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All Chapters of Carrying His Claim: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

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Chapter 31

The Thorne delegation arrived four days later, summoned by the scout’s brutal return and the emergency Council session that had followed it — Aldric Thorne himself, along with a modest retinue of advisors and warriors, came to discuss the alliance’s military response in person rather than trust anything this significant to a letter. The compound had spent the better part of the morning preparing for their arrival, extra hands in the kitchen, the main hall aired and polished in a way I hadn’t seen since my very first week here, everyone moving with the particular brisk purpose of a household determined to receive an important guest properly despite the grim circumstances prompting the visit.I watched the arrival from the main hall’s window, curiosity outweighing my usual instinct to stay clear of pack politics that weren’t strictly my business. Aldric cut an imposing figure even from a distance — tall, silver-haired, carrying himself with the particular weight of a man who’d led a pac

Last Updated : 2026-09-04

Chapter 32

The delegation departed three days later, and the compound settled back into its ordinary rhythm, as it always did once formal visitors had gone, though something about the household felt subtly different in their absence—a held breath released, or perhaps simply the natural quiet that follows any stretch of careful, performed hospitality. The extra hands in the kitchen returned to their usual duties. The main hall’s polished formality gave way, by the second evening, back to its familiar lived-in warmth. I found myself glad of the return to ordinary rhythms, even as some part of me noted, walking the quieter hallways, how much heavier the past week’s careful diplomacy had actually weighed on everyone without my fully registering it until the weight lifted.I found Selene in the library that evening, the same window seat, the same low fire, though something in her posture struck me as heavier than usual, weighted in a way I couldn’t immediately place.“Your father seemed pleased with

Last Updated : 2026-09-05

Chapter 33

I couldn’t sleep that night, the particular restlessness that had started arriving more often as the pregnancy progressed, my mind circling old maps and border numbers and Selene’s careful, too-measured account of a private conversation I still couldn’t quite stop turning over. The house was silent around me in the particular way it only ever seemed to be well past midnight, every ordinary daytime sound stripped away until even my own footsteps felt too loud against the old floorboards. Somewhere near midnight I gave up on sleep entirely and made my way down to the kitchen for tea, and found Kieran already there, sitting alone at the long table with a book open in front of him that he wasn’t reading.“Couldn’t sleep either,” he said, by way of greeting, closing the book without marking his place.“Apparently not.” I filled the kettle, grateful for something ordinary to do with my hands, and settled across from him once the tea was steeping. “What’s kept you up?”“Everything, tonight.

Last Updated : 2026-09-06

Chapter 34

I spent the following afternoon doing something I hadn’t done in longer than I could easily remember — going through my own records, the careful case notes I kept on every contract I’d ever carried, spread across my desk in a fan of familiar handwriting that charted five years of a life I’d built entirely on purpose. I’d always kept them, out of habit more than necessity, a professional archive I rarely had reason to revisit once a contract closed cleanly. Today felt different. Today I needed to see the evidence laid out in front of me, in my own hand, before I could trust whatever conclusion I was circling toward.I don’t know exactly what I was looking for. I told myself, pulling the first folder from my travel case, that I wanted to review my own history properly, the way I’d review any client’s file before a significant decision. I understood, somewhere around the third folder, that I was actually searching for evidence — proof that some version of what I was currently feeling had

Last Updated : 2026-09-06

Chapter 35

The alarm came just after two in the morning, sharper and closer than the horn I remembered from weeks earlier — not the long, distant call that meant trouble at the border, but something shorter and more urgent, the particular sound I’d never heard before and understood instantly, some old instinct recognizing danger before my conscious mind had fully caught up.I was at my window within seconds, and what I saw below stole whatever composure I’d managed to gather on the way there. Warriors moving not toward the treeline this time, but through the compound itself — torches sweeping the courtyard, the training yard, the narrow gap between the main house and the outbuildings where I’d never once seen anyone patrol before. Whatever this was, it wasn’t happening at the border. It was happening here.My door opened without a knock a few minutes later, and one of the two warriors Kieran had stationed outside my quarters stepped in, tense and apologetic in equal measure. “Ms. Vance, I need y

Last Updated : 2026-09-07

Chapter 36

Kieran called for a feast three nights after the infiltration, over what I understood from Dessa was some quiet disagreement among his Council about whether the timing sent the wrong message. He held firm regardless. A pack that had just watched its own compound breached needed, he argued, a reason to stand together in something other than fear — a full table, warmth, the deliberate, defiant ordinariness of celebration in the face of a threat that wanted them huddled and afraid instead.I understood the reasoning, and yet some careful part of me had spent the whole day bracing for the evening regardless, given how thin the household’s collective nerves had worn since the alarm three nights earlier. I dressed with more care than usual, some instinct telling me the pack needed to see its Conduit steady and composed tonight, whatever uncertainty I was still privately carrying.The hall was fuller than I’d ever seen it, every warrior who could be spared from patrol duty crowded in alongsi

Last Updated : 2026-09-07

Chapter 37

Gideon steered Kieran away from the gathering entirely within minutes, murmuring something about a private word that clearly wasn’t a request, and I watched them disappear through a side door with the particular efficiency of a Beta managing a crisis before it could grow any larger than it already had. The hall, left without its Alpha’s steadying presence, took considerably longer to find its footing again. Musicians who’d resumed playing too quickly faltered again without him there to anchor the room’s mood, and I noticed more than one pack member glancing toward the door he’d disappeared through, waiting for some signal about how the rest of the evening was supposed to proceed.I stood near the edge of the gathering for a long moment, uncertain what to do with myself now that the room’s attention had, at least partially, redirected away from the spot where Kieran had stood a moment earlier. A few pack members offered careful, uncertain smiles as they passed, the particular kindness

Last Updated : 2026-09-08

Chapter 38

Kieran found me a little past midnight, well after the feast had finally wound down and the compound had settled into its uneasy, watchful quiet. I’d been sitting by the window for the better part of an hour by then, still turning over Selene’s careful, unreadable stillness, when the soft knock came. He knocked softly at my door rather than simply appearing the way he sometimes did. When I opened it, I found him looking considerably more shaken than he’d allowed himself to look in front of the hall — the composed Alpha entirely gone, replaced by a man still visibly working to understand what his own body had done without his permission.“Can I come in?”I stepped aside to let him pass, and he entered slowly, almost cautiously, like a man uncertain whether he still deserved the easy welcome I usually offered him. I closed the door behind us and watched him stand near the center of my room, hands loose at his sides, something raw and unguarded in his expression that made my chest ache.

Last Updated : 2026-09-08

Chapter 39

The Elder Council convened three days after the feast, formally and on short notice, in a manner that made clear even before I understood the agenda that whatever they intended to discuss carried weight beyond the household's usual business. I learned of it from Dessa, who delivered the news with the particular careful neutrality she'd started using whenever a subject touched too close to me directly, setting the tea tray down with more precision than the moment strictly required, as though the careful placement of a single cup might somehow soften what she was about to say."They've called a full session. All seven senior members, not just the standing quorum." She busied herself with the tea tray between us, not quite meeting my eyes. "I don't know the formal agenda. I know it was called the morning after the feast, which I don't think requires much guessing."I spent that afternoon in careful, contained dread, unable to settle into any of my usual routines, my mind circling the sam

Last Updated : 2026-09-09

Chapter 40

I found Kieran in the courtyard garden two nights later, later than either of us usually lingered outdoors, the autumn air was sharp enough that I wrapped my shawl tighter around my shoulders as I settled beside him on the low stone wall. He'd been quiet for days, worn thin by Council sessions that stretched longer each time, by careful conversations with Gideon about troop numbers and border readiness, by whatever private reckoning he was still working through about the feast, about Selene, about a succession now tangled in more uncertainty than either of us had bargained for when this contract first began."You should be resting," he said, though he made room for me without hesitation, his shoulder finding mine in the dark."So should you." I leaned into him, grateful for the warmth, for the simple fact of not being alone with the weight of the past week. "How did today's session go?""Long. Circular. Nothing resolved, though nothing worsened either, which I've learned to count as a

Last Updated : 2026-09-09

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