Chapter 57: Only Daughter

Chapter 57: Chapter 57: Only Daughter

And not long after Azura finished recounting her dramatic encounter—complete with hand gestures, sound effects, and a reenactment of the moment she was grabbed from behind like a horror movie protagonist—the atmosphere in the dining room went from "cozy feast" to "arctic expedition."

Azura shivered, wrapping her arms around herself.

I swear, if I had a coat right now, I would be wearing it. Actually, I would be BUILDING a igloo and hiding in it.

Caelian finally stopped tapping his screen, looking up at Azura with an expression that was impossible to read—like a poker player who had just been dealt four aces and was deciding whether to go all in.

"So, let me get this straight. You met this mystery man in a pitch-black room—a room you just happened to wander into while looking for the kitchen?"

Azura nodded enthusiastically, grateful that someone was finally understanding her plight.

"Yes! Exactly! One minute I’m looking for food like a woman possessed, the next minute I’m being treated like a secret agent in a bad thriller! The man literally thought I was a SPY following him! Me! A spy! I can’t even sneak an extra cookie without making eye contact with the jar!"

The triplets exchanged glances—a silent conversation passing between them in the way only people who had shared a womb could manage.

Then Caelian turned his phone around, displaying it to his brothers.

"The footage from that area is gone," he said, his voice flat. "Completely deleted."

He tapped the screen a few more times, frustration creeping into his tone.

"I’ve tried to recover it, but this guy is good. Scarily good. He left absolutely no trace. No crumbs. No digital footprints. Nothing."

Caesar stared at the screen like it had personally insulted his mother. His eyes narrowed, scanning the edited footage and the image of the hallway that Caelian had pulled up.

"Hold on... isn’t this... that person’s wing?" He looked up at his brothers, his brow furrowing. "So you’re saying—based on what she said—that the ’dark room’ she wandered into... is that room?"

Caelian gave a single, solemn nod. Caelus didn’t move, but his silence was louder than any agreement.

Caesar’s expression darkened. He ran a hand through his hair, muttering under his breath like a man trying to solve a crossword puzzle with missing letters.

"If that suspicious bastard appeared in that room... does that mean he’s connected to... that person?"

Azura, who had been blissfully rubbing her full belly like a happy little Buddha, squinted at the screen. She blinked a few times. Then a few more times. Her brain was running at about 30% capacity, the other 70% still dedicated to digesting four plates of food.

Caelian shoved his phone closer to her face—so close she could count the pixels.

"Do you remember which room you meant? Is it this one?"

Azura shook her head slowly, then rubbed the back of her neck with a guilty grimace.

"Look, I was running on empty. My stomach was growling so loud it could have been mistaken for a wild animal. I wasn’t exactly taking mental notes of the hallway decor. If you asked me what color the walls were, I’d guess ’hungry gray’ or ’starvation beige.’"

She gestured vaguely.

"All I remember is: dark room, scary grabby hands, and a guy who really needs to work on his communication skills. That’s my entire testimony. Exhibit A, your honor."

Caelus had already moved. He was mind-linking orders to the guards, his expression carved from stone as he instructed them to search the wing they suspected. He’d even looped in Oliver to lead the investigation personally.

He then turned to Caelian, his voice clipped.

"What about the footage of her walking through each corridors?"

Caelian’s jaw tightened. "All of it. Deleted. Wiped clean. Whoever this guy is, he’s not an amateur."

"Tsk."

Caesar crossed his arms and leaned back, his chair creaking under the weight of his frustration.

"I knew there was a traitor in this pack. But I didn’t think they’d be connected to that bastard. I thought Father and Grandma had already wiped them all out. Guess some cockroaches survived." He let out a sharp breath. "I’m deploying extra guards to monitor that wing starting now. No one gets in or out without my say-so."

Azura watched the entire scene unfold like she was spectating a very intense episode of a drama she hadn’t been following.

She sat there, still rubbing her swollen belly, a conflicted look on her face.

Okay, so... on one hand, I was kidnapped. On the other hand, the food was great. On the third hand—did I grow a third hand? No, that’s just my stomach. Move along.

She blinked, finally realizing the absurdity of her situation.

Wait. I was KIDNAPPED. I should be angry! I should be demanding answers! I should be throwing a chair or something!

But then she looked at the triplets—now fully consumed by a serious pack matter involving traitors, deleted footage, and a mysterious man in a dark room—and sighed.

Great. Now I can’t even cut them off to demand answers about the kidnapping because they’ve launched into Full Alpha Mode?. And I look like a bystander at a press conference.

After a full two minutes of deep, contemplative pondering—during which she had stared at the ceiling, nodded to herself once, and whispered "yes, I deserve answers"—she finally decided that as the victim of a literal kidnapping, she had the sacred right to interrupt their little Alpha book club meeting.

So, Azura cleared her throat with the theatrical gravity of a stage actress about to deliver a soliloquy. And then, she waved her hand like a teacher trying to get the attention of rowdy students.

"Hello? Earth to Alphas? I know you’re busy playing ’Mysterious Traitor Hunt 3000,’ but can I please borrow ten minutes of your valuable time for something equally important? Or is it because I didn’t scream, cry, or throw myself on the floor like a dramatic soap opera victim that you forgot to explain the whole ’we kidnapped you’ part?"

She gestured between herself and them, her expression a mix of exasperation and disbelief.

"Do I need to act like a damsel in distress for you to remember that I am, in fact, the VICTIM here? Should I cry? Should I flip a table? Because I can do it. I have range. I once cried on command when I stubbed my toe and realized I was out of ice cream."

The triplets turned their heads in unison—like a very handsome, very confused hydra.

They had, in fact, forgotten to explain anything. Azura had been too busy eating, and then she’d dropped the bomb about the mysterious man, and now here they were—deep in pack conspiracy mode that they’d completely glossed over the whole "we kidnapped this woman and she’s been surprisingly chill about it" part.

Caelus opened his mouth to speak.

But Azura was already scanning the room.

Her eyes darted left. Then right. Calculating. Weighing. Like a discount version of Sherlock Holmes trying to figure out which item would cause the most dramatic effect with the least amount of property damage.

Finally, she stood up.

She grabbed the chair she was sitting on.

She flipped it.

But gently.

Thump!

The chair landed on its side with a soft, almost apologetic sound. She even patted the backrest like she was saying "sorry, old friend, it had to be done."

Then she threw herself into character.

"KIDNAPPERS! HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME!" she wailed, her voice echoing through the dining hall with the intensity of a B-list actress auditioning for a horror movie. "WHY DID YOU KIDNAP ME?! ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE NOT SCAMMERS?! JUST BECAUSE MY WOLF IS HIBERNATING, YOU’RE PRETENDING I’M YOUR FATED MATE?! AND THAT WHOLE ’YOU’RE OUR STEPSISTER’ EXCUSE?! THAT’S NOT A LOGICAL REASON TO KIDNAP SOMEONE EITHER!"

She stopped as abruptly as she started.

Then she picked up the chair.

Set it upright.

Sat down.

Smoothed her dress.

And folded her hands in her lap like a prim schoolgirl.

"Ahem. Anyway." She looked at them with wide, expectant eyes. "Was that dramatic enough for you to explain everything now? Or do I need to add a crying montage and a flashback to my tragic backstory?"

Caelus stared at her like she was a mysterious merchant who had materialized out of thin air in the middle of the ocean—fascinating, confusing, and potentially dangerous.

Caesar looked at the fallen chair. Then back at Azura. Then back at the chair. He had definitely seen her pat it. Like she had apologized to a piece of furniture.

Did she just... apologize to the chair?

Caelian’s brain had stopped working entirely. His expression was blank. Empty. Like a computer that had been asked to divide by zero too many times.

A full minute passed before Caesar and Caelian’s brains rebooted like two ancient computers that had been force-fed too many pop-up ads.

Slowly, dramatically, they turned to look at each other.

Their eyes met.

Not a normal glance. No, this was the kind of glance that carried years of shared trauma, unspoken agreements, and the collective knowledge that when shit hits the fan, you let your older brother hold the fan.

The conclusion was unanimous.

They mind-linked Caelus simultaneously, their voices overlapping like a poorly synchronized choir.

’Big brother. We’re leaving this entire mess to you.’

There it was. The sacred "big brother" card. The only time they ever used that title was when they wanted to dodge responsibility and offer Caelus up as a human sacrifice to the chaos gods. Truly, they were model younger brothers. The kind of brothers who would push you into a lake to distract a bear and then run in opposite directions.

It was no wonder Kyler had spent their childhood hanging them upside down from trees like unwanted pi?atas, and leave them there for three hours "to think about what they’d done."

A vein throbbed on Caelus’s temple. He could feel his blood pressure rising like a thermometer in a sauna. These two idiots—born literally minutes after him—had spent their entire lives perfecting the art of dumping their problems on his doorstep and running away giggling.

But he was the eldest. He was the responsible one. He was the one who had to deal with their crazy stepsister who had just apologized to a chair.

So he took a deep breath. Centered himself. And responded with the calm, measured tone of a man who had long since accepted his fate.

"We are indeed at fault for drugging you and bringing you here without your consent." His voice was calm, measured—the voice of a man who had long since accepted that his brothers were chaos incarnate. "However, this was done at your mother’s request. The ’stepsister’ reasoning is, unfortunately, valid."

Azura blinked.

"Your mother didn’t want your pack to know she had taken you from there. So she asked us—her new stepsons—to handle the matter discreetly. She didn’t want more people to find out about this arrangement."

Azura’s face remained stone-cold neutral. A mask of marble. Unreadable.

Inside, however, her brain was doing backflips and hitting the gridiron.

Finally! A clue! Another breadcrumb in this godforsaken plot that I know nothing about! I’m the only transmigrator in history who got isekai’d into a novel she only read the smutty Chapters of. Do you know how pathetic that is?! I don’t know the lore! I don’t know the politics! I only know that the female lead moans like a malfunctioning teakettle and that the male leads have the creativity of a horny parrot!

She was basically playing a video game with no tutorial, no map, and a controller that sometimes just vibrated for no reason.

But something felt... off.

"So my mother—the one who’s been missing for years after my father was killed by rogues—married your father?" Azura tilted her head, her eyes narrowing. "And she asked you to sneak me out of my pack like I’m a stolen library book?"

She leaned forward.

"Are you absolutely, one hundred percent, cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die sure that I’m the child she wanted?"

Azura’s brain was now running at full capacity, which was roughly equivalent to a potato trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. She was absolutely, positively, one hundred percent certain this was a misunderstanding.

Because Selena—the female lead, the protagonist, the main character who spent 500 Chapters moaning like a broken foghorn while being passed around four male leads like a communal bong—was the one who was supposed to get kidnapped. That was basic novel logic. The villainess didn’t get kidnapped in Chapter one. The villainess got her karma in the final arc when the female lead finally grew a spine and slapped her across a banquet hall.

If Azura Williams was the one being kidnapped, then the entire plot was broken. It was like opening a book about Cinderella and finding out the ugly stepsister was the one who got the prince.

As her brain continued its pathetic attempt at problem-solving, Caelian finally spoke. His tone was casual, but his eyes had the sharpness of a wolf who had just spotted a limping deer.

"Married?" He raised an eyebrow. "We’re not human. Why are you using human terminology?"

Azura’s eye twitched.

Right. Werewolves. Mate ceremonies. Not weddings. Got it. Note to self: stop applying human logic to a world where people turn into wolves and apparently have family trees more tangled than a pile of earbuds left in a pocket.

Before she could say something stupid to change the subject—like asking if they served appetizers at mate ceremonies—Caesar cut in, rolling his eyes at his brother.

"Are you really going to nitpick semantics right now, Caelian?" He turned to Azura, crossing his arms. "Look, our father and your mother held their mate ceremony two weeks ago." Caesar’s voice was straightforward, matter-of-fact. "She asked us to retrieve her suffering child—her only daughter. The one with silver hair. Named Azura."

He tilted his head.

"That’s you, isn’t it? I mean, aside from the hair color being completely wrong."

Azura’s brain screeched to a halt like a cartoon character running off a cliff.

Only daughter?!

She felt like someone had just handed her a jigsaw puzzle, except half the pieces were from a different puzzle, a third were from a board game, and the remaining ones were just potato chips.

What do you mean ’only daughter’?! What about Selena?! Isn’t she my younger sister?! The one who looks more like Jonathan because they both have silver hair?! While I’m sitting here with black hair like some kind of family conspiracy theory?!

And since when am I the ’suffering child’?! I’m the villainess! I’m the one who made Selena’s life a living hell! I should be the ’please send her to therapy’ child, not the ’rescue her’ child!

Her eye twitched again.

I should have transmigrated into a crow. Just a regular crow. Sitting on a fence. Cawing at awkward silences. That’s it. That’s the dream. No family drama. No mysterious mothers. Just caws and vibes.