Alle Kapitel von The Lycan king's Unwanted Luna : Kapitel 91 – Kapitel 98

Seraphina's POVI unwrapped the blade one final time before dawn, checking the cloth around it the way I had every morning since I'd found it. My mother's voice returned to me, unbidden. Never let the King see the second mark. She hadn't warned me against a council chamber. But if she'd feared this blade falling into the wrong hands badly enough to hide it for twenty-four years, I understood exactly what I was risking by carrying it into a room full of men who'd spent that same quarter century trying to erase everything it proved.I wrapped it again and carried it with me anyway.I found the fifth Alpha before the session began. "The second Alpha has requested the right to examine the blade first.""Will you allow it?""I'll enforce the rules of the examination. I can guarantee the blade won't leave this chamber without your consent, and that every hand on it will be recorded." He paused. "I cannot guarantee what the assembly decides to do with what it learns. That's beyond anything I

Seraphina's POVThey came for the blade before midday, two council officials and a guard, formal enough that I understood resistance wouldn't change what they'd already decided to do."I want to see the authority permitting this seizure," I said.The senior official produced the order, royal seal pressed into its wax. I read it myself rather than let him summarize it for me, and found the line near the bottom that stopped my breath entirely.The council shall hold authority over any surviving Ashbourne heir for the duration of the investigation."This wasn't in anything the assembly voted on," I said."It's a standard provision attached to seizures of this nature.""Show me the precedent."He couldn't, not immediately.Kael's POVI found her with the officials still in the room, the order laid flat on the table between them.I could have invoked royal authority outright and ended the seizure on the spot. The second Alpha would have called it exactly what it was, a king overriding his

Chapter 96: The King's Deadly SecretKael's POVSeraphina took the record from my hand before I could close it.Her eyes moved over the final lines. Then she stopped at the seal.For several seconds, she said nothing.I watched her thumb pass over the stamped crest, the same crest that had appeared on royal orders throughout my childhood. My father's mark. The one I had trusted without question until the night he died and left me a kingdom full of secrets."Tell me that's not his."I couldn't.She looked up at me. "Kael.""It's my father's seal."She lowered the page, but she didn't give it back."Your father authorized Verrin's return to service. Now we're finding his seal on an order connected to the eastern passage, the same route my mother used to escape." Her voice tightened. "How many times am I supposed to find your family at the centre of what happened to mine before I start asking what you know?"The question struck harder than an accusation."I didn't know about Verrin's mis

Seraphina's POVThe fifth Alpha read everything twice. Verrin's routing sheet. The record of the second Alpha's house holding the eastern passage. Lucien's message about Eamon, and the woman in the second Alpha's colors who had taken a nine-year-old boy.When he set the last page down, he did not give me a riddle."My house kept this much," he said. "The second Alpha's house was charged with finding Ashbourne survivors and reporting where they were to the royal household. Verrin was posted at the eastern passage with a general order to hold anyone who crossed it. The second Alpha's house had learned Evelyne would be the one to cross.""But he let her through.""He disobeyed. That's why his record has a gap, and why his return was authorized afterward under the king's seal. Someone wanted him quiet, and wanted him kept close.""And your house?""Objected. The original agreement never authorized removing survivors. We said so in writing, and we were overruled.""And then?"He didn't ans