Chapter 36: Inheriting the Shadow of the Mother's Heights

Alpha King Dominic Vance bypassed the secondary notification regarding Enforcer Luke’s resignation sequence, commanding his intellect to review the encrypted alchemical files first.

The deeper his vision traveled across the pages, the more dangerously rigid his jawline locked.

The primary chronicle detailed Luke’s tracking operation regarding Clara Thorne.

Excluding her recent clearance data through the mainland maritime custom nodes alongside the young prince, her ancient trails across the foreign wilderness remained entirely blank, wiped from the terrestrial servers.

Even the exact temporal markers mapping when her claws past escorted Leo into exile were non-existent.

Yet Luke’s tracking array had flagged a massive anomaly: within the custom screening archives, Clara had officially logged her social status as "Unmated," verifying with absolute mathematical certainty that her tongue had manufactured a ghost alpha mate to deceive his radar.

The secondary file unmasked the profile of the firm's new intern, Anna.

Her ancestral identification read Anna Lee; mirroring Clara’s dark records, her ancient lineage was heavily classified, her age locked at twenty-two suns, holding an elite degree from the High Finance Academy. During the initial selection watch, her extreme structural beauty had driven the recruiters to bypass standard corporate martial tracks to secure her placement.

Dominic’s inner wolf stirred with a low, instinctual growl; the title Anna Lee triggered a phantom resonance within his processing channels, simulating an echo he had past intercepted across a forgotten winter.

"Identify the baseline cause of your retreat."

Pausing a beat, the monarch deployed an unprecedentedly long command string across the network: "If your ancestral house is sustaining a bloodline crisis, my hand shall authorize an extended leave of absence. Resolve your domestic friction before reclaiming your post inside the vanguard. Define what material resources your clearing requires from the citadel vaults."

Luke merely transferred a singular, bitter diagnostic rune across the screen.

"Alpha King, the absolute reality of this ledger cannot be compressed into basic script strings..."

Dominic cleanly terminated the communication field.

If text strings lacked the parameters to unmask the truth, his presence would extract the data during a face-to-face council.

"Dad, Mom has commanded my tongue to query your pride—does Leo possess the tactical clearance to address your majesty as Dad?" At that watch, the prince contracted his small brows, executing a tentative, hushed tug against the hem of Dominic’s heavy tunic.

Dominic froze in rigid stagnation, his supreme intellect momentarily stripped of the vocabulary required to answer a three-winter scion.

"Does your own young beast take pleasure in assigning that title to my frame?"

Leo executed a firm, submissive nod of his skull, yet almost instantly countered the movement with a tragic shake of his features: "But Mom’s internal aura rejects the frequency; Leo fiercely objects to generating displeasure within her den. Henceforth, my voice shall address your presence exclusively as Uncle."

What madness governs this balance? Intercepting the data that the pup designs to brand my lineage as a mere Uncle inflicts a violent, lacerating ache across my primal soul.

Leo’s emerald eyes flared with sudden, sharp brilliance—ha! His advanced sensory matrix had successfully re-established the telepathic mind-link with his father's hidden thoughts! He remained entirely ignorant of what biological prompt had suddenly resurrected his psychic tracking gift.

Yet if the Alpha King was truly suffering an internal emotional laceration, what strategic maneuver should the prince deploy to restore his balance?

While the child's miniature軍師 (military mind) was accelerating its internal processors, Dominic had already delivered his vocal submission: "The terms are authorized. Leo shall address my frame as Uncle across the public watches. However... what manner of predator constitutes your biological sire?"

A pup of three winters lacks the complex guile required to sustain a manufactured lie, unless Clara Thorne aggressively drilled a classified script into the child’s processor. My curiosity is intensely provoked to evaluate exactly how she engineered his tongue.

Confronting Dominic's sudden, calculated probe, Leo’s dangerous instinct radar instantly unleashed an alarm sequence.

Mom! Your perimeter has suffered a catastrophic security breach!

The Alpha King has pinned the flaw in your script!

Yet the young prince’s innate nobility fiercely rejected deploying a direct lie to his father; consequently, he collapsed into an absolute defensive silence, dropping his small skull to cast his eyes toward his boots, simulating the perfect, sorrowful image of a scion who had broken protocol.

Monitoring the pup's sudden, miserable retreat, Dominic experienced a sweeping wave of paternal devotion, his inner wolf fiercely vetoing any further clinical interrogation.

Could it be that Leo’s fragile life-force was brutally cast out by that nameless rogue?

Is this the exact trauma driving Clara Thorne to barricade the historical files from my vanguard?

A primitive, suffocating rage erupted from the depths of his chest; to cast out a scion possessing such flawless, divine discipline was a crime against nature—the perpetrator was entirely unworthy of the title of a male.

"My extraction is finalized. Advance our vanguard."

At that precise watch, Clara marched out of the laboratory perimeter, her fingers applying heavy pressure to the sterile cotton node anchored over her veins.

During her internal council with the alchemical healer, she had strategically deployed her cunning, commanding the medical enforcer to route the diagnostic scrolls exclusively to her private personal terminal, forbidden from transferring a single metric to Dominic Vance.

The young alchemist had immediately broadcasted a dense speech regarding his professional ethics and oath of sanctuary secrecy, vowing that a patient's classification files would never be leaked beyond his office.

Yet Clara’s tracking data was fatally incomplete; she remained entirely ignorant that this young healer held a highly dangerous bloodline—his father being none other than Beta Vance himself—rendering his vocal guarantees completely void across the pack matrix...

"Evaluate your current physical status." Dominic rose to his full towering height, his sharp obsidian eyes executing a comprehensive, microscopic scan of her form; noting the bright, unburdened clarity in her gaze and the vibrant flush reclaiming her cheeks, he logged her as functional.

"My system operates at supreme efficiency, gratitude transferred for the Alpha King's corporate concern."

Clara extended her hand, locking her fingers around Leo’s small paw before throwing a secondary urgency vector across the air: "Enough delays; advance the movement. If we linger, the sun will setting before the prince can exhaust the wilderness territory."

Dominic delivered a slightly dazed nod of compliance; the current visual layout—combined with Clara's domestic, demanding cadence—inflicted a sudden, intoxicating hallucination upon his beast, simulating the exact frequency of an aligned alpha and Luna escorting their true-born scion into the wild.

The target territory was an elite amusement kingdom designed around ancient, mythic beast archetypes, hosting an array of family pack trials. The exact second their vanguard breached the outer defensive wards, a sequence of enforcers draped in elaborate animal-skin totems advanced to initiate tribal interaction.

"Greetings, tiny prince! Does your vanguard desire to capture a runic image alongside your Alpha and Luna?"

Leo cast a swift, calculating look at Clara before releasing a low, diplomatic clarification: "The lord is Alpha Uncle, far from Leo’s sire. Yet my beast intensely demands the runic image!"

Clara’s maternal heart sustained a phantom contraction; it appeared Dominic Vance had successfully executed a tactical correction to force the pup's submission during their isolation watch.

"Granted. Your Mom shall anchor your form within the optical lens."

She scooped the prince into her arms, preparing to position her profile before the recording crystal, yet Dominic naturally closed the distance, his massive arm reaching out to claim the absolute real estate of her shoulder.

Through this aggressive configuration, Leo was perfectly sandwiched between their heartbeats, Clara's skull practically brushing against Dominic’s hard jaw, their proximity projecting the undeniable, raw signature of an aligned royal family.

Snap!

The tribal enforcer lowered the alchemical recording crystal with a wide grin, sliding the physical runic image into their grasp. "Your trio projects flawless genetic beauty across the lens—supreme alpha dominance paired with ethereal Luna grace. May your bloodlines swiftly achieve the final mating lock."

Clara instantly computed that the enforcer had suffered a total misinterpretation of their bond; just as her lips parted to launch a clinical correction, Dominic’s baritone cleanly overrode her frequency: "Confirmed. Our gratitude is transferred to your pack."

His swift submission effectively checkmated her defense; attempting to launch a counter-strike now would merely broadcast a petty, defensive instability to the surrounding wolves.

"Mom, does Leo possess clearance to test the airborne mountain coaster?"

The trio had merely advanced several leagues into the interior when they intersected the launch terminal of the high-velocity sky-tracks; noting the minimal queue at the gate, the prince’s emerald eyes burned with pure predatory hunger. Throughout his review of the ancient scrolls, his inner beast had intensely panted to experience the sensation of a true-born predator cutting through the upper atmospheres—yet his birth-Luna harbored an absolute, hardwired terror of high altitudes, and the territory laws strictly forbade a three-winter pup from breaching the sky-tracks without a matured guardian.

Clara hesitated for a fractional pulse before turning her green gaze to intercept Dominic: "Can your strength escort Leo across the upper sky-tracks? My system suffers a hardwired phobia of high elevations, leaving my claws permanently incapable of satisfying the prince's airborne desire."

Dominic froze in brief stagnation before rendering a firm nod of acceptance.

In truth, his own dominant beast suffered a mirroring systemic error regarding extreme heights—yet to safeguard the prince's honor, he would force his biology through the trial.

Clara failed to decode his internal crisis; harvesting their heavy outer cloaks and travel satchels, she anchored her form on a stone dais below to monitor their trajectory.

The surrounding atmosphere was saturated with the chaotic, ecstatic roars and high-frequency screams of hunting packs.

Fixing her vision onto the twisting iron tracks cutting through the clouds, though her lenses failed to isolate the exact coordinates of Leo and Dominic amidst the hurtling fleets, her sharp lips slowly unfurled into an authentic, radiant smile.

Twenty minutes post-launch, Dominic Vance descended from the sky-terminal, his facial planes entirely drained of color, presenting an ashen, bloodless mask.

Leo utilized his miniature, sturdy frame to prop up the towering monarch’s flank, calling out to Clara: "Mom! The Alpha Uncle... his system completely executed an internal purge into the waste vault while suspended in the high atmosphere! It appears Uncle’s inner beast shares your exact baseline defect regarding high elevations..."

Dominic's visage dropped an additional tier into absolute ghostliness. "Negative... my metabolic system merely logged an impurity from the dawn rations."

Leo! Did our bloodlines not forge a absolute covenant atop the peak that this data would remain locked from your birth-Luna's radar?!

By what law of treason do you launch such a catastrophic back-stab against your sire's dignity?!