All Chapters of Too Late To Claim Me: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

AriaThe tent felt smaller than it had any right to.Canvas walls pressed inward like a fist closing. Lantern light flickered across faces I knew too well, Remus, jaw tight, hands braced on the wooden table that held a map of the eastern mountains. Marcus, standing apart from the others, his back to us, his shoulders rigid. Jax in the corner, arm still in its sling, watching everything with sharp eyes. Two more warriors I trusted with my life, barely more than silhouettes in the shadows.And me. Sitting on a crate that still smelled of gunpowder, my hands folded in my lap like I was at a board meeting and not about to plan the death of a man who'd been family to half the people in this room."Say it again," Marcus said. His voice was quiet. Too quiet.Remus didn't flinch. "Raphael King. He's the Architect. He's been running the Order for decades. Vivian is his daughter."Marcus turned.I'd seen Marcus angry before. I'd seen him fight, seen him kill, seen him stand between me and death

AdrianThe dark magic hit like a wall of ice.It tore through skin and muscle and bone. Reached for the core of me... that quiet place where my wolf slept, where my power had always lived, coiled and waiting. I knew Vivian's magic. I'd known it since I was just a boy. Since training sessions that were really punishments. Since lessons that were really lessons in how much pain a body could take before it broke.Her magic had always been particularly cruel. The way it crawled beneath the surface. The way it squeezed.But this time, something inside me pushed back.The Silverwood power... thirty years dormant, thirty years beaten and starved and tortured into silence, woke up. It rose through my chest like a geyser. Hot. Bright. And absolutely furious.The shadows Vivian had thrown shattered against it, dissolving into wisps of nothing. And then, because power once unleashed is never content to simply defend, the light rebounded.Vivian's scream split the air.She flew backward. Crashed

AriaThe sun came up on a battlefield that I can't put a name to it yet.I was sitting on an overturned supply crate outside the medical tent with Caelum's head heavy on my shoulder. He'd fallen asleep halfway through a sentence about Grandma and a garden and a dog that could talk. His body was a furnace against the morning chill. His breath came slow and even. His hand was still twisted in my shirt like he was scared I'd vanish if he let go.So I didn't move. Barely breathed. Just sat there watching the camp wake up around me in that grey-gold light, trying to remember how to be a person again.Behind us, the lodge was still burning. I could smell it, that particular stench of old wood and older secrets going up in smoke. Every few minutes another chunk of roof would cave in with a groan that sounded almost human, and somebody would flinch. A few warriors had stopped to watch. Their faces were smeared with soot and blood. Their eyes were hollow. Nobody cheered. Nobody said anything.

MarcusI walked into the room when the guard's spoke and his words hung in the air like smoke.A Silverwood crest. An old one.I watched Aria's face go pale, watched her hand tighten on the doorframe until her knuckles went white. She didn't speak for a long moment. Neither did I. Neither did Remus, who had also appeared in the doorway behind the guard, his expression carved from stone."Where is she now?" Alpha Remus asked. His voice was calm. Too calm."Waiting in the east wing. She said she'd speak to you whenever you were ready." The guard swallowed. "She's been very... patient.""Patient," Aria repeated. The word came out flat."Show us," I said.---The east wing was quiet. Too quiet. The few warriors stationed there stood at attention as we passed, their eyes tracking us with the kind of wariness that came from too many surprises in too short a time.The door to the small meeting room was closed.The guard stopped. "She's inside. Said she wanted to wait alone."I looked at Alph

AdrianI woke up in pieces.First the ceiling. A rough timber beams, it was old but look solid. Then the light—grey and soft reflection, the kind that came through windows before the sun had fully decided to rise. Then the pain. A dull, deep ache in my chest that throbbed with every breath.And then the memories.They hit me all at once, a flood I couldn't stop. The lodge. The fire. The little boy... Caelum's small hand on mine, and the vision that had ripped me open. Raphael's face when I refused him. Vivian's magic driving into my chest. Aria screaming my name.Aria.My sister.I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The room tilted, and I had to grip the edge of the cot to keep from falling. The cot. Not a cell. Not a cage. A cot, in a small room with a window and a blanket that smelled like clean wool and herbs.Someone had bandaged my chest. The wound was closed now, I could feel the tight pull of healing skin beneath the wraps. Caelum's doing. The boy had healed me. A f