Lahat ng Kabanata ng I Became the Obsidian Lycan King’s Obsession : Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

Serena’s POVThe preparations for the interception filled the short time between the second and third bells with a kind of controlled intensity that left no space for second thoughts.Alaric laid the service maps across the study table and assigned positions with the same precision he used on a battlefield. The disused service room near the old east storage halls sat at the junction of three approach corridors and one narrow back stair that had once been used for moving casks before the newer kitchens were built. Two of those corridors could be held from recessed doorways. The back stair could be closed from above. The room itself had only one functional door and a high vent that was too narrow for a man to pass through.“Primary team takes the main approach and the room itself,” Alaric said. “Secondary team holds the eastern corridor and the stair head. No one moves into the open until he is inside and the door is closed behind him. We take him alive. We take anyone with him alive. P

Serena’s POVThe moment the runner confirmed the outer guard was unconscious and the inner door stood open, the study ceased to be a place for maps and planning.Alaric was already moving. “Full escort. East wing holding rooms. Now.”We left the royal wing at a pace just short of a run. The corridors that had felt merely watchful an hour earlier now felt like lost time measured in stone. Gale followed as far as the first stair, then stopped under the physician’s standing orders and the hard look Alaric gave him. Two of the primary team took the lead. I kept pace at Alaric’s shoulder, the bond between us pulled tight with the same fear neither of us wasted breath naming.If Kieran had taken Belinda out of the cell only to silence her, the trail would end in blood in some service passage or under the weight of the river. If he had taken her for another purpose, we were already behind the only living voice that could stand in front of the council and speak the early gold, the herb routes

Serena’s POVGale returned from the wine cellar before the afternoon light had shifted across the study floor. He carried two ledgers and a thin sheaf of schedule copies, and the expression on his face told me the anonymous tip had not been empty noise. Alaric cleared the table with one movement of his arm. The ledgers landed in the open space between us with a solid sound that felt heavier than paper and binding had any right to feel.“There is a discrepancy,” Gale said. “And it is not clerical.”He opened the wine cellar ledger first. The pages recorded cask movements, special reserves, and the withdrawals tied to formal household events. Most of the entries were ordinary. One cluster was not. Over the past five weeks a series of small, precise withdrawals had been logged against a reserve that was normally touched only for the highest state ceremonies. The quantities were modest. The timing was not.“Now the coronation schedule,” Gale continued. He laid the steward of ceremonies’ c

Serena’s POVCoronation day arrived under a sky so clear it felt deliberate.The palace had been transformed overnight. Banners in the deep crimson and black of the Obsidian line hung from every gallery. The great hall had been opened to its full length, the floor polished until the light from the high windows ran across it in long pale sheets. Musicians held the upper galleries. The scent of ceremonial incense and cut greenery filled the approaches. From the outer courts to the inner doors the household moved in the strict order of a day that would be recorded in the archives for as long as the throne stood.I woke before dawn with the bond already carrying Alaric’s focused calm. He had slept little. Neither of us had. The confirmation paperwork had been sealed in the night after the last witnesses signed. The default clause no longer opened a path for Kieran. On the surface the day belonged to the formal acknowledgment of the bond and the completed standing of the treaty. Under the

Serena’s POVThe full confirmation came before the light left the medical chamber windows.The physician returned with the measured calm of a man who had already chosen his words. The tests aligned. Early pregnancy. Weeks rather than months. No sign of the complications that sometimes followed strain or residual toxin. The faint on the dais had been the body’s blunt demand for attention after too many days of treating every symptom as another pressure of the palace.Alaric listened without interruption. When the physician finished and left us alone again, the silence that settled was different from any that had come before. He remained standing at the side of the bed for a long moment, one hand still wrapped around mine, his eyes fixed on some point beyond the far wall as if the future had become a physical space he was required to map.“A child,” he said at last. The words were quiet and testing, as if he needed to hear them in his own voice before they could become real.“Yes,” I an