Chapter 198: A magnet for disaster

Snowflakes shattered slowly against the windowpane where I pressed my forehead, feeling the bitter frost creep beneath my skin, freezing my blood into coarse slush that painfully scraped my veins from within.

Three months had passed.

Ninety endless days since that cursed moment Magnus was bound in steel handcuffs and taken away. Since then, my life had plunged into a void. The vast house, stripped of his scent, felt like a haunting crypt, each breath scraping raw against my lungs. I could find no solace, no quiet corner where the ache proved tolerable.

The last time we saw each other was a week ago. Forty brief minutes inside a gray visitation room. The thick, bulletproof glass separating us felt like a cruel mockery.

Time after time, I pressed my palm against the barrier, desperate to catch even a sliver of his heat, staring into his dark eyes and listening to his voice distorted by a cheap intercom.

The inability to reach out, to bury my face in the crook of his neck and inhale his rich scent, was driving me insane. The separation fractured me. I wanted to tear at the concrete walls of the holding facility until my fingers bled.

Our plans were methodically dismantled. Court hearings were postponed one after another, reducing our hopes to ash. It was an exhausting war of attrition.

The architect of this torture was the city’s newly appointed leader. He had never once appeared in public, pulling strings from the shadows, making it physically impossible for us to drag him into court.

They were backing us into a corner, wearing us down with uncertainty. No matter how deep our people dug for leverage, every lead shattered against the impenetrable wall of the system. We were being led in circles on purpose.

"You’re standing there again."

Footsteps behind me made me startle. Turning around, I met Sayan’s gaze as he entered the room. Stepping away from the frosted window, I walked toward the fireplace and sank heavily into an armchair. I picked up the half-empty coffee cup left on the table and took a sip, wincing as the cold bitterness constricted my throat, leaving a foul residue on my tongue.

"You’ve been coming around our house awfully often lately, don’t you think?" I asked quietly.

"Ha, if I don’t come by, who’s going to drag you away from the glass? And someone has to make sure Damian and Matthias don’t give the guards a heart attack," Sayan said, crashing into the adjacent armchair and casually crossing his legs.

Dark circles of exhaustion bruised the skin beneath his eyes. In Magnus’s absence, he carried the weight of the entire pack on his shoulders, tearing himself apart to keep things running.

"And here I thought it was all about Rianna. The poor Omega is going to start hiding behind the curtains from you soon."

Resting my hands over the fabric of my dress, I instinctively shielded my lower stomach. It was frighteningly small for how far along I was. The lack of growth weighed heavily on my mind, leaving me breathless with anxiety every night. Alan and Adam insisted in unison that it was a girl. Female embryos developed differently, the bump expanding slowly—especially with a future Alpha Breeder inside me.

A breeder...

Realizing that a girl like me was forming within my womb was terrifying. Given Magnus’s and my dominance, our daughter was guaranteed to inherit that trait. Bringing her into a world that hated us, feared us, and sought to subjugate us felt like a crime against our own child.

"Of course not! I would never—"

"You’re smitten with our new maid, Sayan. I’ve practically slipped in the puddle of drool you leave behind every time you stare at her, thinking no one notices. Isn’t a grown male ashamed to ogle so openly? Aren’t you afraid Jake will pack up his sister and take her away?" Hiding a faint, nervous smirk behind the rim of my porcelain cup, I watched my friend’s face darken rapidly.

Rianna had come to work for us after the roof collapsed at her college. With classes suspended, Jake refused to leave her alone in the dormitories, so I offered her a safe job here. The modest girl was entirely overwhelmed by Sayan’s predatory gaze, flushing bright crimson and fleeing the room whenever he entered.

"Right, like he’d take her. Jane, she’s so young. She’s only eighteen. She’s studying at the college and living there. There’s no way I’m letting her go back to that pit when this is over."

"And then she’ll find someone her own age to forget you," I grunted, watching the gears grinding heavily in the male’s head. "She’s not blushing purely out of fear—there are feelings there, too."

Sayan’s budding infatuation remained the sole flicker of life in my hollow reality. Days blurred together into a vacant streak, where I only drew a lifesaving breath once a week during my brief visitations with my Alpha. The rest of my time was consumed by desperate attempts to uncover leads on Amelie, reviewing documents, and analyzing intel on the new city leader’s moves.

"I actually came for another reason. The first court hearing has finally been scheduled, and..."

"That’s wonderful! Sayan! When?" Surging out of my seat, I rushed over to the Alpha, my knuckles turning white as I gripped the armrests of his chair. My heart slammed against my ribs, driving heat through my cold blood. "We need to notify Illai Keiner immediately so he can send—"

"That’s the problem, Jane. Those bastards slapped a travel ban on Oliver Hans. He’s barred from entering the country. We couldn’t figure out why they were stalling the trial, but now it all makes sense."

The air was knocked clean from my lungs. I stumbled back in shock. The world around me drained of color, compressing into a bleak, gray blur. A rusty, agonizing pang twisted through my chest.

They had calculated every move. Oliver Hans, Voice of the International High Court, was our ultimate trump card.

Following the purge of the corrupt leadership, Magnus had accepted aid from Illai Keiner, who owed him a heavy debt. My Alpha had located and returned Keiner’s sister, Arden, who had been wanted internationally for crimes against their clan.

In return, Keiner arranged for the world’s leading advocate for breeder rights to intervene. Oliver was supposed to dismantle the prosecution’s charges using his broad authority. But the new regime had mapped our network and found a legal loophole to shut the border in his face.

"What do we do now?" I asked hollowly, staring blindly out the window as heavy snowflakes fell, veiling the estate grounds in white.

Sinking back into the armchair, my hands trembled as I cupped the cold mug, its bottom covered only by thick coffee sludge. How I wished I could read those grounds to foresee the stabs in our back. But fate had cursed me with a different gift: a magnet for disaster.

"We attend the first hearing," Sayan grunted, resting his elbows on his knees and running his fingers through his hair in frustration. "Our legal team is armed to the teeth and ready to tear them apart, even without Handan present. We need to gauge their angle and listen to the formal indictment."

"Then we’ll be there. Do we know who the judge is yet?" I asked, my eyes fixed on the flickering flames in the hearth.

"Yes. They brought an old fossil into play—someone who’s been retired for fifteen years. And the bastard is utter scum," Sayan spat venomously.

"How can they legally do that?" My throat constricted at the realization of the lawlessness unfolding before us. The system was crumbling right in front of our eyes.

"Of course they can’t. But according to the intelligence we scraped together, that relic was personally accredited by the city leader himself. This whole circus is starting to feel far too much like your trial, Jane. A total sham held together by a thin thread."

"What about the city leader? Did we dig up any solid intel on him?" Tension locked my spine like iron. No elections had been held; he had been thrust into power out of nowhere. We suspected the President was pulling the strings, but no one had concrete proof.

Then, overnight, posters of the new leader had been pasted over the vandalized billboards across the territory.

He had an unnaturally pale complexion and features that were striking, yet terrifically predatory. Dark hair framed eyes so pitch-black you couldn’t distinguish the pupils from the irises. A true raven. A single glance at his printed face was enough to send a chill down my spine.

"Yeah, but only breadcrumbs. Though we did secure one major breakthrough—and it’s a game-changer. He isn’t native to our territory; he’s from the Northern Reaches. Which is a massive violation of the citizenship laws governing public office."

"Then how is this happening? Why hasn’t anyone stopped him?" My hands turned to ice, the cup trembling uncontrollably in my grip.

"We’ve never touched on this topic before, but... were you aware that the Northern territories harbor a high concentration of Alpha Breeders? And that they possess zero rights or freedom up there?"

The man’s cold tone paralyzed me. Genuine terror seized my chest. Each word struck with lethal precision, assembling scattered puzzle pieces into a horrific picture that made my inner wolf tremble.

"Are you implying..."

"He was brought here to reinstate the old subjugation laws for breeders and grind this city back into the dirt. I’d bet my life he was hired directly by the President."

"But our city—just like the Lower District—is autonomous..." I tried to argue, desperately clinging to the remnants of logic.

"The moment Magnus wiped out the old council, military rule was declared. Add in the influx of breeders fleeing from all across the country to seek asylum in our territory... and it gives the President the perfect excuse to crush everything we’ve built and reinstate the old regime—or make it ten times harsher. Our autonomy collapsed the moment martial law hit," Sayan cut in brutally, shattering my last shred of hope. "It’s supposed to be temporary, but the President has already extended his claws into our domain. The consequences are going to be catastrophic."

"Do you think their ultimate goal is to execute Magnus?" I asked, locking eyes with him.

"I hate to terrify you, Jane, but I think their ambitions run far deeper—especially considering there are only four Alpha Breeders left in the entire country capable of bearing purebred pup for any Alpha."