CHAPTER 261: CHAPTER 261 BIGGEST SURPRISE

And so, Claire could only follow obediently. Eventually, the wind picked up, cutting through her like icy blades. She couldn’t tell if it was exhaustion making her feel it so sharply, or dread crawling beneath her skin. Just as she was about to voice another skeptical, sarcastic remark, the stranger said, "We’re here."

He fumbled with the wall, his back still turned to her. Claire tensed, ready to strike the moment the door opened. But as if he had eyes on the back of his head, he spoke first.

"If you kill me now, you’ll never know why I helped you... and you might miss out on the biggest surprise of your life."

That single sentence froze Claire in place, leaving her stunned and hesitant behind him.

’Does this person only know how to threaten me?’ Claire thought bitterly. ’He must be so scared of me making a move that he keeps throwing out all kinds of bait just to stall for time.’

Her glare burned into his back, but the stranger only chuckled, unfazed—almost amused—as if she weren’t a threat at all. He simply kept feeling along the wall, searching for the hidden mechanism to open the entrance.

Claire’s mind raced, tangled with possibilities. Why had he really helped her? And what was this surprise

he kept hinting at?

Claire’s thoughts scattered the moment the hidden entrance creaked open. As they stepped out, the sudden glow of moonlight stung her eyes, making her squint. What greeted her was a stretch of dense forest, and just beyond it, the shimmer of a lake.

If her memory served her right, the Main Palace had a vast forest behind it, with a lake nestled at its heart.

So this must be the place...

They walked only a short distance before a small, weathered cabin came into view near the lakeshore. The stranger pushed the door open, and a wave of thick dust rushed out, instantly clogging Claire’s nose. She sneezed several times, grimacing.

The man stepped inside first, lit a small oil lamp that bathed the cabin in a soft, flickering glow, then brushed the dust off a chair. With a simple gesture, he signaled for her to sit. Claire lowered herself onto the seat reluctantly, her sharp gaze never leaving him, while he moved to clear another chair for himself.

"So, may I know your name, and which Pack you belong to?" the stranger asked evenly.

"Why would I tell you?" Claire shot back, glaring at him.

He gave a small shrug. "If you don’t, that’s fine too. But earlier, when I arrived at the banquet and caught sight of your hair, I thought you might be the missing Princess. Then your scent reached me, and it felt strangely familiar... until you turned."

His voice trailed off as his gaze locked on her, filled with an emotion she couldn’t place. "That’s when I realized—the reason your scent feels so familiar... is because it’s the same as mine."

Claire’s heart skipped a beat. "What do you mean?" she demanded, though her voice wavered.

"It means," the man said firmly, "that you are my pup, and I am your father. I, Dimitri Rosenthal, sired another child without knowing, and now I’ve found you. If I’m not mistaken, your mother must be Rosalie, of the White Crescent Pack near the border..."

His certainty made Claire’s mind buzz. Everything he said was true. Her mother was

Rosalie, the daughter of the White Crescent Pack’s Beta. But more than that, he was saying he was her father?

It suddenly made sense. When she was born, she never truly had a father figure. The man she knew as her father had never treated her like his daughter, only recognizing the son her mother bore later. Now she understood why: she had never been his child.

And Rosalie... her mother’s tragic fate returned to her in a flood of painful images. The White Crescent Pack, once strong, was annihilated by vampires three years ago.

Her mother was defiled by lesser vampires before being cruelly slain, while the man she’d thought of as her father was impaled through the body with a stake, rammed from the base of his spine which was his ass up through his mouth.

Claire had watched it happen while she was being dragged away, and she had felt... nothing. No grief. No sorrow. Only the emptiness of seeing her pack fall.

Maybe... if the vampires had not mistaken her for the Royal Princess who had escaped during her abduction, she would have shared her mother’s fate. Instead, she became the sole survivor of her pack, but until that very last moment, her mother never told the truth about her real father.

When the White Crescent Pack was attacked, it wasn’t random. The vampires had seen her in the crowd and believed she was the missing Princess. That mistaken identity drew the newly appointed Vampire Lord to their territory, sealing the pack’s doom.

Back then, she had thought her resemblance to the Princess was both her greatest curse and her only blessing. Because of it, her pack was slaughtered. but also because of it, she alone survived.

But now... now she finally understood why she bore those features. It wasn’t coincidence. It wasn’t luck. It was because she truly carried royal blood in her veins.

The Moon Goddess knew how deeply she had once longed to be someone of importance. It was that very resemblance to the Princess that had allowed her to strut proudly through her former Pack—admired, tolerated, even envied. But all of that radiance had been shattered, ground into dust beneath the heel of the Vampire Lord.

Day after day, he broke her. He tortured her, degraded her, used her as nothing more than a plaything, forcing her into the life of a sex slave for three long years. She had been made to crawl on the floor like a dog, to bark on command, to beg for scraps of food... or for him to take her body again and again.

Pride had no place there. Survival demanded obedience, and so she endured, humiliation after humiliation, until survival itself felt like a curse.

That was why, when Zion found her and mistook her for the missing Princess, she hadn’t denied it.

How could she?

From the very moment she saw him, she had fallen in love at first sight. And beyond that, she wanted—no, needed—to escape that hell. Zion had become both her chance at freedom and the fragile hope she clung to with everything she had left.

But now, someone was telling her he was her father? Then where was he when her mother gave birth to her? Where was he when she had been dragged into the Vampire territory by her hair? Where was he when she was tortured, debased, treated as if she were filth?

Hatred flared in Claire’s eyes as her lips curled into a snarl. Yet, in the same breath, doubt struck her. The man before her stood tall, with short golden hair and striking golden eyes. Handsome, regal, he bore features that, try as she might, she couldn’t deny held some resemblance to her own.

She didn’t know how to reconcile it, her seething anger with the truth standing right in front of her. But beneath the storm of emotions, another feeling broke through, unbidden and undeniable: happiness. For the first time, she could claim it without shame, she wasn’t a fraud. She was a real Princess.