Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 191

The first assassination hit the airwaves before dawn. A vampire elder from House Ulivar, found staked in the gardens outside the Council House with her fangs shattered and a werewolf rune scorched into her chest.

Within the hour, two more were confirmed: both members of the moderate faction, both known supporters of the peace summit. The footage was grainy and quiet, as if even the anchors couldn’t bring themselves to fully name what was happening.

I watched the broadcast in the infirmary lounge, curled sideways on the couch with a pressure cuff around my arm and an IV feeding something metallic and cold into my veins.

The volume was muted, but I didn’t need sound to understand what I was seeing. Words like extremist, civil unrest, and retaliation crawled across the bottom of the screen while images of silver-bladed protest banners filled the frame. The ache in my body was slow and chemical, but underneath it was a second tension, tight and cold and sinking deeper by the minute.

This wasn’t theoretical anymore. This wasn’t whispers behind closed doors or threats buried in legislation. It was blood in the streets. Real and permanent.

The Council chamber felt warmer than usual, not physically, but in the way that too many people packed into one space can start to vibrate with unspoken tension.No one spoke above a murmur. Half the vampires brought private guards and refused to remove their weapons, even after Bell ward scans. The wolves arrived in tight formations, silent and heavily aware. I recognized militia insignias I hadn’t seen since the last time the realm was on the edge of collapse.

When I entered, the quiet spread further. I could feel eyes on me, not with malice, but something close to defeat.

Like they’d already decided what I was, and they didn’t have the strength left to argue about it.

Richard stood at the podium, composed in a way that could only be achieved through sheer force of habit. His shoulders were squared, but his grip on the lectern was tight enough to leave impressions.

“The assassinations of Council members Ulivar, Fenn, and Durell are not merely crimes,” he said. “They are declarations. Calculated attacks meant to destabilize this government and throw us into war. Let me be perfectly clear: that will not happen while I rule.”

No one responded. The silence didn’t feel like agreement.

It felt like exhaustion.

“We will not be manipulated by violence. Those who act against the Council, no matter their rank, allegiance, or bloodline, will be treated as enemies of the throne.”

When he stepped back, his eyes didn’t search for support.

He looked somewhere far away, jaw locked. Every inch of him said he was done waiting for consensus.I rose to speak. I didn’t plan to, but I couldn’t let his voice be the last one they heard.

“We can’t fix this by doubling down on fear,” I said. “And we can’t call for unity while threatening retribution. We need to show people there’s still something worth protecting here, something that doesn’t look like more death.”

Some looked at me, curious. Others looked like they were trying to remember what hope even felt like. No one stopped me.

I sat down.

My vision blurred. I blinked, then blinked again. A flash of heat rose behind my ribs, then dropped. My pulse accelerated. My fingers began to sting like they’d been plunged into ice, and the bench under my palm seared where I touched it. I yanked my hand back. The metal smoked faintly.

The Bell crystals began to wail. Not hum, not chime, screaming, discordant, like metal teeth grinding against each other. Twelve nodes at once, glowing erratically.

Pain bloomed through my temples and I heard someone shout my name. The sound stretched and warped.

Across the chamber, Richard stood up, fast. I looked at him. I tried to breathe.

Then I felt everything break.I woke drenched in sweat. I could feel the infirmary cot under me, too soft and too real. My skin itched ünder the spell-dampening wards, like something was trying to climb out through me. Every surface in the room had edges. Too loud, too bright.

Simon sat in the corner, bent forward with his head in his hands. He looked like he hadn’t slept.Chapter 355

“You’re awake,” he said, voice dry.

“What happened?”

He stood and pulled a monitor closer. “You collapsed in the chamber. Cracked the marble, shattered the crystal system, flatlined for forty seconds. You’ve been cycling through phases of instability ever since.”

I tried to sit up. My body didn’t want to obey. He steadied the IV before I could pull it loose.

“Careful. You’re still recovering. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

It sees things I don’t. It remembers things I never lived.”

He shifted his hand to my chest, laying it flat. His thumb moved gently over the rise of my sternum as his eyes searched mine.”I don’t know what’s happening to you,” he said, voice Lower now, nearly breaking. “And I hate that i can’t fix it.

But you don’t need me to fix you. You’ve always found your way through the impossible. You’ve survived things that should’ve broken you in half. And every time you come back stronger, sharper, more yourself. I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much I admire that. Or how much it terrifies me, loving someone who doesn’t flinch in the face of the unknown. But I do. I love you exactly like that.”

I blinked back the sting in my eyes. “You’re not scared of me?”

“Oh, I’m terrified of you,” he said. “But I always have been.”

I pulled him into another kiss, this one deeper, the kind that made the room fall away. I clung to him, letting the warmth of his mouth and the tension in his shoulders say everything he hadn’t. He kissed me like a man desperate not to lose his tether. I kissed him like I might shatter if he let go.

His palm found my thigh under the blanket and stayed there, not moving higher, just anchoring us together while his other hand framed my jaw.

“I love you,” he murmured. “Whatever happens next, I need you to believe that.”

“I do,” I whispered. “I believe you. I believe us.”

We stayed like that until the shakes began to subside. He held me, and I let him, fitting myself against him like I wastrying to climb back inside the world I used to know.

And that’s when I felt it. Deep beneath my own heartbeat, steady and quiet, like an echo finally reaching the surface.

Another heartbeat.

I didn’t say anything. I just pressed closer, let him kiss my temple again, and curled my fingers into the front of his shirt.

I had no idea what I was becoming.