CHAPTER 20
THIRD PERSON POV
The wind howled through the bone-white trees as Lucian knelt in the white sand, his fingers locked around Isabella's throat.
Every time he increased the pressure on her windpipe, a jagged spike of agony ripped through his own neck.
It was a mirror of suffering, his own airway felt like it was being crushed by invisible hands but he kept squeezing.
He wanted to kill her. He wanted to end the bond that was making his ancient, cold blood boil with a fever he couldn't control.
"You are a plague," he hissed as Isabella's hands were weak against his forearms, her face turning a bruised shade of violet.
She was a mutt " a wolfless reject of a dying pack, yet she was holding the leash to his sanity.
He looked toward the black water of the river, his mind screaming at him to toss her back, to let the current take the pain away.
But as he began to haul her toward the edge, his own heart—that dead, heavy stone in his chest—trembled.
The bond flared, sending a wave of her primal terror through his nervous system. It didn't make him feel pity, it made him more angry.
If he can't kill her with his fang or his hands without feeling so much pain, his going to throw her to die.
Isabella's vision was blurring as she looked down at the river that was only inches away now.
In the woods, that voice had guided her. It had told her when to run, where to turn, and when to jump.
But now, when she was being crushed by the very monster who seemed to had awakened that voice, there was only a suffocating silence.
Her sudden, strange strength had vanished too, leaving her as weak as the human stray her father had always called her.
She felt the cold spray of the water hit the back of her legs as Lucian hauled her to the very edge.
He was going to do it. He was going to let gravity solve the problem of his own agony.
With the last of her oxygen, Isabella reached up, not to claw at his hands this time, but to grip his forearms.
She forced her eyes to stay open, forced them to lock onto the bleeding red. "If..." she wheezed.
"If I'm... so much... of a plague... why did you... save me?" Lucian froze.
The pressure on her neck didn't vanish, but it stopped increasing. "Just... let go. If I'm nothing... let me go."
It was a gamble—a reckless attempt to save her life. Lucian's snarl faltered. The spike of pain in his own throat reached a high degree that forced him to realize he couldn't kill her without destroying himself in the process.
"You think you are clever, huh?" His eyes turned to slits, though the hand on her throat finally loosened, sliding down to grip her shoulder with bruising force.
"You think my weakness is your shield?"
"I think..." Isabella gasped, drawing in a jagged, painful breath as her feet hit the sand again. "I think you're... stuck with me."
Lucian's eyes narrowed, a lethal spark dancing in the depths of his irises. Before he could retort, he stiffened, his head snapping toward the treeline.
"Sire?" The voice of Marcus cut through the mist, cool and professional, yet laced with curiosity.
Lucian didn't hesitate. He didn't want Marcus to see the girl. In one fluid motion, he swept Isabella off her feet and shoved her behind the massive trunk, drowning her with the heavy, soot-stained fabric of his burnt cloak.
"Stay silent," he breathed into her ear, his voice a promise of death. "If you breathe a word, I will let the river have you before my servant can even blink."
Isabella slumped against the cold bark, her heart racing, she doesn't know what had made him so startled.
She watched through a gap in the cloak as a tall, elegant man in a charcoal suit stepped out of the fog.
Marcus came to a halt exactly ten paces away. His sharp, red eyes immediately falling on Lucian's ruined, healing chest.
"Sire?!" Marcus was concerned with the burnt chest, about to run to aid his king but Lucain stopped him.
"Didn't I say I wanted to be left alone for the day?" Marcus halted, he quickly noticed the way his King's hand was clenched so tight it was trembling, and the way he was positioned in front of a tree as if guarding a hoard of gold.
"The council was concerned by the sudden shift in the atmosphere, Sire," Marcus began. "The sky looked... vengeful.... And you smell of holy fire."
Lucian didn't move. He stood tall, his chin raised, even as the charred skin of his chest pulled and hissed with the effort of healing.
"I encountered a witch at the Southern boundary. A minor miscalculation."
"A witch? A miscalculation?" Marcus's gaze drifted toward the edge of the now empty cliff, then back to the tree Lucian was shielding.
It's been centuries that the witches had been eradicated and the southern border holds the wolves pack. Witches don't go there.
"You were sprayed by the holy water, Sire. I will assume you kill the witch. But I don't see a body." Isabella held her breath behind the tree, the rough bark biting into her back. She could feel the heat radiating off Lucian.
She watched through the gap in the cloak as Marcus took a single, slow step forward. "Is there a reason you are standing so close to the ravine, my King? The mist is thick tonight. One might think you were hiding something."
"I am hiding my temper, Marcus," Lucian growled, the sound vibrating through the tree and into Isabella's spine.
"Do not test it. Return to the manor and tell those councilors to leave my home." Marcus paused, his nostrils flared, catching a faint scent.
" Leave." The command was a physical wave of power that forced Marcus to bow, involuntary into submission.
But as the servant turned to vanish back into the mist, he cast one final, lingering look at the shadow behind the tree.
He knew. He didn't know who was there, but he knew the King was not alone.