2024-09-16 00:02:08He had his own affairs to handle, which the Lancasters could only dream of reaching his level.
With just a snap of his fingers, he could make their wildest wishes a reality.
If he so desired, the wealthiest families in the city could lose everything, their fortunes vanishing and businesses crumbling into bankruptcy.
But what good would it do to explain this to a woman as arrogant and narrow-minded as Mrs. Lancaster?
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Chapter 735
Varan offered a cold, dead-eyed smile."Here’s the deal," he said. "Get on your knees. Right there, in front of the lens. Confess to murdering my brother, beg for forgiveness, and hit the floor in a ten-count kowtow.""And then?""Then it's quick. One clean cut on your neck. You won't feel it." He shrugged."And if I don't?"Varan's voice didn't change at all."Then I start with your fingers," he said. "One at a time. Then your hands. Then your arms. And I keep going until you confess. Until you beg. Until you try to kneel and find out you don't have knees anymore."Behind him, three hundred soldiers stood and listened.Six hundred thousand people watched at home.Alex looked at him. He looked almost bored."You'll die in one move," Alex said. "Why would I kneel to a dead man?"The whole factory went still.Varan let out a dry laugh. "You have no idea who you're dealing with—or the nightmare waiting for you.""Quiet," Alex said flatly. "You get one warning, and this is it. Clear out o
Chapter 734
Vesper came out of the pen.He shouldn't have been able to. Poisoned twice in a week. Four days flat on his side under Alex's needles. But a bonded guardian doesn't get a vote when his house is dying.For half a minute, House Calder had a chance.He flipped a vehicle onto its side. Threw two men through a wall. Thirty Line troops gave ground, and up on the landing, something wild and stupid rose in Wren's chest. Hope."Cable teams," a voice said below. Calm. Bored. Like a man calling a card game.They stopped fighting him. They started processing him.Three teams, three sides. Stakes hammered into Calder stone. Steel line thrown over him like a net over a bird, men leaning back on the ropes in ranks while others put round after round into his legs.Never the skull. Nothing about it was angry. They'd done this before.His forelegs buckled. Then his hindquarters. Then all of him.They left him alive. Pinned under eleven cables, two men standing on his neck.Lord Calder came down his own
Chapter 733
"Get up," Alex commanded.Rowan got up.Alex wiped his blade once and put it away. "Listen carefully, because I'm going to say all of this exactly once.""I am listening." Rowan straightened."Lord Draven died today by his own son's hand. A family matter. A grievance twenty years old. There was no outsider in this house — no outsider at the gate, no outsider on the grounds, no outsider in this hall." Alex's voice didn't change at all. "That's the only version of today that exists. Can you hold it?""In front of who, sir?""The district magistrate. The Wardens. Everyone."Something moved across Rowan's face. It might have been the closest he'd come to a smile in a year."Then yes, sir. I can hold it." Rowan's voice went flat and certain. "Can you let me command the Draven house?"Alex nodded slowly. "It is yours.""Forty-one holdings across three districts," Rowan said. "I've kept the books on all of them since I was fifteen, because my father didn't trust a clerk and didn't consider m
Chapter 732
The front doors of House Draven stood nine feet tall, oak banded in iron, built for a siege that never came.Nobody had shut them against an enemy in four generations.Alex shut them now.He dropped the iron bar across the frame one-handed — a beam three grown men were supposed to need — and set it in its cradle like he was latching a gate behind livestock.No ceremony. No effort.The sound rolled down every hallway in the house.Somewhere in the east corridor, a voice called out, asking who'd closed the doors.Nobody answered.Alex rolled his shoulders once and started walking.In the great hall, Lord Draven wasn't worried yet. “So, the man you called has come?”Wren sat bound in a chair at the center of the floor, two guards behind her. Draven stood at the window, hands folded behind his back."You should understand what's about to happen," he said, "so you don't waste the next hour hoping."Wren said nothing. Her wrists were raw from the rope. Her jaw stayed locked.“Look around yo
Chapter 731
The car didn't stop at the gatehouse.Every noble estate Wren had ever visited stopped guests there — logged them, walked them in on foot.House Draven's driver didn't even slow down. The grounds kept unfolding after that, the way grounds only do when a house wants you to know exactly how small you are.Beasts lined the drive. Not chained. Stationed — the way soldiers stand post.Horned things the size of draft horses flanked a fountain. Something long and scaled coiled along a garden wall, one eye open, watching her pass. Further back, near the trees, shapes she didn't have names for and didn't want to guess at.House Draven didn't just have a guardian bond. House Draven had an army wearing fur and scales, standing at attention.A steward met her — not at the front doors. A side entrance. Past a hallway of portraits she didn't recognize, the air gone hushed and wrong, the kind of quiet built to remind visitors they'd already gone somewhere they weren't invited.Wrong. Something in he
Chapter 730
The doors hadn't finished swinging before the room started deciding what it had seen.House Draven's retainers came for Edmund first — four of them, moving fast and low, the way men move when they want to be gone before anyone thinks to stop them.Nobody stopped them. Nobody wanted to be remembered as the one who'd touched him.Then the guests left. Not a stampede — worse.An orderly, quiet emptying. Coats collected. Cars called. Every one of them already rehearsing tomorrow's story: I was standing by the far wall. I didn't really see.The tigers went out on canvas through the side doors, the white one still trying to stand on the leg that worked. The wolves who could walk had already vanished into the dark. The ones who couldn't were carried out by staff who hadn't signed up for that kind of night.Someone started sweeping glass.That was the only sound left in the hall. A broom, scraping stone.Lord Calder stood in the middle of it and didn't move.Wren stood where the blade had bee
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