Claimed by my Sister's Fiancé 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 81 - 챕터 90

KIAN POV"Read it to me directly. I need to hear the exact words, not a summary."Elira's voice had gone unnaturally quiet, the message displayed on Callum's tablet trembling slightly in her grip as she stared at the signature line without fully absorbing it.Callum cleared his throat, clearly uncertain how to deliver news this destabilising with any real gentleness. "It's addressed to you directly, Elira. It reads, quote, I know this will sound impossible. I know everything you've been told for twenty two years insists this cannot be true. But I am alive, my daughter, and I have been for all of it, hidden by people who believed protecting you required my permanent silence. I did not choose this separation. I have spent every single day since regretting that I never fought harder against it. If you are ready, I would very much like the chance to finally meet my grandchildren, and to tell you myself exactly what happened the night everyone believes I died. Signed, Anya."The room went

ELIRA POV"You have my eyes. I always wondered, all those years ago, whose eyes you'd carry when you finally arrived."The woman in the hospital bed was thinner than the photograph Marcus had shown me weeks ago, older, her dark hair threaded through with grey that shouldn't have been there yet, but her eyes, when they found mine, carried an unmistakable, aching familiarity that stole every ounce of composure I'd been carefully holding onto."Mom," I whispered, the word foreign and impossible and achingly right all at once.Anya's eyes filled with tears, her hand reaching weakly across the blanket toward me. "I never thought I'd hear anyone call me that again. I dreamed it, sometimes, in whatever strange, distant place a mind goes during twenty two years of silence. I never let myself believe the dream might actually come true."I crossed the room and took her hand carefully, overwhelmed by how small and fragile it felt after so many years of imagining her only as a photograph, a stole

ELIRA POV"Tell us. Whatever you remember, however fragmented it feels, I need to hear all of it."I knelt beside my mother's bed, gripping her hand, watching her gather herself through visible effort as she reached for memories that had clearly been buried somewhere beyond ordinary consciousness for over two decades."I don't fully understand how," Anya said slowly, "but I believe some part of me remained aware, even during the coma. Fragmented, dreamlike, but aware. I remember voices, sometimes, discussing things I shouldn't have been able to hear at all." Her brow furrowed with concentration. "There was a woman who visited often, in the early years. She spoke as though I could understand her, even unconscious. She called herself Vesper's mother, and she said something I've carried ever since, even without fully understanding why.""What did she say," Kian asked, tension radiating through the small room."She said Vesper wasn't the true leader of the Old Guard at all," Anya said. "N

ELIRA POV"Then we move now, with whatever force we can assemble in the next thirty minutes, because waiting for perfect preparation isn't a luxury we have left."I said it with a certainty that surprised even me, watching Silas and Callum spring into motion, assembling every available fighter Ashgrove and Marcus's remaining forces could provide on such short notice.Kian gripped my hand as we moved toward the transport vehicles, his expression carrying the same fierce, unshakable determination I'd come to rely on through every previous impossible crisis. "You don't have to fight this one alone. Not the political maneuvering, not the ritual itself, none of it.""I know," I said. "I'm counting on that."Robert appeared as we finished loading the final security detail, his expression carrying the same steady resolve he'd shown since the medical facility rescue weeks earlier. "I want to come. Whatever help I can offer, however small, I intend to give it.""You'll be more useful helping c

ELIRA POV"I don't understand what happened. Why didn't it work the way she said it would?"Adrian's small voice trembled as he stared up at me, still gripping my hand with the desperate uncertainty of a child who'd just watched everything he'd been prepared for his entire life collapse in a single blinding moment."Because it was never really about the ritual," I said gently, kneeling down to his level despite the exhaustion still burning through every muscle in my body. "It was about what you actually wanted, Adrian. The ground listened to that instead of what Vesper wanted for you.""I didn't want any of it," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. "I just wanted to know why I was different. Why the other children in the compound were scared of me."Something in my chest ached fiercely at the admission, recognising far too much of my own childhood in his frightened, searching eyes.Silas approached with a full security detail, Vesper's unconscious form already being secured