Betrayed By My Mate, Now Claimed By The Lycan King のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 51 - チャプター 60

The scraping against the inner doors grew louder. It wasn't the wild battering of a desperate charge. It was measured. Deliberate. The sound of metal tools working at the seams and hinges, backed by the low, constant pressure of bodies pushing in rhythm. Jakob had shifted from testing our strength to trying to take the keep apart piece by piece. Gunnar issued orders as we climbed back up from the stores. No shouting. Just clear, hard instructions that moved through the inner keep like cold water. "Double the braces on every inner door. Move the heaviest crates and tables against them. Archers on the inner wall walks — if they breach, I want the first ones through turned into corpses before they clear the threshold. Matthías, you have the main hall and the wounded. No one enters or leaves without being seen by at least two people you trust." Matthías gave a short nod and limped off, already calling names. Sunna stayed with us. "What about Lasse?" "Leave him where he is for now,"

I saw him through the breach for a moment — silver hair bright with other people's blood, eyes locked on me with cold recognition. He wasn't throwing himself into the meat grinder at the doors. He was directing. Letting the first waves spend themselves against us while he waited for the exact moment our line thinned. The breach widened further. More wolves forced through. The inner hall began to take the overflow of the fight. Wounded who couldn't move fast enough were dragged farther back by Merja's people. Tables were overturned for cover. The carefully ordered defense of the keep dissolved into a series of brutal, room-by-room struggles. Matthías held the entrance to the main hall with a knot of the steadiest warriors, injured leg braced, sword work still short and efficient. Sunna appeared on my left long enough to put a dagger into a Blackpine throat, then vanished again toward the eastern stairs where Nina was still dealing with probes against the inner wall. The bond flared

"You turned my daughter into a weapon," Jakob snarled. "She was already one," Gunnar answered, voice flat and lethal. "You were just too much of a coward to see it." They broke apart. Jakob's next cut was aimed at Gunnar's damaged shoulder. I intercepted it with my claws, the impact jarring all the way up into my teeth. The cost of the night's power use screamed through my nerves. My vision tunneled at the edges for a second. Jakob used that second. He drove a short blade toward my side — not a killing thrust, but a precise attempt to open something important. Gunnar's hand closed around Jakob's wrist before the point could land. The sealed bond flared hard, raw strength pouring both ways. I heard the bones in Jakob's wrist grind. He snarled and tried to twist free. Around us the hall had become a slaughterhouse. Ironfang warriors fought in knots around the wounded. Matthías went down to one knee when his injured leg finally failed him, but he still killed the wolf that trie

Anton smiled. Blood stained his teeth. "You already know there are others. You felt it in the way people looked at her when she first arrived. In the way some of your own warriors hesitated when the scales came out. I was just the one willing to act. The rest are still waiting to see which way the blood runs." Sunna shifted her weight. "He's stalling." "He's telling the truth," I said quietly. "Just not all of it." Anton looked at me again. For the first time something like genuine curiosity crossed his face. "You can feel it, can't you? The way the bond isn't clean anymore. The elders marked it. Next time they hit it, it might not hold. And when it breaks, all that power you've been borrowing from each other turns into a weapon that cuts both ways." Gunnar moved. He didn't strike Anton. He simply closed the distance until he was looming over the chained man, silver eyes reflecting the single lantern light. "The fragments," Gunnar said. "What was left of the Sire after t

"It didn't leave with them," he said quietly. Sunna crouched at a safer distance, eyes narrowed. "How did no one notice it during the fighting?" "Because it wasn't fully active yet," Merja said from behind us. She had followed without being invited, drawn by the same wrongness the rest of us could now feel. Her face was pale. "The larger fragments were being fed with pack blood and elder magic. This one was separated. Dormant. Residual. But it's still a piece of the heart stone. And it's waking up because she's standing near it." I forced myself to take a step back. The pressure in the bond eased slightly, but the fragment's green veins continued to pulse in a slow, stubborn rhythm. Gunnar's voice was flat. "Can it be destroyed the way the others were?" Merja shook her head. "Not here. Not without risking a release of whatever residual connection it still has to the larger pieces. If you shatter it carelessly, you might call the others straight to the keep. Or worse — you might f