Amphitrite didn't take it further; she left the room with a rather satisfied smirk and winking back at Nikolai through the closing door.
He couldn't help but feel that she was always teasing him.
"Well..." he sighed, leaning back on the cold steel bed and noticed that the original body of Lunaria crumbled into a green powder when her soul moved to the new body.
"What exactly are they trying to achieve with this power?"
Nikolai couldn't understand them, with a power that almost let them ignore death. The Nosferatu seed to seek more, sothing nearly unattainable. Did they have so secret, or a hidden plot other than reviving their previous elders and healing the leader's lover?
It was all too grand for that.
'Why would they make themselves the target of all other forces, when they could do it quietly.'
Stuck in his thoughts, he rolled onto his side and noticed a map pinned to the wall, sothing Amphitrite must have put there. "Huh?"
Amphitrite made markings in several spaces around the city... and small notes...
Gateway...
Possible gateway...
Tower entry point 1.
Tower entry point 2.
Different words, they showed the place where Nikolai hunted the ghouls, wraiths and found those strange caves... those were labelled as Tower entry points... with crosses through them.
"Because I destroyed the doorway, is that why?"
He suddenly wanted to find Amphitrite and ask questions, blooming like a rose garden in his mind.
Because the shape of all the markings wrapped around the city in a certain shape, forming a strange sigil from the ancient language of monsters for... "Gate" or "Opening."
Nikolai didn't know what this ant, and rolled off the tal bed, about to rush to finish her when Leona appeared in the doorway, bowing with her ginger hair covering her face.
"Young Master, Lord Ivan has called for your presence in the main mansion."
***
The mood in the mansion seed dark; the cloudy skies pouring a solemn rain didn't help things. Nikolai gazed at the doors of Nikita, Selene and Kumiko on his way down the hallway, noticing maids were cleaning them.
"Leona, where is everyone?" he asked, gazing out at the busy courtyard, despite the rain.
Leona walked at his side, her uniform clinging to her from the rain she had clearly not bothered to dry. The towel tucked under her arm remained untouched.
"They're all gathered," she said softly, eyes forward. "Lady Kumiko, Lady Risa, Lady Selene, and Lady Nikita. They were summoned not long before you."
Nikolai raised an eyebrow. "All four?"
Leona nodded, hesitating before adding, "Miss Amphitrite too... but master. So maids are whispering... It's related to you. That... perhaps Lord Ivan intends to discuss the Luna."
He stopped walking for a mont, boots silent against the polished floor, and stared ahead.
"My Luna?"
A bitter smile touched the edge of his lips.
Suppose he had ti to think about that, with war looming, his grandfather missing, and ancient monsters plotting in the shadows. And yet, in a household like theirs, bloodlines weren't just duty—they were a vital tool, blessing, and fate.
"And what do you think?" he asked, voice lower now, almost thoughtful.
Leona blinked, slightly startled by the question. "I think you already made your choice."
Nikolai stared at the closed doors for a mont longer.
The lights inside were off. No sound. Just a quiet, hollow presence.
The corridor stretched on, clean but oddly lifeless as if the heartbeat of the mansion had been pulled sowhere deeper, out of reach.
Rain continued to whisper against the tall stained-glass windows lining the halls.
His steps echoed between polished marble columns as they reached the stairwell leading to the core of the estate. The long walk through the rain washed away Nikolai's thoughts, and he gazed up at the massive castle built into the mountain walls.
"Leona..." he asked."
"Yes, my lord?"
"Is grandfather still in their hands?" A simple question, but the sky arced with lightning before a rumbling boom echoed through the air.
"..."
She didn't respond—her face beca pale, and her eyes downcast.
anwhile, he noticed they took a left turn instead of going to the main office where his grandfather would hold etings.
They went down, into the earth...
An underground eting room, as if to keep everything that happened a secret.
***
The main chamber of the Volkov underground wing was vast—vaulted ceilings, silver chandeliers humming with soft enchantnts, and tapestries bearing the crest of the house: a coiled wolf with bleeding fangs.
At the centre stood his father and acting head. Ivan Volkov, still and severe as stone. His dark robes hung like a shadow, and the glow from the rune circle at his feet made his eyes gleam a faint red in the dim.
He turned, gaze imdiately falling on Nikolai as he approached with Leona behind him.
"You ca quickly," Ivan said.
"You summoned ," Nikolai answered. "And you only do that when it's sothing... serious."
Ivan winked before waving the maid from the room.
Once alone, he sighed. A pause. Then a gesture to the long table beside them—half-cleared, still marked by relics and open docunts. A map of S-Kingdom stretched across one half, while the other bore photographs of ancient stone crypts and Nosferatu emblems etched into ruins.
"There's no ti left to delay. Your grandfather has been taken."
The words struck like a blade through the fog of uncertainty Nikolai had been walking through for weeks. His eyes narrowed, the tension in his gut twisting tight.
"So we failed to save him?"
"Yes," Ivan said. "They needed him for sothing... sothing to do with resurrection—the sa technology we both saw at their mansion and in those docunts."
"I see..." Nikolai muttered. "Is it sothing to do with our blood, like your sister?"
Nikolai's mind flashed to Lunaria and that new body. Her strength and power increased in that corpse, but it seed to crumble into dust at the second her soul was torn from one body and moved into another.
"Then they're not just experinting. They're using it."
Ivan nodded slowly.
"And they're preparing to unleash it. Our enemies are no longer satisfied with surviving the long night. They want to own it. They want to create sothing that cannot be killed. Even by our standards."
"What would you have do, father?"
Silence fell, broken only by the faint hiss of rain through the narrow ventilation slits.
Ivan stepped forward, resting a heavy hand on his son's shoulder.
"You're next in line. You always were. But with your grandfather gone and struck from the list and not likely to be next on their list... the ti has co."
A hush dropped between them.
"You an—"
"I an the Volkov family must be led by soone who understands our cause, and has the drive and will to fight the coming battle. Who has bled. Who has already lost enough to hate cleanly."
Nikolai stared at him, the weight of his father's words pressing like a stone on his chest.
"You're asking to beco... head of the family."
"I'm not asking," Ivan said quietly. "I'm preparing you."
There it was. The shift he'd been dreading. Not a mission. Not a trial. But succession.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I will die knowing the last of our blood still runs away when it matters most."
That silence returned.
Nikolai's fingers curled into fists. He thought of the won he loved and what might happen to them if he hesitated. Then Lunaria, who lost everything, and was manipulated by the Nosferatu, of the cursed sigils etched around their city like a noose.
He thought of Amphitrite's smirk.
Of responsibility.
"I'll do it," he said.
Ivan turned back toward the map table, as if he'd already known the answer.
"Then, who will you undergo the ceremony of choosing your Luna?"
It was the mont of fate, and Nikolai didn't know what would happen during this ceremony, but he did everything to make his won share an equal link with him.
"I can't choose... I love them all."
The words seed to spark sothing in his father's eyes.
"Interesting... I always thought you would follow in my footsteps, but honestly... you've never been one to listen." Ivan grumbled, but then his eyes loosened. "At least you've got good taste, so many dutiful daughters to look after when I'm old and sick." He grunted before sliding the chair out.
"Let's get started."
The ceremony was about to start, but Nikolai felt a sudden sense of unease fill his stomach like an iron ball.
"What does the ceremony entail?"
"Follow ... you'll see. Also, don't complain, I couldn't help but drag them all here. I can't know with you."
"Drag who?"
Nikolai muttered under his breath as they walked to a door at the end of the study room.
At first, maids ca and started to remove his clothes... he took a cold, ice bath, before an extrely hot coal bath where Leona and several other maids scrubbed his body.
Then painted a cold... silver paint across his body and face, creating tribal markings all the way to his crotch and then on his forehead.
"Finished," Leona spoke with a shaky voice, her eyes trying to avoid looking at her master's crotch.
They slipped a black, silken robe around his body and fastened it loosely, but he remained bare underneath.
'Why didn't they give underwear...?'
Then they guided him towards the ceremony halls.
There was a small, solemn archway that led into a quiet, hallowed room with a dark grey stone altar at the back, almost made of jade.
But that didn't catch his attention.
The won were kneeling on both knees, wearing sheer black silks, which clung tightly to their bodies, revealing their shapely curves.
Selene, Nikita, Risa, Kumiko and... both Lunaria and Amphitrite? Nikolai muttered.
He couldn't be sure because of the cloth covering their faces, but his chest throbbed... because the link between him and each of these won existed, whether from the four won he slept with... to the two won that shared his bond, even Sarah sat in the back row, but her link was weaker, but her loyalty unbroken.
He was almost lost for words as Ivan stepped forward and raised his arms, drawing everyone's attention.
"Now we begin... my son will choose his Luna."
On the left side of the room, Nikolai noticed mbers of the Moonlight Alliance, with Seraphina waving to him with a wide grin.
"I guess... this is it."
"Let the future Patriarch step forward." An old werewolf with long grey hair down to the floor and wrinkled skin.
With this, Nikolai would face the music... had he done enough?
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