Lahat ng Kabanata ng Claimed by my Sister's Fiancé : Kabanata 231 - Kabanata 240

CORMAC POV"Stay behind me and stay quiet. Whatever that was, I'd rather it think we didn't notice."I said it low, Bridie's hand already in mine, Alistair's soldiers still forming up behind us in the grey morning light.The breath steamed in front of my face, mingling with the mist rolling off the frosted turf of the valley. Behind us, the ranks were slowly settling into formation, leather buckles snapping, pike poles being roped together on the baggage carts, and the low, muttered curses of tired men trying to shake off three days of engineered fury. Alistair was walking down the line, barking quiet logistics to Callum, his voice carrying the brittle rasp of a man whose lungs had swallowed smoke. But my eyes never left the ridge.The ridge was too still. A deer trail ran along that upper rim, framed by rowans and crooked pines, but the birds had cut their dawn song short. Not a fluttering grouse, not the snap of a twig under hoof. Just a dead pocket of quiet that sucked the warmth s

CORMAC POV"Seven confirmed sites, one active vessel neutralised, and a decade of quiet activity nobody outside a single family's archive had documented until today."Rhys laid it out plainly to the assembled council, larger now than the small circle Bridie had described from the original Continental Accord signing.The vaulted council chamber smelled of beeswax, seasoned oak, and the cold iron of old treaties. Rain lashed against the high lancet windows, throwing long, watery shadows across the map Isla had pinned flat with lead weights. The table—a massive ring of dark bog-ash scarred by generations of signet rings and dagger points—was crowded with figures whose names carried the weight of whole dynasties. Couriers stood in the corners, their leather surcoats still dark with river-mire, while enforcers in silver-chased grey kept the perimeter with grounded spears.Beside me, Bridie stood with her arms folded tight over her ribcage, her knuckles white beneath the leather of her brac

CORMAC POV "You may now formally set aside twenty years of grievance in front of everyone who once believed this exact union would never survive its first winter."Elira's officiating carried warmth beneath its dry humour, and the assembled crowd, Fergusons and Mackinnons standing shoulder to shoulder for the first time in a generation, broke into laughter and applause in equal measure.The courtyard of the reconciliation school had been cleared of weapons, training rings, and defensive palisades, replaced by long wooden trestles draped in undyed linen and heavy garlands of wild mountain rowan, winter heather, and sweet meadow grass. The autumn sun hung golden and crisp in a cloudless sky, cutting through the chill that had haunted my bones since the descent into the Hollow Court. Men who had spent two decades exchanging crossbow bolts across border river ditches were now passing earthenware jugs of dark plum wine, their shoulders brushing with only the faintest, lingering hesitation

CORMAC POV"You'll forgive us if we don't extend much trust to strangers claiming both sides have been lied to. That's precisely the kind of thing a spy for either house would say."The Wrenna elder, a stern woman named Uisdean, studied us with open suspicion across the council hall.Her voice had the dry scrape of winter gorse, honed by fifty years of looking across the sluggish Fenmoor marsh and seeing only enemies. She sat in an iron-braced chair of seasoned oak at the head of the trestle, her spine held as rigid as an unsheathed dirk. Her silver hair was sheared close around a jaw that looked chipped from grey flint, and her calloused hands remained flat on the pitted timber, mere inches from the short hunting bow propped against her knee.Around the drafty perimeter of the stone room, a dozen Wrenna guards stood in boiled leather, their thumbs hooked into weapon belts, eyes darting between our travel-stained clothes and their elder’s unyielding profile. The air inside the keep sm

CORMAC POV"It's not talking to Fenmoor anymore. It's talking to us."I said it as the hall's torches guttered, one after another, the ancient voice curling through the rafters like smoke looking for somewhere to settle.The sudden drop in temperature hit like an iron plunge into winter ice. The smell of wet earth and ancient river silt that had sanctified this neutral rotunda evaporated in a split second, replaced by that suffocating, greasy stench of char, stagnant bog-rot, and unwashed wool that had haunted us at the Hollow Court. Around the perimeter of the ancient Weaver's Seat, the shadows stretched upward, clawing along the damp limestone blocks like black grease, swallowing the torchlight until only tiny, sputtering yellow beads remained atop the iron sconces.Beside me on the oak bench, Bridie’s fingers clamped over my forearm. Her grip was tight enough to bruise, her knuckle bones pressing hard against my leather bracer. She didn't shrink back against the high wooden backres