CHAPTER 10: Ghost in the Bloodline
797 Words
He’s alive.
The words wouldn’t stop echoing in Aria’s mind as she stared at the name on the screen.
ARIES D. VEX
There was no date of death. No termination tag. No burial records.
Just one word beneath his file: ACTIVE.
She could barely breathe.
“He died with the others,” she whispered.
Dominic stepped closer. “That’s what they wanted you to believe.”
Aria’s jaw tightened. “Why hide him?”
“Because if he lived, so did his claim,” Dominic replied. “To House Vex. To the last unbroken bloodline. If Nexum failed to destroy you, he was their backup plan. Maybe even their prototype.”
Aria backed away from the screen, her pulse racing. She hadn’t spoken her father’s name aloud in years. Not since the night her world burned and his scent vanished with it.
She remembered his hand on her shoulder.
His voice telling her: Never lower your eyes, even when the wolves circle.
“What now?” Kellen asked from the hallway, having overheard everything.
Aria turned, her expression unreadable.
“We find him.”
---
The next morning, the city was already reeling.
Her latest data drop had hit the networks like a solar flare. High-level resignations rippled through corporate syndicates. Tabloids spun stories of conspiracy and corruption. Proxies went silent.
And through it all, Nova Quinn’s face remained on every screen.
Her voice.
Her rebellion.
Dominic watched the chaos unfold from the secure bunker beneath ValeCorp. Vincent, his lieutenant, stormed in holding a tablet.
“She’s made you a target,” he said. “Half the High Table wants your head. The rest are calling for votes of no confidence.”
Dominic didn’t flinch. “Let them.”
“You’re not thinking clearly,” Vincent snapped. “We built this empire on control, not chaos.”
Dominic turned slowly.
“No,” he said. “You built it on fear. She’s building something stronger.”
---
By midday, Aria had disappeared again.
Disguised, cloaked, armed with intel from the data chip, she tracked the only known signal left of her father—a forgotten safehouse deep in the outer districts, masked beneath an old cathedral long condemned after the Uprising.
She approached it alone.
The air was thick with memory. Stone and ash. Prayer etched into the walls.
Inside, the church was empty.
Or so it seemed.
She passed beneath the shattered stained glass, her boots echoing across the altar.
Then she heard it.
A breath.
A voice.
“You came too late.”
Aria turned fast.
A man stood in the shadows beyond the pulpit, half his face obscured by a hood. A beard covered his jaw. Scars marred his cheek. But his eyes—those were Vex eyes.
The same as hers.
“Aries,” she whispered.
He stepped forward.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“You’re alive,” she said.
“I stopped being alive the night they slaughtered our kind.”
“No,” she said. “You hid.”
His expression hardened.
“I survived,” he growled. “Because someone had to remember who we were. Someone had to wait for the right moment to burn them all down.”
Tears threatened the edge of her voice. “And you never came for me.”
His voice cracked. “Because if I had, they would’ve found you. They would’ve turned you into what they wanted me to become.”
Aria’s fists clenched.
“I needed you,” she whispered. “And you let me believe you were dead.”
“I watched you from the shadows,” he said. “I saw everything. The fall. The rebirth. You burned brighter than even I expected.”
She stepped forward.
“But you didn’t stop them.”
“No,” he said. “Because my fire was never meant to lead. Yours was.”
They stood in silence.
Then Aries slowly extended a hand.
“In your blood, Aria, is the last true will of House Vex. Not just to survive. But to conquer. I trained in secret, yes. But you? You made the world listen.”
She looked down at his hand.
Didn’t take it.
“I’m not here to join your hidden crusade,” she said. “I’m here to end theirs.”
He nodded once.
“Then let’s end it together.”
---
Outside, in the growing dusk, Dominic waited.
He watched the cathedral.
And when Aria stepped out, walking side by side with a man who looked like her ghost, he didn’t speak.
But something deep inside him shifted.
She had more than claws now.
She had legacy.
And for the first time, Dominic wasn’t sure if he was still the strongest wolf in the city.
---
- Writer
