Chapter 35: The Betrayal of the Royal Enforcer

"Mom!"

Leo's advanced sensory nodes intercepted the biological disruption the exact fraction it ignited; the precise second his emerald vision locked onto Clara, her fingers instinctively released the burning chalice.

A resonant, metallic shatter echoed across the chamber floor as the crystal shard network detonated over the stone layout.

Clara dropped her posture instantly, her bare hands targeting the razor fragments before they could pierce the young prince’s soft paws, desperate to prevent a biological compromise to his system.

"Restrain your flesh. My claws shall clear the destruction."

A massive, towering shadow flooded her perimeter, casting a dense aura of cold winter mint across her tracking zone; Dominic forcefully but tenderly redirected her wrists away from the shards, independently harvesting the lethal glass.

"Leo, remain anchored to your coordinate. Your birth-Luna remains intact." Clara registered a sudden, systemic collapse of her muscular power; dispatching the defensive protocol to the pup, she leaned heavily against the leather dais to secure her footing.

Sealing the fragments within multiple protective layers before castrating them into the waste vault, Dominic monitored Clara’s bloodless facial planes, an intense, possessive ache tearing through his chest, yet his commanding tongue remained paralyzed.

Her internal equilibrium appears entirely shattered.

The data suggests a failure in her sleep cycles, or her executive operations are crushing her life force.

Abandoning her frame to isolate inside this stronghold triggers a massive error across my security radar.

Intercepting Dominic’s private mental broadcast, Leo’s tiny facial planes shifted into a tight, anxious frown; his system similarly refused to leave his mother unmonitored within the den—she was shielding a heavy trauma in her psychic vault!

Yet defying his telepathic matrix, regardless of how aggressively the pup extended his tracking radar, Clara’s internal thoughts remained under an absolute, silent blackout.

Had his birth-Luna completely closed her mental frequency against the outer wilderness?

His miniature features registered a flash of deep tactical confusion before hardening into iron loyalty; under this dark occlusion, his beast absolutely refused to march with the sire and leave her unguarded.

"Mom, Leo aborts the campaign. My vanguard remains anchored to your flank."

He launched his tiny frame straight into Clara’s embrace, locking his arms around her knees, his flawless, aristocratic visage lifting to reflect her pale countenance within his obsidian pupils.

She extended a fragile hand to caress the pup’s silken crown, her resonance dropping into an intensely soft, melodic cadence: "My system is functional, prince. Banish the anxiety from your core."

Yet her submissive tone achieved the exact inverse, accelerating the pup’s defensive panic, his brow contracting into a tighter, ancient knot.

But his biology remained bound to three winters; his intellect lacked the extra vocabulary required to restore a broken adult Luna.

Leo swiveled his desperate emerald eyes to track the Alpha King's massive frame. "Dad, your sovereignty must execute a protective watch over Mom! My spirit begs your strength!"

"Leo, your tongue is forbidden from begging that predator—" Clara violently locked the pup against her chest, her emotional shields completely fracturing as a torrent of silent, desperate tears spilled across her face; her underlying terror computed exclusively that Dominic Vance was plotting to execute a total seizure of her scion.

Witnessing her absolute breakdown, Dominic’s dark brows locked into a lethal, rigid arch; a phantom iron claw seemed to violently clamp around his heart muscles, starving his chest of oxygen.

"Don your tactical gear immediately." His vocal cords dropped into a freezing, absolute monarchical mandate, pinning Clara to her seat. "Your frame shall accompany my vanguard to the medical fortress. This is far from a negotiation; if your pride resists compliance, my house commands ten thousand protocols to enforce absolute submission."

His internal radar failed to decode whether the violent ache in his chest was provoked by the pup's distress or her broken profile; yet across the ancient laws, a matured female—a birth-Luna—possessed zero justification to exhibit such chaotic, unhinged instability before the young lineage.

If her system lacked the capacity to secure her own survival parameters, how could her claws defend the prince?

Dominic’s conscious intellect had long categorized his obsession with Leo as a natural side effect of the pup's flawless discipline and unique psychic traits, forcing his inner beast to invest special bloodline devotion.

But toward Clara Thorne, his strategy dictated absolute emotional insulation.

A female of her displaced status had never resided within the scrolls of his elite mating options.

Their past physical encounter—the feral kiss that had breached her lips—was merely a chemical error induced by Lady Anna’s dark aphrodisiac formulas.

His throne could lavish vast kingdoms and material gold upon her trail, yet his emotional core would remain permanently barricaded against her spirit.

"My flesh requires zero medical intervention, nor does your crown possess the authority to issue mandates to my trail, Alpha King. Our covenant defines us strictly as a lord and a transient tenant; your sovereignty lacks the boundary clearance to govern my life."

Across her seasons, Clara’s spirit intensely loathed being chained by absolute mandates or driven by dominant alphas; Dominic Vance had fully unleashed both transgressions against her perimeter, rendering his clinical protection entirely repulsive to her pride.

"Mom, Leo is experiencing severe panic! Let the conflict dissolve between Mom and Dad!

Whimper...

"

Defying her calculated defense, her sharp syllables pushed the pup beyond his emotional threshold, a soft, tragic whine escaping his throat.

At this watch, his birth-Luna projected an absolute, lethal hatred for the sire, yet her mental vault remained dead to his tracking radar, leaving his young beast marooned in a terrifying void of emotional storm!

Furthermore, within his primitive calculations, his father’s dominant aura had similarly launched an aggressive strike against the mother, though the underlying cause remained hidden from his intellect.

"Banish the terror, Leo. The Alpha King and my trail are far from conflict; my system merely sustained a minor biological fluctuation, and his voice is deploying standard protective interest."

The pup’s distress violently lacerated Clara’s maternal core; she instantly shifted her frequency into an intensely tender, soothing murmur to stabilize his systems.

Across the hearth, Dominic recorded that his vocal delivery had run entirely too brutal for the den, his sharp brow twitching as he lowered his tone: "Clara Thorne, your radar tracks the data; even the prince is suffering a systemic failure due to your instability. Does your intellect compute it acceptable to sustain this reckless, stubborn posture?"

"Terms recorded. My vanguard shall accompany your trail to the medical sanctuary within this watch."

Clara rose with absolute facial neutrality, carrying Leo back into the sleeping quarters to secure her heavy outerwear and travel vaults, simultaneously harvesting the cartoonish tiger-striped tactical satchel she had prepared for the prince.

"Once the alchemists verify my vital signs, my vanguard shall join the campaign to escort Leo through the amusement wilderness."

Henceforth, her strategy dictated that the prince would never again be isolated within Dominic Vance's perimeter without her presence; at that exact threshold, her primeval survival instinct had delivered a verified warning—the Alpha King intended to execute a complete, tyrannical theft of her child!

"Confirmed. My crown grants the terms."

Dominic experienced a passing jolt of surprise, his sharp lips tightening before delivering a nod of compliance.

His calculations had zero anticipation that Clara Thorne would voluntarily volunteer to align with their vanguard; her violent rejection during the previous twilight watch had communicated a total refusal to run adjacent to his presence.

Yet tracking the tear-tracks staining the prince’s face, her inclusion would serve to stabilize the lineage.

As his hand mobilized to establish clearance with the medical fortress, he registered that his primary enforcer, Luke, had again failed to respond to his high-priority runic link.

The trace of instinctual unease within his gut expanded by a massive margin.

"Identify your status. Multiple sun cycles have elapsed since your vanguard reported to the central citadel."

"The classified intelligence compilation your crown commanded remains missing from my desk."

"Execute an immediate return."

Despatching the sharp text string to Luke's offline frequency, he was forced to route a direct line to Beta Vance, specifically masking Clara’s medical presentation to prevent the old Dowager Luna from launching an unnecessary panic spiral across the citadel.

Beta Vance refrained from executing an invasive interrogation, rapidly deploying an elite medical alchemist to await their arrival.

"A global biological scan of this magnitude is required?"

Clara’s intellect registered severe irritation as she reviewed the diagnostic ledger, attempting to barter terms across the laboratory: "Can my system restrict the scan to these select parameters? Otherwise, by the time the runic arrays deliver the data, the stars will have claimed the sky, stripping our vanguard of the watch required to hunt with Leo."

"Negative. Your biological integrity dictates absolute compliance."

"..." Her internal thoughts offered a sarcastic tribute to his ancestral line; her systems were entirely functional, her metabolic hunger pristine—if only his towering frame would cease casting its massive shadow across her path.

"Your vanguard shall execute the blood draws and skeletal scans first; once those metrics are locked, we shall advance immediately to the amusement territory. The diagnostic scrolls will clear on the morrow." Dominic calculated her facial coloration had reclaimed its natural, vibrant flush, suggesting zero systemic collapse, rendering a prolonged siege inside the waiting halls entirely redundant.

Clara readily embraced the modified timeline; after delivering a sequence of protective commands to Leo, she marched into the blood-harvesting chamber.

Right at that precise second, Dominic’s tracking crystal emitted a sequence of urgent runic chimes.

"Alpha King, deliver absolution to my trail; throughout these recent watches, my ancestral den sustained a catastrophic bloodline crisis. The classified intelligence your crown commanded has achieved absolute verification; the encrypted scrolls are now transferring to your terminal. Lastly... my spirit must communicate a final declaration—my hand officially resigns its commission from your vanguard."

The transmission belonged to Enforcer Luke; following the dense wall of text, a massive wave of encrypted data files and visual memory matrices flooded the screen—unmasking the absolute, long-buried truth of the past.