Claimed by the Alpha I Hate – Episode 50
Blackwood prepared for war while Daisy read Vera’s ledger beside the map. Each coded payment brought her closer to the person who betrayed her mother.
Nolan argued for time to scout the mountain route. The castle could be a trap, and Lucien had already demonstrated control over paths the wolves could not sense.
Daisy feared delay more than ambush. Klaudius had attacked the boundary, invaded the mansion, and taken her grandfather. Waiting allowed him to choose every battlefield.
“Then we make him react to us,” she said. She proposed answering the demand for surrender with a meeting at neutral ground.
Nolan rejected the idea until Daisy explained that Vera’s pendant protected her mind and the mate bond could guide Blackwood to her.
“You are describing yourself as bait,” he said.
“I’m describing myself as the one person Klaudius will come for.” Daisy refused to remain the object around which men planned a war.
The council divided. Marcus saw opportunity; Elias saw too many ways for the plan to fail.
Nolan ended the debate privately. He took Daisy to the courtyard where her power first formed a controlled barrier.
“If the bond disappears again, I may not reach you.” His fear was not for Blackwood’s strategy but for the woman standing before him.
Daisy placed his hand over Vera’s pendant. “Then we strengthen it before I go.”
Nolan understood what she offered: not surrender to instinct, but a deliberate acceptance of their bond.
“Are you choosing this?” he asked. Scott’s rejection had taught them both why the question mattered.
“I’m choosing you,” Daisy said. “Not because you’re Alpha. Not because the Moon Goddess decided. Because when everyone called me a monster, you asked what I chose to become.”
Nolan kissed her, and their power met without violence. His wolf rose beneath the bond while red light circled them.
A mark began to form where his hand rested near her shoulder, then stopped before becoming permanent. They were not yet ready to complete it under the shadow of war.
The partial bond was enough. Daisy could feel Nolan’s presence like a fixed star inside her mind.
A messenger arrived carrying Klaudius’s reply before they sent one. The vampire lord already knew about the proposed meeting.
The message named the mountain castle and commanded Daisy to come before the next moonrise. It included a lock of hair from someone Blackwood believed safely hidden.
Daisy recognized it as her grandfather’s. His guarded room stood empty, and Mila’s cell had been opened from inside. The endgame had begun with another betrayal at the heart of Nolan’s fortress.