Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 189

Amelia

The emergency summit had been called in a panic. It wasn’t planned as a milestone or framed as a celebration.

It was stitched together under pressure, foreign governments issuing ultimatums, trade routes buckling, and neighboring kingdoms threatening sanctions.

If we didn’t offer the illusion of diplomacy, we risked becoming the next failed state broadcast around the world. The palace called it historic, a new page in our fractured history, but everyone who walked into that ballroom already knew what it really was: a temporary ceasefire dressed up in protocol.

They stripped everything ornate from the room. There were no chandeliers, no velvet tapestries, and no illusions of civility to soften the tension. Instead, there were soundproofing panels, concealment enchantments, and rows of reinforced chairs flanked by guards with visible weapons.

Every delegate had a nameplate, and every whisper could be traced. Vampires sat in clusters, tight and watchful.

Wolves sat bristling in their corners, bodies tense and shoulders squared. The gaps between the tables weren’t just spatial, they were centuries wide.

I stood at the podium in a navy-blue dress that was deliberately plain and sharp. There was no crown, no royal insignia, no distraction from what I had come to say.

Behind me, Richard stood still and unreadable. He wasn’t there to speak or to hold my hand. He was there because ifBehind me, Richard stood still and unreadable. He wasn’t there to speak or to hold my hand. He was there because if Tell, someone needed to be close enough to catch me.

I let the silence stretch, far longer than any speechwriter would have advised. It wasn’t a speech if they weren’t actually listening.

“We’ve all lost something,” I said. My voice wasn’t toud, but it cut clean through the room’s tension. “Blood, territory, families, and futures. Every time we come close to building something, we tear it down before it’s allowed to grow. Not out of malice, but out of fear. This summit wasn’t born from unity. It was born from exhaustion. But maybe that’s enough. Maybe we don’t need to believe in peace yet. Maybe we just need to stop believing in war.”

The room stilled further. I could feel the weight of it.

Delegates leaned forward slightly with the sharp alertness of those measuring risk.

“I’m not standing here because I’m perfect, or because l represent some pure neutrality. I’m not pretending! haven’tmade mistakes or enemies. I’m standing here because l’ve seen what happens when extremists define the conversation. I’ve stood between a protest and a riot.

I’ve held children who were bleeding from shrapnel their leaders never acknowledged. I’ve heard people speak my name with awe, with disgust, and with a kind of desperation that doesn’t know where to land. And I still believe we can stop this. I believe we can choose not to destroy each other.”Then something shifted in the air, too sudden to ignore.

The Bell wave didn’t register as sound. It registered as sensation, a pressure that coiled behind my eyes, pressed into the base of my skull, and rang inside my molars.

The air twisted. The walls bent. People collapsed before I had time to process what was happening. Wolves dropped like marionettes with their strings cut. People screamed or seized. A woman convulsed in her seat until her chair toppled. Blood streamed from a man’s nose as he slumped forward onto the marble floor.

The resonance twisted toward me, and I moved into it without hesitation.

It felt like my chest cracked open under the force. The pulse tore through my nerves, fire laced with static, burning along the wires of my body. I didn’t try to resist it.

I focused on redirecting it, grounding it, remembering everything Simon had taught me, about breath, about intention, and about blood being smarter than pain.

But this wasn’t a training chamber. This was war, and I was standing directly in its center.

My limbs seized as my spine arched, and something deep in me matched the rhythm of the wave, syncing like a tuning fork to vibration. I wanted to scream, but my throat wouldn’t open. I wanted to stay upright, but the floor was already rushing toward me.

Richard called my name, and I heard him just before I lost control.

The marble floor caught me before anyone else could.

When I woke, the infirmary lights were too bright and too white, and everything smelled like sterilization and sweat.

My body didn’t ache in any familiar way. It felt hollowed out and rewired, like I had been taken apart and put back together again. Richard was sitting beside me, his summit suit wrinkled, his sleeves pushed to his elbows, and his hands clenched tight around the edge of his chair.

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