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.
