All Chapters of Claimed By The Vampire King: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

We spent hours maybe days tearing the place apart. I felt like I was losing my mind, flipping through pages of dead history, reading about wars that had happened before the first star was lit. We were looking for anything—a name, a weakness, a reason why these things were hiding on the other side of a door in my bedroom."Here," Julian finally shouted, his voice cracking from lack of use. He pulled a massive, iron-bound volume from a bottom shelf. The cover was covered in a thick layer of soot, and the pages were stiff with age.He laid it out on a desk, the parchment creaking in protest. It was a map, or at least, the closest thing to one. It showed the portal the same swirling black-and-blue nightmare and surrounding it were dozens of these Weavers. They were working in harmony, moving huge, crystalline shapes, literally stitching reality together."They're not just monsters," I said, leaning in closer, feeling the familiar hum of the Pact resonate with the text on the page. "They’r

The walk back to the throne room felt less like a stroll and more like a tactical advance. My brain was still buzzing with the sheer insanity of what we’d found. A cosmic dumpster? A pressure relief valve for the universe? It was a lot to process, especially when you factor in the existential erasure part of the job description. Julian was right behind me, his usual snarky composure completely replaced by a twitchy, nervous energy. "So," he muttered, tripping over a loose floorboard. "Do we start with So, Brother, we’re actually garbage, or do we bury the lead and mention the terrifying space-spiders first?" he asked.“Maybe with the facts," I said, not slowing down. "Caius is a King. He’s going to want the strategy before he deals with the existential crisis."We found Caius in a room, it was big , bigger than all the rooms i had seen in this place so far, it was a circular space that looked out over the now-azure horizon of the Wastes. He was hunched over a table, his dark cloak p

The silence of Texas was thick, like heavy linen draped over my shoulders. My small rental house was nothing special a one-bedroom box on the outskirts of a town so small that the gas station was the local social hub but it was mine. The porch was perfectly situated, shaded by an old, rusted tin roof that kept the brutal midday sun from ever touching my skin.I spent most of my time in the backyard, tucked away behind a waist-high fence of peeling white paint. I’d set up a single chair in the corner where the oak tree cast a long, cooling shadow.Sometimes, I’d take a walk down to the grocery store. It was just a four-aisle place that smelled of floor wax and overripe bananas. I’d buy a gallon of milk, some bread, or a bag of apples, mostly just to keep the locals from thinking the recluse in the old rental was a serial killer. I didn't need the food, my metabolism didn't work like that anymore, not since the Pact, but the habit of being human was hard to shake. It was a comforting l

Julian’s POVMy room was a tomb, and I was pacing a hole into the floor that reached down to the bedrock. I had been back and forth between the Wastes and the human world at least a dozen times in the last forty-eight hours, tearing through the miserable, gray atmosphere of a dozen different towns. I was looking for her, but every time I reached out to track her resonance, I hit that same wall of static. She wasn't just hiding; she was gone. She’d scrubbed her own existence from the map, and it was all because my brother was an absolute, world-class idiot.I stopped pacing and gripped the back of a chair, my knuckles turning white. I wouldn't speak to him. If I walked into that throne room now, I’d kill him, and then there wouldn't be anyone left to fix the mess he’d made of the sky. So, I stayed in the dark, breathing in the smell of stale incense and anger.I needed to clear my head, or at least try to. I left my quarters and started walking toward the archives again, just to see i

He didn't say a word or ask how I’d gotten past the in or if I was a hallucination. He didn't even seem to see the room. The second his eyes landed on me, the atmosphere in the room ignited.He moved. It wasn't a walk; it was a blur of motion. He covered the distance in a heartbeat, like a predator reclaiming its territory. Before I could even draw a breath, his hands were on me, one at the small of my back, the other tangling into the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling me flush against him.The force of the collision knocked the air right out of me. He was trembling. I could feel it through the layers of his tunic, a violent, uncontrollable shaking that radiated off him. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling sharply, as if he were drinking in the very air around me."Andrea," he breathed. It wasn't a word; it was a jagged, broken prayer.His grip was desperate, bruising. He held me as if he were afraid that if he let go, I would dissolve into dust or vanish back into