The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 723

Jennifer reached the east wall first, boots skidding through gravel still settling from whatever had hit it.

"Hold!" Her hand shot up before she'd finished crossing the yard. "Crown Wardens! Stand down, we talk this through before anyone bleeds for it!"

For one breath, it almost worked. The shapes past the broken gate slowed.

Then a voice cracked back, mocking. "Wardens siding with Calder now? Since when do you take a house's coin to guard its lies?"

"Nobody's taking anyone's coin—"

"They poisoned their own beast and blamed us for it! And you're protecting the ones who did it!"

That was all it took. Someone threw first — Jennifer never saw who — and after that there was nothing left to argue, only a fight nobody had wanted five seconds ago and everybody was in now.

Steel met steel. A beast screamed past the treeline. The gate gave up the last of its resistance, and men poured through.

Inside, none of it had reached the office yet. Just sound, muffled through stone, closer every second.

Lord Calder stood frozen, one hand locked around his daughter's arm, staring at the door like it might hold if he wanted it badly enough.

"Every second you spend deciding is a second Vesper doesn't have." Alex's voice stayed flat. "Choose. Let me save him, or let him die. I'm not wasting my time while you make up your mind."

"You don't get to rush him—" Kevin cut in, finger jabbing the air. "That beast can't be cured. What are you really after? Coin? Scamming a dying house with something impossible?"

"I'm not rushing him. I'm telling him the truth. He can hear it now, or hear it after it's too late to matter." Alex's mouth twisted. "And being stupid doesn't mean everyone else has to be."

Kevin's face went red, and this time it had nothing to do with the fighting outside. He'd said almost nothing since Alex arrived. Now, with the house falling apart around him, thirty years of silence found its voice all at once.

"You want to know why our enemies are at the gate?" He rounded on Alex, close enough to spit the words.

"A stranger shows up out of nowhere, claims he can cure what no one's cured in thirty years — and inside the hour, House Vayne is tearing down our wall. That's not coincidence. That's timing." His voice climbed, filling every corner the horn had left behind.

"How do we know you didn't tell them exactly when to come? How do we know you're not the reason any of this is happening? He doesn't want to save Vesper. He wants him dead quiet, dressed up as a cure."

"Kevin!" Calder's voice cracked — but the words had already found the crack in him they were looking for. His eyes moved to Alex, and something in them changed. Not gratitude anymore. Suspicion, wearing fear's face.

Alex didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.

"Enough." He looked at Calder, not Kevin. "You don't want my help, say so now. I'll walk out that door and go home. I've got no stake in whether Vayne owns this land by tonight or you do. You can all die over it and I won't lose a minute of sleep."

Nobody answered. That silence was answer enough.

"He'll only finish what the curse started." Kevin's voice dropped, but the certainty in it didn't.

"I've seen failed bond-rites before. The body doesn't hold steady when they fail — it goes faster. Let him touch Vesper, and you're not gambling on saving him. You're gambling on how much pain is left before the end."

"And what's your plan?" Wren rounded on him before her mother could stop her. "Forty years of Vesper's life, and every coin this house has paid you, and all you've ever done is watch him. What's the difference between dying now and dying an hour from now while you keep reading your books?"

Her voice broke and kept going anyway. "I'd rather bet on him still being alive."

She was already moving before her grandfather could answer. "Please," she said, not to Kevin, not to anyone but Alex. "I believe in you. Please. Help him."

"If you want him helped, you need to let me touch him." Alex fell in beside her, and for one second, before he looked away, something in his face said he'd heard exactly what that please had cost her.

"The curse spread overnight," he said, half to Wren, half to the healer trailing furious behind them. "Whatever this would've cost me this morning costs more now. I need to go in harder than I would have an hour ago."

He didn't say what harder would cost him. He didn't plan to.

"Harder how," Calder managed.

"You'll see when I start."

Vesper's pen reeked of scorched fur, and under it, something sweet and wrong. The Qilin lay on his side, the length of three men, his storm-grey hide gone dull and veined along the ribs.

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