Alle Kapitel von AUCTIONED TO THE LYCAN KING: Kapitel 91 – Kapitel 100

MAYA The archive was not a room anyone wanted to visit. Deep in the palace basement. Cold. Damp. The kind of place where history went to be forgotten instead of preserved. Shelves stretched into darkness lined with documents that smelled like rot and neglect. The single torch I carried barely pushed back the shadows. I had come looking for military records. Treaties. Border agreements. Anything that might reveal alliances or weaknesses Damien could exploit. Knowledge was a weapon and I needed every blade I could sharpen before his army reached our walls. What I found instead was erasure. The royal family records were kept in the southeast corner. Thick leather-bound volumes documenting births, deaths, marriages, and successions going back six centuries. Asher's lineage traced through pages yellowed with age. His father. His grandfather. Generations of Lycan Kings

MAYA The headache started during morning training. Not the dull ache from bond sickness. This was sharper. More invasive. Like someone had opened a door in my skull and let too much information pour through at once. I was sparring with Jasmine when it hit. She threw a jab. I blocked. Countered with a hook. And then I felt it. Her fear. Not saw it. Not guessed it. Felt it. A cold spike of anxiety that did not belong to me flooding my senses like water through a broken dam. She was afraid of being too slow. Of disappointing me. Of becoming a burden instead of an asset. The emotion crashed through my consciousness so vividly I stumbled backward. "Maya?" Jasmine lowered her fists. "You okay?" I pressed my hand to my temple. The fear was still there. Lingering like an echo in a cave. "

MAYA I returned to the library alone after midnight. The palace was quiet. Most of the staff had retired. Guards walked their rotations with the mechanical precision of men who had done the same route for years. No one questioned the Queen wandering through corridors at ungodly hours anymore. I carried a small oil lamp. The restricted section was darker at night. The shadows deeper. The air colder in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. I found the book Rhea and I had been reading. BLOODLINE MANIFESTATIONS. Set it on the table and opened to the section where pages had been torn out. Four pages. Gone. Removed with surgical precision. I ran my fingers along the ragged edges still clinging to the binding. The paper was not yellowed like the rest of the book. Not aged. The tears were clean. Recent. Very recent.

MAYA I could not sleep. Asher had left hours ago. Pulled toward the war room by Ethan's news about Damien's army repositioning at the gates. The bond thrummed with his tension. His focus. The controlled chaos of a king preparing for siege. But I stayed in the library. Alone with books that rewrote everything I thought I knew about myself. I was not just a wolf. I was a weapon. A threat. A legacy three centuries old that people had been trying to erase since before I was born. The guilt I had carried since Blue Moon fell sat differently now. Heavier in some ways. Lighter in others. For months I believed my family died because I was foolish. Because I fell in love with a monster and brought him to our door. Because my blindness cost them everything. But the genealogy chart spread before me told a differ

MAYA The war room had never felt this crowded. Every military commander in the kingdom stood around the massive table. Maps spread across the surface showing border positions and defensive structures. Colored markers indicated enemy movements and allied territories. Lycan generals in full armor. Council members in formal dress. Elite guards positioned at every exit. And at the head of the table, Asher. Silver eyes sharp. Every inch the king his people needed him to be. He had summoned me personally. Not through a messenger. He came to the settlement himself and said four words. "I need you here." Now I stood beside the table. Not sitting. Not yet invited to claim space in a room that had never welcomed wolves. Lord Harlen noticed me first. His face tightened. "Your Majesty, this is a military council. Surely the Queen's p