Chapter 5
Clarice POV:
The scandal rocked the Pack, but Jacob spun it. He claimed the Red Wolf was a "parasitic twin" and the true Alpha was simply "gestating longer due to its immense power." Bella remained under house arrest, a prisoner in luxury, waiting for the second birth.
I, however, was living in a very expensive incubator.
"Draco, put me down," I sighed as he carried me down the stairs.
"Healer said no stress," Draco grunted.
"Walking isn't stress!"
"You carry my heirs," he rumbled. "Plural. Precious cargo."
*Heirs.*
The magical resonance scan confirmed it. I wasn't carrying a baby. I was carrying a Clutch. Three distinct life signatures.
The Serpent Clan went wild. I was the first human-wolf to conceive with a Serpent King in five centuries.
That afternoon, we were in the library. Draco was "nesting"-arranging swan-down pillows near the fireplace with intense, terrifying focus.
"My King," a servant knocked. "A visitor. She insists."
"Who?"
"Bella."
Draco growled. "I'll remove her."
"No," I said, hand on my stomach. "Let her in."
Bella waddled in. She looked grotesque. Her skin was grey, stretched tight over a belly that pulsed with unnatural veins. She smelled of desperation and that chemical tang.
She fell to her knees.
"Clarice," she wheezed. "Help me."
"Help you how?"
"Jacob... if this baby isn't perfect, he'll kill me. But you..." She stared at my stomach. "You're pregnant. I heard the rumors. Tell me the secret."
"Secret?"
"How did you make a monster's seed take root? Give me the potion! If I can make this thing inside me look like an Alpha..."
"There is no potion, Bella," I said. "It's called compatibility."
"Liar!" She lunged, eyes manic. "You have magic! Give it to me!"
Draco was there instantly. He caught her by the throat, lifting her feet off the ground. Fangs extended.
"Touch her," he hissed, "and I peel you."
"Draco, put her down," I said. "She's not worth the carpet cleaning."
He tossed her back. She hit the wall, gasping.
"You think you won," Bella rasped, clutching her freakish belly. "But you're carrying snakes. Cold, heartless things. They'll eat you from the inside out."
"Leave," Draco roared. The window cracked from the pressure.
Bella fled.
That night, I woke up sweating. *My blood was boiling.*
"Draco!"
"Clarice?"
"It's time."
"Too soon," he panicked. "Four months!"
"Serpent pregnancies are faster," I groaned. "And... something else."
I threw the covers off.
*My legs were fusing.* My skin shimmered, turning iridescent gold.
*The ancient bloodline. My mother's secret. The Siren blood, dormant in my wolf veins, was waking up to accommodate the children of the deep.*
"Get the healers!" Draco shouted, shaking the castle. "The Queen is shifting!"
*Bella was wrong. They weren't eating me. They were remaking me.*
Chapter 6
Clarice POV:
The transformation was agony, a fire reshaping bone, but when I woke, I felt... powerful. My skin had a pearlescent sheen. The gnawing wolf hunger was gone, replaced by a predatory, aquatic stillness.
Draco helped me up. "The eggs are ready, my Queen. But first, you must know what they inherit."
He took me to the vault beneath the castle.
It wasn't a cave. It was an empire. Gold bars stacked like firewood, chests of uncut diamonds, blueprints for tech the humans wouldn't invent for a decade.
"Wolves fight for scraps of forest," Draco said. "We own the ground they walk on. We own the banks that hold their mortgages."
He turned to me, emerald eyes glowing.
"Bella calls us beggars. Let her. A King doesn't need to shout."
*
A week later. My father's seventieth birthday.
We stood at the Silver Moon Pack House entrance. Draco in midnight blue velvet, me in shimmering gold that hugged my swollen form.
The music died when we entered.
Bella was there.
She sat at the head table, and she looked monstrous. Her belly was distended to a grotesque size, black veins pulsing. She was shoving raw meat into her mouth, grease running down her chin.
"You," she spat. "You dare?"
"Happy birthday, Father," I said, placing a small box on the table. *A deed to a diamond mine.*
Father's eyes bulged.
"Look at her!" Bella shrieked, struggling to stand. Her legs trembled under the weight. "She's barely showing! Runts! Pebbles! *This*," she slapped her massive stomach, "is a god! I am carrying the Wolf God's avatar!"
The crowd murmured, swayed by the sheer size of her.
"That is not a god, Bella," I said, my voice echoing with a new, Siren-like resonance. "It is a parasite."
"Jealous!" she screamed. "You're just-"
Terror crossed her face.
She clutched her stomach. A wet, tearing sound ripped through the silence.
*Splosh.*
Fluid-dark, foul-smelling sludge-gushed onto the floor.
"My water!" she wailed. "It's coming!"
At that exact moment, an electric cramp seized me. Not pain. Urgency.
I squeezed Draco's hand. "Draco. The eggs."
Chaos.
"Midwife!" Jacob roared.
Draco swept me up. "Clear a room!" His Alpha aura crushed the wolves into submission.
They gave us the guest suite. Bella was dragged screaming into the master bedroom next door.
The contrast was stark.
In my room, Draco lit lavender candles. He placed me in a warm bath.
"Breathe," he murmured.
I didn't scream. The Siren blood made it seamless. With one powerful push, relief washed over me.
Draco reached into the water, hands reverent.
He lifted them out. Three large, leathery eggs, glowing with soft golden light.
"Perfect," he whispered, tears in his eyes. He wrapped them in thermal silk.
From the room next door, a sound erupted that made my blood freeze.
*Not a cry. A screech. Like metal grinding on bone.*
"What is that?" I whispered.
"The truth," Draco said.
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