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Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Cursed Alpha's Substitute Bride : Kabanata 131 - Kabanata 139

139 Kabanata

Chapter 131: Subject 23, Bloodanchor Lineage Confirmed

I reached the door first and didn't bother knocking. It swung open at my touch, unlocked, and the interior beyond told its own immediate story. Overturned furniture. Papers scattered across the floor. A desk drawer pulled open and emptied in obvious haste. Someone had been here recently, and someone had left in a considerable hurry. "He's gone," I said, my voice flat with disappointment and fury tangled together. "Whoever set those fires, they weren't just a distraction. They were cover for Berg's escape." Aldric moved past me into the room, his silver eyes scanning everything with the particular focus he brought to reading a space for meaning others missed. He crouched near the overturned desk, examining scattered papers with careful attention. "These are partial records," he said after a long moment. "Fragments. He didn't have time to take everything." He held up a single page, and I watched his face go carefully blank in the specific way that always preceded bad news. "Se

Chapter 132: Overextension Threshold

For a full three seconds I couldn't make my mouth work. The page sat in my hands, Berg's cramped handwriting swimming slightly in front of my eyes, and somewhere distant I heard my own pulse pounding hard enough to drown out the wind outside the broken window. "That's not possible," I said finally, my voice coming out thin, stretched too tight over something enormous trying to break loose beneath it. "Pip has never met this man. He's never left Ironveil territory since he arrived there. There's no way Berg could have assessed him." "He wouldn't need to meet him in person," Kael said, and I could hear him forcing his own voice into careful steadiness, the specific control he used when panic threatened everyone around him and someone needed to stay level. "Vex's network has been tracking redistribution recipients for months. If they identified Pip as significant enough, they wouldn't need direct examination. Sample collection, observed behavior, secondhand reports through an embedde

Chapter 133: He Engineered It

"He engineered it," I said slowly. "The entire thing. He wanted the curse broken, found Berg himself, and then manipulated you into believing you'd made the decision independently." "Yes," my father said, his voice breaking. "I've carried the guilt of that decision for seventeen years believing it was mine alone. If he orchestrated it from the beginning, if he's the same man who resurfaced as Carver, embedded now in Ashveil, working for Vex's network." "Then he's been playing this exact game for seventeen years," I finished, fury burning hot and clean through the fear now, something I could actually grip and use instead of simply drowning under it. "Using bloodlines, calculating thresholds, orchestrating outcomes from behind people who never fully understood they were being manipulated." I looked at my father, seeing him fully in that moment, not as the man who'd failed me for nineteen years, but as another one of Carver's instruments, deceived as thoroughly as anyone else caught i

Chapter 134: Three Hours, Maybe Four

I don't remember getting off the horse. One moment I was in the saddle, Danna's words still crashing through me like something physical, and the next I was standing in front of her, my hands gripping her shoulders hard enough that she flinched, my voice coming out in a register I didn't recognize as my own. "When," I demanded. "How long ago exactly." "Three hours," Danna managed between sobs. "Maybe four. Holger tried to fight them, he's hurt bad, Sera, he took a blade to the shoulder trying to stop them from taking him." "Where is he now," Caius said, already moving past us toward the smoking ruin of the stables, his voice hard and clipped in a way that told me he was holding himself together through sheer force of will alone. "The healer's room," Danna said. "Dennis carried him there right after." I forced myself to breathe, forced the panic clawing at my throat back down beneath something more useful, and turned toward the stables, the acrid smell of smoke and burned timber

Chapter 135: The Vale Is Compromised

I stood fast, my whole body vibrating with fury and terror colliding violently, and forced myself toward the door. "We need to know where they're taking him," I said. "Now. Every minute we spend standing here talking is a minute closer to whatever timeline they've built around him." "The site," Rowan said, following close behind. "It's the only location that makes sense. If they're planning a controlled channeling, they need the Vale itself." "The Vale is compromised," Kael said. "We fought Jeppe's men there, we know its layout now. Would they really risk returning to a location we've already breached once?" "They might not have a choice," Aldric said slowly. "If Berg's calculations show Pip's threshold approaching soon, if waiting risks him developing past whatever window makes him useful, they might be forced to move regardless of the risk." I turned toward Kael, forcing myself to think tactically despite every instinct screaming at me to simply ride out immediately, chase blin

Chapter 136: Then We Split

"Vex's information broker," Kael said slowly, understanding dawning fast across his face. "The one who processes everything the network's assets send back before it reaches Vex directly." "He's not just processing information anymore," Sable said grimly. "He's authorizing payments, coordinating logistics between Berg's assessments and Vex's operational plans. Which means if we can locate Sørensen directly, we might find exactly where they're planning to take Pip, potentially before they arrive." "Do you know where he operates from," I asked, hope flickering fragile through the exhaustion and terror still burning through my chest. "Not precisely," Sable admitted. "But I have a lead. A trading contact who mentioned him operating out of somewhere near Skallgard, in the eastern territories, close enough to both Greyveil and the Vale to serve as a logical coordination point." "Skallgard," Caius repeated, his brow furrowing. "That's neutral territory, mostly trading routes and small set

Chapter 137: Ask Him Yourself

The smoke thickened with every mile, and somewhere beneath the pounding of hooves and my own ragged breathing, I became aware of a sound I hadn't heard since the day the Tethering broke. A low frequency hum, buried under everything else, the specific vibration old magic made when it strained against something trying to hold it wrong. "You feel that," Caius said, riding hard beside me, his voice tight. "I feel it," I said. "It's stronger than before. Faster." We crested the final ridge overlooking the Vale, and what spread out below stole the breath straight from my lungs. The stone formation at the center blazed with light, brighter than it had during Jeppe's forced tear, the frost patterns across the entire valley floor pulsing in slow, rolling waves that radiated outward like something breathing. And standing at the very edge of that light, arms raised, his whole body rigid with strain, was Pip. Not restrained. Not fighting against something being done to him. Standing there

Chapter 138: I've Always Trusted You

"You need to stop," I said, my voice breaking with desperation. "Whatever he told you, whatever he promised, this isn't safe, Pip. You have to let go before it burns through you the way it nearly burned through everything at the Vale before." "I can't," he said, and something in his expression shifted, agony bleeding through whatever had been holding him steady until now. "It won't let me. Sera, I tried to stop an hour ago and it just pulled harder." The current in my blood surged in response to his words, and I understood with terrible clarity exactly what had happened. Vex hadn't simply convinced Pip to willingly channel the site. He'd found a way to trap him inside the connection once it began, using whatever knowledge Berg's assessments had provided about the exact threshold of his ability to create a hold that Pip alone couldn't break. "I'm going to help you," I said, forcing steadiness into my voice despite everything screaming panic through my chest. "The same way I shaped t

Chapter 139: He's Alive

I began forcing everything else away, the fighting, the roaring site, Vex's cold satisfaction, until only the structure of the connection remained clear in my perception. There, buried deep in the flow, I found it, the specific point where something had been grafted onto Pip's natural ability, crude compared to the elegant designs I'd studied in my mother's journal, but powerful enough to hold him regardless. I reached for it with everything I had, applying the opening technique my mother had documented, not forcing, not pushing, simply asking the redirect to release its hold. For a terrible moment, nothing happened. Then Pip screamed, a sound I'd never heard from him before, raw and agonized, and I felt the structure shift beneath my perception, the redirect straining against my attempt to unmake it. "Sera," Aldric's voice, distant but urgent through whatever connection he still maintained. "The marker, it's reaching capacity. If you don't break this now, whatever's contained ins

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