Claimed by the vampire prince

Chapter 545: Chapter 545

The rebels did not seek victory through conquest, they sought to cause chaos.

Every attack spread fear. Every village reduced to ash undermined confidence in the crown. Every successful raid made the people question whether the king could truly protect them.

Casilo had once compared fighting the rebels to fighting ghosts.

Ragnar could not even deny the comparison. Still, he preferred to call it exactly what it was.

Cowardice.

Gerard understood perfectly well that his men could not stand against the full force of the royal army. Because of that, they never even attempted it.

When Ragnar ascended the throne, part of him had expected the rebels to react aggressively and attempt some grand confrontation before he consolidated power.

Instead, they continued doing what they had always done. They preyed upon harmless civilians.

The solution to this particular problem was not brute force. He had to outsmart Gerard and cripple his forces. Supply routes had to be severed. Their safe havens had to be identified and eliminated. Their operational territory needed to be narrowed until there were fewer and fewer places left for them to hide. Eventually, the terrain protecting them would become a cage.

Ragnar had begun implementing that strategy the moment he took power.

It was not a fast process.

Gerard likely understood that as well, which was why he continued bleeding the eastern territories in the meantime. Every burned grain store weakened the local economy. Every village reduced to cinders created more fear. Every regional lord murdered by the rebels was another strike against Ragnar’s credibility as a king. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

Within the first week after leaving the capital, Ragnar had established a defensive perimeter around the largest eastern settlement and driven rebel forces out of four smaller towns. His soldiers had dismantled several camps and seized stockpiles of weapons and provisions.

At first, the victories had come quickly. Then the mission became more complicated.

It did not take Ragnar long to discover that there were far more camps than reports had initially suggested. Every time one hideout was destroyed, another seemed to appear elsewhere. Gerard must have anticipated that Ragnar would launch a large-scale attack and had responded by scattering his forces across the region before the army ever arrived.

The strategy forced Ragnar into a frustrating pursuit.

The rebels struck one location while reports arrived from another. By the time soldiers reached either destination, the perpetrators had vanished into the forests once more.

But Ragnar was not easily deterred. If Gerard wished to be hunted like a dog, then Ragnar would gladly oblige him.

Since leaving the capital, he had fought and won every encounter against rebel forces. He had shown no interest in taking prisoners. The bodies of the dead rebels were left behind to serve as a warning.

He would not leave until the rebellion was broken.

By the second week of being away from Circe, however, what little patience he possessed had nearly evaporated. He was tired of chasing enemies who refused to stand and fight, and tired of receiving reports of villages being attacked while he was occupied elsewhere.

This mission should have been over already.

He had underestimated Gerard. That had been his mistake.

The rebel leader was proving far more cunning than Ragnar had initially given him credit for. The man had somehow managed to evade capture despite having the kingdom’s entire military hunting him.

Casilo remained at Ragnar’s side throughout it all.

Where Ragnar excelled at seeing the larger picture, Casilo excelled at translating those broader strategic goals into the countless operational details required to keep a campaign moving.

They had spent years fighting side by side and, over time, had developed a way of communicating that rarely required full sentences. Casilo could read every crease in Ragnar’s features and every subtle shift in his expression, often knowing exactly what he was thinking before a word was spoken. It was an invaluable skill and one of the many reasons they had worked so well together for so many years.

Yet despite all their efforts, Gerard continued slipping through their fingers.

As the soldiers settled down for the night after another grueling day, Ragnar stood near the edge of the camp and surveyed the sea of tents illuminated by scattered campfires.

There was a spy among them.

The suspicion had taken root early in the campaign and had only grown stronger with time.

No matter how capable Gerard was, the rebels should not have been evading the royal army this effectively. Someone had to be warning them.

Someone inside his own ranks.

Ragnar had not discussed his suspicion to anyone. Not even Casilo.

If he was correct, then a careless conversation with the wrong person would only accelerate the damage.

So he remained patient and watchful.

After careful consideration, he began feeding slightly different pieces of information to various members of his command chain.

Then Ragnar waited to observe the rebels’ future moves, to pinpoint who exactly was leaking information to the enemy.

It was a slow process. One that demanded a level of patience Ragnar did not possess in that moment.

Yet he endured it.

Because if there truly was a traitor hiding within his army, Ragnar intended to uncover them.

Morana had managed to keep pace with Ragnar’s forces ever since they had marched out of the capital. She flew high above them, high enough that anyone looking up from the ground would see nothing at all. Even the silhouette of her wings vanished against the darkness of the night sky, swallowed entirely by the endless black overhead.

She had not announced her presence to Ragnar’s army, nor had she made any attempt to involve herself in military matters. Instead, she remained an unseen observer, circling far above and watching everything unfold.She cataloged every detail she could, nothing escaped her notice.

Twice over the following days, one of Ragnar’s men approached him with reports from scouts claiming they had seen a figure moving in the sky at night.

Too large to be a bird.

Ragnar wanted to dismiss both accounts, but he hesitated. It would not have been the first time he had seen large wings streaking across the sky.

By the third week, Gerard moved into the next phase of his plan.

It was around the same time that Ragnar finally identified the spy hidden among his ranks.