My Sister Stole My Mate And I Let Her (Seraphina) novel Chapter 432

Chapter 432: Chapter 432 CIRCLING OF PREDATORS

DAMIAN’S POV

Marcus and Catherine were an unlikely pair of allies.

Marcus burned hot—impatient, volatile, always pushing, always needing to feel like he was the one driving the conversation forward.

Even sitting still, there was a restlessness to him, a tension coiled beneath his skin like he might snap at any moment if the world didn’t move fast enough to match him.

Catherine was the opposite.

Where Marcus reacted, she observed. Where he pressed, she waited.

There was something unnerving about the way she held herself, like she was never fully in the room—like part of her was always somewhere else, calculating, rearranging outcomes before anyone else even realized there was a game being played.

If Marcus was fire—loud, unpredictable, always threatening to consume—then Catherine was something colder. Something that watched the fire burn and calculated how best to use the ashes to her benefit.

The meeting had started as all our meetings did—layered words, veiled intentions, the careful circling of predators who had agreed, for now, not to turn their teeth on one another.

“...you’re underestimating the rate of disruption,” Marcus was saying, irritation threading through his voice as he leaned forward, fingers tapping against the table. “The interference patterns we’ve been tracking aren’t random. They’re deliberate. Someone—hell, maybe even a group—is moving against the system.”

I watched him without responding, my gaze steady, my expression giving nothing away.

He hated that. I could see it in the tightening of his jaw, the way his shoulders squared just a fraction more.

“Your system,” he added pointedly. “Your auction. Your network. If it collapses, everything we’ve built around it goes with it.”

I leaned back in my chair, folding one arm over the other.

“If it collapses,” I said, my voice calm, measured, “then it means it was weak enough to be broken.”

Marcus’s lips curled into a sneer. “Or maybe you’re the one who’s too weak to maintain it.”

I felt it then—not anger, not yet. The tightening thread of something darker.

Catherine’s gaze flicked between us, her silence more deliberate than either of our words.

“Careful,” she said softly.

Marcus exhaled sharply through his nose but leaned back, though the tension didn’t leave him.

I tilted my head, considering him.

“You’re agitated,” I observed.

“And you’re not agitated enough,” he shot back. “That’s the problem.”

A faint smile touched my lips. “You mistake stillness for inaction.”

“Stillness?” He scoffed. “If your chest wasn’t rising and falling, I’d think you were a fucking statue.”

“Careful,” I repeated Catherine’s warning. “I promise you prefer me still.”

For a moment, the room seemed to narrow, the shadows pressing closer, the air growing just a fraction heavier.

And then the door opened.

One of my men stepped inside, head lowered in deference, his movements controlled but not quite steady enough to hide what lay beneath.

“What is it?” I asked.

He hesitated.

“Speak,” I barked.

“Sir...” His voice dipped, careful. “There’s been a...development.”

“Regarding?”

“The auction.”

Foreboding stirred in my chest.

“Go on.”

“The...untouchable piece”—he swallowed—“has been claimed.”

For a second, I didn’t understand the words.

Not because they were unclear, but because they didn’t fit.

They didn’t belong to any version of reality that made sense.

“Repeat that,” I commanded.

He did, the abominable words wobbling as they fell from his lips.

Something inside me snapped.

The chair beneath me scraped sharply against the stone as I stood.

“No.” The word came out as a low growl.

“Sir—”

“No!”

My hand came down on the table hard enough to crack the surface, the polished blackwood splintering beneath the force.

“She was not available for purchase,” I said, each word clipped, controlled only by sheer force of will. “That condition was absolute.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said quickly. “But the bidder...she invoked the rules. Forced the claim. There was no opposition.”

Of course there wasn’t opposition.

No one would dare.

No one—

My thoughts halted as rage swarmed in and overrode all else. It surged up fast, violent and molten, burning through the thin layer of control I was an expert at maintaining.

“She’s gone,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else.

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