All Chapters of Claiming the RUNT: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

"I honestly couldn't tell you," Grilla whispered back, her gaze lingering on the way I carefully unwound the stained gauze from a warrior’s forearm. The stench of rotting flesh was heavy in the tent, but I didn't flinch. I had seen worse in the Hollow Pit; this was merely duty. "Maybe she’s just trying to secure her position. Or maybe she’s as broken as the rest of us."I ignored their hushed murmurs. I didn't need to hear their words to understand the sentiment. They expected me to drop the bandages and return to my room in the Duke’s Suite, waiting for my next command. They didn't understand that for the first time in my life, I wasn't waiting for permission to exist. I was doing something tangible, something that mattered.As I finished cleaning the wound, a shadow fell over the cot. I looked up to see Malakai standing at the tent entrance. He looked as weary as I felt, his tactical gear splattered with dried mud."You're still working," he stated, his voice a low, raspy rumble."T

"Step forward, anyone who claims he harmed you!" I stood over Obi’s broken frame, my voice tearing through the courtyard like a jagged blade. "Speak up, you cowards! If he is the monster you claim, point to the scars he left on your flesh! Show me the blood he spilled! I will stand right here and help you throw the next stone if any of you can look me in the eye and prove he hurt you! Step forward!"The silence that followed was suffocating. I glared at the young man who had dared to question my loyalty. He withered under my gaze, shuffling backward, his eyes darting to the dirt."Why didn't he help us sooner?" someone muttered from the back.I laughed, a sharp, hysterical sound. "He was ten! He was ten years old when the Duke’s guards first threw you into the pits! What was a ten-year-old boy supposed to do against the enforcers of the Black Eagle? He was a prisoner in his own home, just like you! Do you really think he had any power when his own father and brother treated him like a

"The kid’s code was encrypted through a three-layer dead-man switch," Malakai Reed muttered, slamming a heavily modified satellite tablet onto the polished mahogany desk. "If his pulse stops, the server blocks wipe everything. We lose the Swiss accounts, the shipping manifests, the entire digital vault of the Ashford estate."I didn't blink. I kept my attention on the gold-trimmed glass of scotch in my hand, watching the amber liquid swirl against the crystal. The Duke’s Suite was quiet, the heavy velvet drapes muffling the sound of the rain lashing against the high windows of the estate."Is he conscious?" I asked, my voice flat, devoid of the exhaustion that had been scraping at my throat for days."Barely," Malakai replied, cracking his knuckles with a sharp, rhythmic sound that grated on my nerves. "Old Elder Nnamdi Vale gave him another dose of the coagulant, but the boy’s system is rejecting the synthetic stuff. He’s running a fever that could cook his brain. If he slips under a

"You need to get to that giant iron oak," I said, pointing toward the solitary timber silhouette piercing the skyline at the absolute crest of the bluff.Cassius Okoye slowed his steps, his heavy leather coat catching the rising wind. He lifted his chin, his dark eyes scanning the empty gray horizon. Down here, far from the toxic smog of the Ashfang Dominion’s refinery grid, the air felt unnaturally clean, almost sharp enough to sting the throat. He hadn't expected a hidden sanctuary like this to exist within the borders of my father’s old territory."Keep the perimeter secured down there," Cassius commanded, his gravelly voice halting Malakai Reed and the three Blackfang Enforcers who were trailing us.Malakai frowned, his hand instinctively dropping toward the grip of his sidearm, but he nodded and stepped back into the tree line. Out here in the open clearing, there wasn't a single brick wall or concrete barrier for an assassin to hide behind. The guards could track our movements p

"You will stay right here until you pull a clean shipment out of these crates," Cassius Okoye said, slamming his hand down on the edge of the industrial processing table. "Only the high-purity water-refined chemical blocks. I won't accept anything less."We were standing completely isolated in the center of the gravel clearing, deep within the barren storage yards of the outer sector. The entire landscape was a jagged network of limestone ridges and heavy industrial machinery, completely cut off from the main metropolitan grid."There are hundreds of unmarked storage crates stacked across this entire yard," I replied, wiping the dust from my palms as I looked out over the massive sea of steel containers. "How am I supposed to identify the high-grade shipments when every single warehouse manifest has been wiped?""Then the work will force you to become precise.""This is ridiculous, Cassius," I said, shaking my head as the sheer scale of the compound made my stomach twist. "It’s one th