The Lycan King’s Secret Daughter - Chapter 142

AURELIA'S POV They come at me like carrion birds the moment the doors open. No preamble. No courtesy left to burn. The Council chamber feels different today-smaller somehow, the walls pressing close, the air thick with the particular hunger of men who smell weakness and have decided to feast. They have spent the night sharpening their arguments, rehearsing their demands, building the architecture of their assault. I see it in the way they lean forward before I have even taken my seat, in the way their eyes track my movements with predatory attention.

"Confirmation," Councillor Brenn demands, knuckles white where they grip the table's edge. "We require certainty." "Timelines," another adds, his voice clipped and urgent. "Medical verification." "Legitimacy," a third presses, eyes sharp and assessing behind wire-rimmed spectacles. "The realm deserves to know whose child this is." The words hit me in waves-measured, invasive, practiced. Each one strips something away, peeling back layers of sovereignty I have spent months building. My body becomes a ledger to be balanced. My future a contested border to be negotiated.

My womb a resource to be claimed. I sit still because rage used too early dulls its edge. I let them speak, let them reveal themselves, let them lay bare exactly what they believe they are entitled to. "You will address us," Brenn says, impatience bleeding through. I look at him slowly, letting the silence stretch until discomfort settles into the spaces between them. "I am not a broodmare to be inspected." A murmur ripples through the assembly, quickly smothered by the weight of what I have just said.

"Your Highness," Elder Marrow says with a tone polished smooth by decades of entitlement, his silver hair catching the light, "this is not personal." "It is nothing but personal," I reply. "You are discussing my body as if it were communal property." "We are discussing succession," he insists, spreading his hands in a gesture meant to convey reasonableness. "Bloodlines. Claims." "Whose child is it?" another voice cuts in, sharp as a blade-Lord Caldwell, a Redfang loyalist who has been waiting for this moment since the day I burned their proposals. "Ironshade's?

Redfang's?" I feel Lucian shift beside me, heat radiating from his body, coiled energy barely contained beneath the surface of his stillness. His hand rests on the arm of his chair, fingers curling slowly into a fist. I lift one finger-not to silence him, but to ask him to wait. Just a moment longer. Let them damn themselves completely. "Enough," I say. "There will be no confirmation today." "You cannot refuse-" Brenn starts, rising half out of his seat. "I can," I interrupt, my voice carrying without effort.