His Baby Daddy [ Taekook ]

Chapter 31

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The Stone Circle of the Snow Moon was a place where the barrier between the physical world and the spirit realm wore thin.

The ancient monoliths, jagged and encrusted with frost, stood like silent sentinels against a sky the color of a fresh bruise. This was the navel of the North, a sacred geography where the blood of the earth met the cold of the heavens. For centuries, Alphas had come here to swear oaths, but never had the stones witnessed a lie as deep as the one standing in their center tonight.

Taehyung stood in the center of the circle. The wind whipped his dark hair across his face, biting at his pale skin, but he didn't feel the cold. He felt the fire. He had stripped off his heavy, fur-lined riding coat, standing now only in the midnight-blue royal tunic. To any onlooker, it was a garment of immense wealth, a symbol of the Crystal Citadel’s prestige. To Taehyung, it now felt like a shroud.

He could feel the witch-bane weave vibrating against his skin—a low-frequency, numbing hum that had kept his soul in a sensory cage for thirty years.

Around the perimeter of the circle, his camp was a tableau of breathless anticipation. Namjoon stood at the forefront, his eyes guarded and his hand resting on the hilt of his broadsword. Namjoon had been Taehyung’s shadow for a decade, his most loyal protector, yet even he looked at the Prince as if seeing a stranger for the first time.

Beside him, the healers Dara and Dain huddled together. They had spent years treating Taehyung for "constitutional weaknesses" and "demon-fire flares," never realizing they were merely managing the symptoms of a soul being strangled by its own father.

The Silver-Soil druids had formed a secondary ring, their crystal staffs glowing with a soft, apprehensive amber light. They were scholars of the earth, and they could feel the tectonic plates of the prophecy shifting.

Opposite Taehyung, Alpha Ruhan held the ceremonial basin of moon-silver. The Alpha’s eyes were fixed on Taehyung’s chest—specifically on the silver embroidery that pulsed with a faint, sickly purple light. Ruhan’s hands, scarred from a hundred battles, were trembling.

"The King’s magic is a parasite," Ruhan said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to come from the roots of the mountains. "It doesn't just sit on you; it feeds on your potential. It has spent three decades convincing you that you are empty, when in reality, you were simply overflowing. This fabric... it is the lie that made you a ghost. It is the reason you never heard the moon. It is the reason I never knew my own son was breathing the same air as I was."

Taehyung didn't hesitate. He took the obsidian ritual dagger, the blade as dark as a starless night, and sliced a deep, horizontal line across his palm. The blood that welled up wasn't just red; it had a shimmering, pearlescent quality—the mark of the Moon Child.
He held his hand over the silver basin, letting the blood strike the metal.