Chapter 15: The Vanishing Heir
865 Words
Lydia felt the room spinning. She looked at "Julian"—the man she thought was her ticket to a billionaire's life—and saw the scavenger underneath the suit.
"You... you’re a Beta," she whispered, her voice cracking. "You lied. You said you owned the Southern shipping lines."
Julian laughed, a harsh, jagged sound. "And you said you were carrying an Alpha’s heir. It looks like we both enjoy a good story, Lydia. But here is the truth: My Alpha is waiting at the border. He sent me to plant the seed, and now that you’ve used that little gold potion to 'confirm' the pregnancy, the Scarlet Peak has a legal claim to the Blackwood estate through your child."
He stepped closer, his scent—sour and sharp—overwhelming her. "You thought you were trapping Caspian. But you were actually building a door for us to walk through."
Lydia clutched her stomach, a sharp, stabbing pain blooming in her womb. The potion was reacting to her fear, the magic turning toxic. "Caspian will kill you," she gasped.
"Caspian is distracted by his 'stray' wife and her new Lycan pet," Julian sneered. He grabbed Lydia by the chin, forcing her to look at him. "By the time he realizes what’s happening, the South will have the boy, and you’ll be sitting on a throne of ashes, carrying a child that belongs to me."
He shoved her back onto the sofa and pulled out a burner phone. "The Queen is at the North Lodge. Send the first wave. And tell the Alpha... the Sun-Queen has a King now. We need to move before the Iron Ridge settles in." While Lydia collapsed into the velvet cushions of the manor, paralyzed by the weight of her own trap, the North Lodge was descending into a different kind of hell.
The air outside the lodge suddenly went silent—the kind of silence that precedes a landslide. Malakai was the first to react. His head snapped toward the eastern tree line, his nostrils flaring.
"The wind just died," Malakai whispered, his hand dropping to the hilt of the obsidian blade at his hip. "They’re using a suppression spell. Elara, get to the boy!"
Caspian surged forward, his wolf pushing to the surface, but he was too slow. A deafening crack echoed through the valley as a series of flash-bang canisters shattered the glass of the upper loft.
"Leo!" Elara screamed. She sprinted toward the stairs, her Sun-Queen mantle shimmering with a violet aura, but a wall of Southern Enforcers burst through the front doors, their faces obscured by bone-white masks.
"Stay back!" Caspian roared, throwing himself into the fray to block the hallway. He fought with a desperate, feral rage—the rage of a man trying to save the family he had already lost once.
Malakai moved like a blur of mahogany and steel. He didn't just fight; he decimated. With a single sweep of his blade, he cleared a path for Elara. "Go! I’ll hold the threshold!"
Elara flew up the stairs, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She burst into the loft, expecting to see Silas guarding the door. Instead, she found the room filled with a thick, cloying silver mist. Silas was slumped against the far wall, unconscious, and the window was smashed wide open.
The bed was empty.
"Leo?" Elara’s voice was a ragged whisper. She ran to the window. In the distance, disappearing into the dark maw of the forest, she saw a single figure in a blood-red cloak carrying a small, struggling bundle.
"No... no!"
She leaped from the window, her power flaring so brightly it lit up the entire clearing like a second sun. She hit the ground in a roll and started to sprint, but a heavy hand caught her arm, spinning her around.
It was Malakai. His face was splattered with the blood of the enforcers, his icy blue eyes wild. "Elara, wait! It’s a trap! If you follow them into the neutral zone alone, they’ll have both of you."
"They have my son, Malakai!" she sobbed, clawing at his chest. "Let me go!"
Caspian emerged from the lodge, bruised and heaving. He looked at the empty loft window and then at the dark woods. The realization that he had failed to protect his heir for the second time in five years broke something inside him. He fell to his knees in the snow.
Malakai ignored the Alpha, pulling Elara flush against his armored chest. The "Spark" between them was no longer a hum; it was a violent, protective shock.
"I am not letting you go," Malakai growled, his voice vibrating in her very bones. "We don't chase them like prey. We hunt them like a King and Queen. I will call the full strength of the Iron Ridge. We will burn the Scarlet Peak to the ground, Elara. Every stone. Every soul. We will get him back."
In the distance, a faint, high-pitched cry echoed through the trees. Leo’s voice.
- Writer
