately choked by a terror so profound it was a taste of metal on my tongue. He was running out of time. We were running out of time.“Enough!” My voice cracked through the clearing like a whip, silencing the growls and accusations. Every wolf, including a smug, pained Vorian, turned to me. “We don’t have time for your posturing.” I looked directly at the Defiler, my gaze stripping away his pretenses. “You want to survive. We need to get into the crypt. Your knowledge for your life. That’s the deal. But understand this: if you betray us, if there is a single ward, a single trap you ‘forget’ to mention, you won’t live long enough for Morvana to kill you

The voice from the darkness was a hook in my soul, reeling us forward into the chill. We stepped through the false wall, our single flashlight beam cutting a pathetic swath through the profound black. It fell upon bones. Not neatly stacked, but piled, heaped, a jumbled sea of femurs, skulls, and rib cages that filled a cavernous space from the slimy floor to the shadowed vault of the ceiling decades above. The Ossuary. The collective remains of centuries of Blackwood pack, their final energy a silent, heavy blanket that smothered the air and muted the magic in my blood to a faint, dying whisper.Vorian’s trap was perfectly sprung. We were in a cage of his design.“The dead make such excellent company,” Morvana’s voice echoed, directionless, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. “So quiet. So… settled. Unlike the living. Always squirming.”Lillian flinched beside me, her hand tightening on the cloth-wrapped bowl. The tether, that psychic fishhook, gave a sickening tug. She gaspe

The pulse in the bond was a fragile, distant star in the vast emptiness inside me, but it was life. It was Kaelen, clinging to existence after channeling a cataclysm. That fragile light was the only warmth in the sudden, chilling reality of our victory.We had slain a god, only to find a vulture circling.Vorian’s voice, echoing down the ossuary passage, was a serpent’s hiss of pure opportunism. The sounds of his approach weren’t the chaotic noise of battle; they were the disciplined, grim sounds of a clean-up crew—boots on stone, the clink of weapons, low, confident commands. He’d waited. He’d let us exhaust ourselves against Morvana, and now he was coming to pick the bones.Lyra stumbled to her feet, leaning heavily on a femur thicker than her arm. Her face was ashen, one arm hung limp, but her silver eyes blazed. “The Defiler,” she spat. “He smells carrion.”Lillian stirred, moaning softly. I crawled to her, my limbs feeling like lead weights, my body a hollowed-out gourd. The Aeth

The thunder of approaching paws swelled, a rolling wave of sound that vibrated through the floor of the cavern. It was not the chaotic roar of battle, but the disciplined, earth-shaking cadence of a procession. A march of survivors.Lyra moved first, her instincts sharp despite her injuries. “Marcus, the prisoners. Secure them out of sight in the side passage. They are not part of this narrative.” Her tone brooked no argument. This moment was for history, not for Vorian’s pathetic epilogue.Marcus and the other warriors swiftly hustled Vorian and his broken men into a narrow fissure in the cavern wall, a natural cell now serving as their temporary cage. Vorian offered no resistance, his spirit crushed by the ghosts of the ossuary. He was already a footnote.I remained on my knees, cradling Kaelen’s unconscious, ice-cold form against me. I couldn’t move him. He was a threadbare anchor, and I was the only thing keeping him from drifting back into the dark. The bond, once a hollow void,