All Chapters of Reborn Before the Mark: I Married His Wolfless Uncle: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Karl had left the false alarm burning behind him.The border call had arrived with the right seal, the right urgency, and a route designed to keep him riding east while Whitecliff stood west. By the time the warning cord answered in his mind as a memory instead of a signal, he had already turned his horse hard enough to pull pain through the animal’s flank.He didn’t ask the guards on the road for permission to pass. He gave them the recorded order to clear the way, then rode until Whitecliff’s gate rose out of the dust ahead of him.The three-pull signal had been meant for the room, not the border. Karl had known that before he saw the false alarm’s missing wagon tracks and the untouched storehouse doors. He had known it when the messenger couldn’t name the clerk who had signed the dispatch. The knowledge had stayed in his chest through the ride, useless unless he reached her without letting it turn him into the kind of man who cal

The blood trail reached the infirmary before Caelan did.It crossed Whitecliff’s assembly hall in broken drops, disappeared beneath an overturned table, then began again near the passage where Noctis guards had formed their line. Caelan followed it with the report pressed beneath his mantle and the key to his travel safe cutting into his palm.He had arrived too late to stop anything.A court clerk knelt beside a dead attacker, recording the false wolf insignia sewn onto his coat. Beside the body lay a treated blade inside a marked evidence frame.Caelan stopped.A strip of wax clung to the wrapping around the hilt. The impression had been damaged, but not enough. He had seen the same broken curve on the payment schedule inside his report.“Do not move that,” he said.“It has already been witnessed,” the clerk replied.“By whom?”She named a Whitecliff officer and two delegates.

Valerian offered his arm before Lorelai reached the first line of guards.She looked at it, then at the path the magistrates had left open through Whitecliff’s custody hall.Three lines divided the chamber. Wolf guards stood to the left. Noctis soldiers held the right. Between them waited the neutral escort appointed by the court, their weapons bound into their sheaths with pale cord.Lorelai stepped past Valerian’s hand.Pain pulled beneath the bandage at her side. The poison had left her legs unreliable, and every breath caught on something sharp. She kept her shoulders level.“I can walk.”“For how long?” Valerian asked.“Long enough to decide who is permitted near me.”His arm lowered.A magistrate waited beside the crowned seal that had supported the Noctis petition. Karl remained beyond the wolf line, close enough for Lorelai to see the strain in his hands and far eno

Eve’s empty mantle lay on the evidence table when Lorelai entered the hall.She had ordered it brought with her.The cut lining faced upward beneath the magistrates’ lamps, every severed stitch visible to the two courts preparing to decide where Lorelai would be taken. A clerk had placed the summons beside it, as if the vote and the missing witness belonged to separate matters.Lorelai stopped at the center of the chamber.The pain in her side had become a hard, burning line. Each breath pulled against the bandage, and the poison left the edges of the room too bright. Neutral guards stood at either shoulder without touching her.Valerian waited beneath the Noctis standard.Karl stood behind the boundary assigned to Greyhaven and the wolf delegation. His eyes moved over her once—from her face to the hand pressed against her wound—then returned to hers.The presiding magistrate lifted the custody petition. &ldquo

The carriage crossed three gates before Lorelai saw the Court of Crimson.She counted each one by sound.The first opened with chains. The second required two separate locks. At the third, the convoy stopped long enough for the escort to change.Noctis guards surrounded the carriage when it entered Vespera. Whitecliff’s neutral escort remained behind at the outer gate, their authority ending exactly where the custody order became hardest to verify.Lorelai pressed two fingers against the bandage beneath her clothes.The wound had stiffened during the journey. Every turn of the wheels dragged a dull ache across her side, and the poison left a cold weakness behind her knees. Valerian’s blood had slowed it.The carriage door opened.Valerian stood below the step.Behind him, dark stone rose around a wide inner court. Covered passages connected the surrounding buildings. Guards occupied the balconies, the stairways, and