Chapter 106: The hound returns

Chapter 107

The passage of forty-eight hours had turned the master suite into a sanctuary of stagnant air.

Outside, the world might have been turning, and Marco might have been fending off the prying eyes of the council, but inside these four walls, time had congealed like drying blood.

Lucian sat on the edge of the velvet couch positioned across from the bed, his posture rigid, his dark silk robe discarded in favor of a fresh shirt that he had left unbuttoned at the collar.

He didn’t care about the decorum of his station anymore. His eyes, rimmed with the exhaustion of a man who refused to succumb to the “thousands of years” of rest he feared, were fixed unblinkingly on the silhouette beneath the quilts.

Isabella hadn’t stirred since her mid-sleep apology. She lay in a state that was neither sleep nor coma—a suspended animation where her body seemed to be reconfiguring itself on a molecular level.

He could feel her. The bond, though stretched thin and ragged like a worn rope, was vibrating. It wasn’t the fiery defiance he was used to.

It was a cold weight of guilt that radiated from her unconscious form, seeping into the room. Even in the depths of her darkness, she was mourning.

“She hasn’t lost any more weight,” Clara’s voice broke the silence as she stepped into the room, her footsteps muffled by the thick rugs.

Lucian didn’t turn his head. “The spell worked, then.”

“It worked,” Clara confirmed, though her voice held a note of fatigue. Yesterday, Lucian had reached the end of his patience.

Seeing Isabella’s vitals begin to flicker from lack of sustenance, he had cornered Clara, his eyes flashing with a lethal command that left no room for her hesitations.

He had forced her to perform a grueling, ancient nourishment rite—a spell that funneled raw, magical energy and liquefied nutrients directly into Isabella’s system.

It was a stop-gap, a way to keep the vessel alive while the soul within it fought its silent battles.

“Her pulse is stronger today,” Clara added, moving to the nightstand to check the basin of water.

“But Lucian… the guilt you’re feeling through the bond? It’s a feedback loop. She’s drowning in it because she can’t wake up to face it. And you’re drowning in it because you won’t let it go.”

“I am fine,” Lucian rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering over stone.

“You haven’t fed,” Clara countered, her voice sharpening. “The marks on your chest are still pulsing. I can see the dark veins through your shirt. If she wakes up and sees you like this—starved and scarred—her first instinct will be that she is a monster. Is that the truth you want her to wake up to?”

Lucian finally turned his gaze toward the witch, his expression a mask of cold, hard iron. “The truth is what it is, Clara. I will not preen for her like a suitor. If she sees me as a monster, then we are finally on equal footing.”

Clara opened her mouth to argue, but the soft click of the door opening broke out. Marco stepped into the dim light of the suite, his expression a weathered mask of concern.

He paused at the threshold, his eyes flickering briefly toward the bed where Isabella lay, then toward the scarred, unbuttoned mess of his King.

“Sire,” Marco began, he didn’t wait for an invitation; the urgency in his posture made it clear that the sanctuary of the master suite was about to be breached by the outside world.

Lucian didn’t shift from his seat on the couch, but his shoulders tightened. “What is it, Marco? If the Council is at the gate, tell them I am currently indisposed. If they persist, kill them.”

“It is not the Council, Sire,” Marco replied, stepping further into the room. “Though their shadows are lingering at the borders of the estate. I brought news from the perimeter. The Hound has returned.”

Lucian let out a long, slow sigh that sounded more like a weary growl. He had almost forgotten about the beast.

In the frantic aftermath of everything going on, amidst the blood and the shifting of a god, he had pushed the memory of the sentinel aside.

He recalled now, with a foggy clarity, how he had joined the Hound to his own essence through that mental link, compelling the creature to vanish into the deep, lightless forest to hunt and keep the borders clear while he tended to Isabella.

He had sent it away because he couldn’t bear another predator in the house while he had things going on with Isabella, even before the her birthday.

“Of course it has,” Lucian murmured, his hand moving instinctively toward the pulsing scars on his chest. “A beast always knows when its master is bleeding.”

“It is waiting in the foyer,” Marco continued, glancing at Clara. “It is… restless. It refused to settle until it was permitted to climb the stairs.”

Lucian turned his gaze toward Clara, who was now standing by the window, her face pale. The Hound had originally been hers—a tool, a pet of her own making before Lucian had commandeered its loyalty during the fight with Elena.

“Clara,” Lucian rasped, his eyes narrowing. “Do you still need your pet? Or has the creature forgotten the hand that raised it in favor of the King who commanded it to kill?”

Clara stiffened, her fingers curling around the edge of the window. She looked toward the courtyard, trying to see the beast.

“The Hound is a creature of instinct, Lucian. It doesn’t forget. It simply recognizes where the power resides.”

“Then reclaim it,” Lucian commanded, his voice gaining a sudden, sharp edge of authority. “I cannot have it prowling the hallways while Isabella is in this state. Its energy is too loud, too primal. It’s aggravating the bond.”

Marco cleared his throat softly, looking towards Isabella sleeping frame. Clara’s expression, which had been a mask of exhaustion and simmering resentment, underwent a subtle but undeniable transformation.

A spark of genuine light flickered in her eyes—the first spark of joy to grace her face since the East Wing had crumbled.

The Hound was more than a mere sentinel to her; It had been a creation of her own blood and incantations. A familiar torn from her control first by her mother’s dark magic… and later by Lucian’s Sovereign will.

To have it back was to reclaim a piece of her own identity that had been sidelined by the King’s looming shadow.

“As you wish, Lucian,” she said, her voice lighter, carrying a silkiness that hadn’t been there before.

“I’ll see to it that he’s settled. He’s likely confused by the conflicting scents of Sovereign blood and Lycan heat. I’ll quiet his mind.”

She didn’t wait for a dismissal. With a final, lingering look at the girl on the bed—perhaps checking one last time if the beast power was stirring—Clara swept out of the room.

The soft thud of the door closing behind her felt like the removal of a weight, leaving the master suite to return to its previous state of heavy, expectant silence.

Lucian remained on the couch, his long fingers drumming a slow, hollow rhythm against the velvet armrest.

He looked like a man suspended between worlds. Marco shifted his weight slightly, his boots creaking against the floorboards.

He watched his Sire with a mixture of reverence and a deep, growing unease. For years, he had heard of his king, have had to privilege to serve him, a King who was the definition of absolute control—a man who was a monolith of iron and ice.

But since this girl, this Isabella, had been dragged into their lives, the monolith had begun to crack.

It had been one frantic adventure after another. From the moment she arrived with her sharp tongue and “wolfless” status, the mansion had ceased to be a fortress of solitude.

It had become a theater of war and ancient prophecy. “Sire,” Marco began, his voice dropping into a more personal, grounded tone.

“I must confess… would this do us good to not inform the council?” Lucian’s hand, which had been rhythmically drumming against the velvet, went bone-still.

The temperature in the room dropped, the flickering fire suddenly cowering in the hearth as his crimson gaze slowly slid from Isabella’s silhouette to Marco’s face.

It wasn’t the look of a tired man anymore. “Do not finish that sentence, Marco,” Lucian voice vibrated a warning that felt like a blade pressed against a throat.

“The Council is a collection of vultures dressed in silk and ancient titles. They do not need to know that the laws of the supernatural world were rewritten in the East Wing. They do not need to know that a Lycan—the original Lycan—is currently breathing my air.”

Marco didn’t flinch like before, though the air around him was thick with his Sire’s mounting pressure.

“Forgive me, Sire, but you know as well as I do that secrets of this magnitude have a way of bleeding through the cracks. The light from the rift, the shift in the atmosphere… they might find out one way or another. As you had said a dark witch was a witness too and definitely she would start whispering. If we do not control the narrative, they will come here to ’investigate’—and they will not come alone.”

Lucian stood up slowly, his unbuttoned shirt fluttering. He walked toward Marco until he was inches from his face, the dark, pulsing scars on his chest visible in the dim light.

“And when they do,” Lucian whispered, his words dripping with a terrifying promise, “I will tear the tongues from their mouths before they can utter a single word of what she is. If the Council wants to ’investigate’ the storm, they can start by counting the bodies I leave at the gate.”

Marco bowed his head, sensing the finality in Lucian’s tone. “I understand, Sire. My life is yours, and my silence is absolute. I only fear for the girl… she is your mate.”

“And I am hers,” Lucian said, turning back toward the bed, his voice softening only when his eyes landed on Isabella.

“You are dismissed.” Marco gave a short, sharp nod and retreated toward the door. He paused one last time, looking at the two of them—the scarred King and the sleeping Storm—before stepping out and letting the heavy oak doors click shut.

Lucian was alone again. His gaze drifted back to the bed where Isabella lay motionless beneath the quilts. Forty-eight hours… and still the storm refused to wake.

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