Claimed by The Wolf l Ran From のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

Emily stared at the Vampire King, waiting for the word to unsay itself.*Son.*She turned to Damien, certain — desperate, even — that he'd laugh it off, call it a mistake, anything that would let her keep believing the ground beneath her hadn't just cracked open again.He didn't. He stood very still, jaw set, eyes fixed somewhere just past her shoulder, and his silence answered the question louder than any words could have."Damien." Her voice came out low, shaking. "Tell me that's not true.""My father wasn't only the former Alpha of Blackwood." The words came slow, dragged out of him like they'd been buried for years. "He was tied to the vampire kingdom through an alliance older than the pack itself. Secret. Sealed before I was even born. I didn't know the extent of it — not until tonight, watching him stand in front of me and claim me like I was always meant to end up here."---"An *alliance*." Emily's father's voice cut across the yard, sharp with a fury that hadn't been there a

"You killed Damien's father."The words left my mouth before I could stop them.For a moment, nobody moved.Nobody spoke.Even the air inside the room seemed to disappear.My mother stared at me, her face slowly losing its color.Damien stood beside me.I didn't have to look at him to know something had changed.I could feel it.The warmth that had been coming from him only seconds ago disappeared, replaced by something cold and heavy."Emily," Mom whispered.I shook my head."No.""Please, what you saw—""I saw you stab him."Damien moved.One second, he was beside me.The next, he was standing directly in front of my mother.His eyes burned gold."Is she telling the truth?"His voice was so low I almost didn't recognize it.Mom looked at him."Damien—""Did you kill my father?"Selene stepped forward."Perhaps everyone should calm down."Damien turned his head toward her."Stay out of this."Something in his voice made even Selene stop.I had seen Damien angry before.This wasn't ang

The pain came first, sharp and searing, blooming across the side of my neck exactly where — some distant, horrified part of my brain understood — a mating mark would eventually go. I didn't even have time to ask what was happening before my knees gave out entirely."Don't touch her!" The Oracle's voice cracked across the cottage, raw with something that sounded less like caution and more like genuine terror.Damien didn't listen. Of course he didn't listen. He crossed the room before I'd even finished falling and caught me just before I hit the floor, his arms locking around me like nothing in the world could have stopped him.The moment his skin touched mine, the mark on my neck pulsed — a dark, violent ripple of black light — and something tore through the bond between us hard enough that I felt it in my chest and, judging by the way his whole body went rigid, he felt it too.Damien released me instantly, stumbling back like he'd been burned, staring down at his own hands with an exp

I was still kneeling beside him when the last of my resolve gave out."Emily." Damien's voice was steady, quiet, his throat still bared to me in the dark. "If you need blood, take mine.""No." I forced the word out through gritted teeth, hands curling into fists against my own knees. "The Oracle said — she said drinking from you directly could do something neither of us understands. I'm not risking that. I'm not risking you."But my body wasn't listening to the part of me making that argument. I could hear every single beat of his heart, feel the heat of him radiating through the small distance between us, smell blood moving beneath his skin with a clarity that made my mouth ache and my vision narrow until there was nothing else left in the room at all.Damien watched me lose that fight in real time, and instead of panic, something in his expression only steadied further, like he'd already decided this outcome was inevitable and had made his peace with it long before I had.I don't fu

"You're lying." The words came out of me before I'd even decided to say them. "You've been lying to me since the moment you showed up at my house. Why would tonight be any different?""I expect nothing from you," the Vampire King said, unbothered, almost pleasant about it. "I don't need your belief."Beside me, Selene had gone rigid, her fury a match for my own. "If this is true," she said, "it changes everything about what I thought I understood."Damien didn't say anything at all. He stayed close, a solid, steady presence at my shoulder, but he made no move to answer for me or step between me and the question I needed to ask myself. After everything, he understood — this one, I had to demand for myself.The Vampire King's smile didn't waver."Ask the blood," he said."The sanctuary cannot be deceived," he explained, gesturing toward the ancient stone around us. "No spell reaches deep enough to fool it. Emily's blood already carries the royal signature tied to Queen Elara's lost line