All Chapters of Claimed by my Sister's Fiancé : Chapter 251 - Chapter 260

BRIDIE POV"Close your eyes. Don't try to force the dream. Just ask, the way you'd ask anyone you genuinely wanted to hear from."Sable's voice was gentle, guiding Rhys through something clearly practised between them many times before, though never for stakes quite this large.The heavy silence of the study settled over us, broken only by the crackle of embers dying in the stone hearth. Outside, the autumn wind combed through the high garden elms, but inside, the air felt suspended, held together by the quiet, absolute focus of every soul packed into the room. Sable stood right beside Rhys’s chair, her hand resting over his clenched fist, her fingers steady and grounding.We waited in the quiet study long into the night, the whole Order gathered in careful silence while Rhys sat motionless in his chair, eyes closed, breathing slow and even.Nearly an hour passed before his breathing changed, and when he spoke again, his voice carried an unfamiliar, layered quality that raised the hai

BRIDIE POV "Every territory's confirmed. Even the ones who fought hardest against the original Accord. I don't think this family's ever gathered this many people in one place who all actually chose to come."I said it to Cormac, watching the old ground fill steadily over three days of arrivals, tents and banners from a dozen distinct peoples spreading across grounds that had once hosted nothing but a single family's desperate survival.The valley was a sea of shifting color beneath the wide, pale sky. Where there had once been only wild heather and the crumbling stone foundations of the original manor, there now stretched an enormous, orderly encampment of canvas pavilions, leather-topped yurts, and military tents. Banners flew from makeshift ash poles in every direction: the midnight blue and silver of the Frostbound clans, the deep violet silk of the Umbral Court, the earthy greens of the Sundered Line, and the simple, undyed wool standards of the Reconciliation Order. It was a gat

BRIDIE POV "It's not going to hold. I can feel it fraying at the Umbral thread, Corvina's grip is slipping!"Isla's shout cut through thermal shockwaves of the roaring light, and I turned to see Corvina staggering, her connection to the weave stretching thin and pale under the entity's assault.The Umbral leader’s dark silks whipped violently in the updraft, her boots sliding half an inch across the fractured stone of the dais. The violet aura she had poured into the central current was flickering like a dying candle, choked by thick coils of black ash that had wrapped around her wrists."Don't let go," I shouted back, though my hands were locked around Cormac's with a force that had long since numbed my fingers."I'm not letting go," Corvina gritted out, her teeth bared, sweat streaming down her temples despite the freezing gale tearing across the old ground. "It's not my grip failing. It's finding something old in me to pull against.""What," Elira called, her silver hair flying wi

BRIDIE POV "Nobody's hurt. Exhausted, shaken, considerably more grey-haired than we were this morning in some cases, but nobody's hurt."Elira delivered the count with visible relief, moving through the recovering crowd with Kian close beside her.I sat wrapped in a blanket near the old dais, Cormac's arm around my shoulders, watching representatives from a dozen peoples slowly find their footing again across grounds that had, for one impossible evening, belonged to all of them equally.The low murmur of conversation rolling across the encampment didn't carry the tense, guarded cadence of border parleys or military musters. It sounded like a camp at the end of a long harvest—exhausted, quiet, but underpinned by the steady, rhythmic assurance of people who had finally laid down a burden they were never meant to carry alone."How do you feel," Cormac asked quietly.He pressed a cup of warm, spiced cider into my free hand, his amber eyes searching my face with that habitual, steady wat

BRIDIE POV"Two hundred and sixty chapters, and for the first time since I started keeping count, I don't have a single crisis to report."Elira said it with warm disbelief, gathered with the whole extended family on Ashgrove's familiar lawn, the evening soft and unhurried around us.The late-summer air carried the sweet, damp fragrance of cut grass and cooling earth. The manicured turf stretched out toward the old garden wall, bathed in the amber glow of lanterns strung between the low oak boughs. There were no scouts returning with mud-stained dispatches, no frantic knocks on midnight doors, and no heavy, suffocating pressure waiting in the dark. For the first time in years, the silence of the night was just silence—open, peaceful, and entirely safe."I'll believe it when the sun comes up tomorrow and nothing's on fire," Kian said, though his smile gave away how little he actually meant it.He leaned back against a cushioned garden bench, one arm draped comfortably along the backres