Chapter 107: Forty eight hours.

Chapter 108

The silence that reclaimed the room following Marco’s departure was a pressurized, suffocating weight that seemed to vibrate with the hum of the fluorescent lights.

Lucian stood by the bed, his shadow stretching across the silk sheets. He felt the hollow, agonizing ache of his hunger in his gut that demanded the metallic sweetness of life but he ignored it.

His eyes were fixed on the rise and fall of Isabella’s chest. Forty-eight hours of watching her soul drift in a sea of guilt that he could feel through the frayed edges of their bond.

Slowly, with a hand that trembled almost imperceptibly, Lucian reached out. He didn’t touch her skin—not yet—but his fingers hovered just above the pulse point in her neck, feeling the radiant, simmering heat that still clung to her.

The Lycan’s fire had cooled, settling into the marrow of her bones, becoming a permanent part of the girl who used to think she was nothing more than an outlier.

“Wake up,” he whispered, the command barely a breath. “Wake up and curse me. Hurl your insults. Tell me how much you hate this house and the man who brought you here. Just… do not stay where I cannot reach you.”

As if in direct response to the raw vulnerability in his voice, the atmosphere in the room snapped.

The low hum of the lights flickered, a spark of static electricity jumping between the gilded mirrors.

Isabella’s fingers, pale and delicate against the dark velvet quilt, suddenly twitched. It wasn’t the aimless spasm of a dreamer, but a sharp, intentional contraction.

A gasping breath hitched in her throat, sounding as if she were surfacing from leagues of dark, crushing water.

“Lucian…”

The name was a broken rasp, a plea that seemed to tear itself from her lungs, carrying with it the unbearable, suffocating weight of two days of silence and a thousand unspoken regrets.

Isabella’s eyes fluttered, the lashes heavy and coated with the salt of unconscious tears that had pooled during her long descent into the dark.

The fog in her mind was thick and swirling with the fragmented, nonsensical memories—a room bathed in orange light, the scent of ozone, and two blurred figures standing over her.

As the veil of sleep finally tore away, a sharp, searing spike of pain shot through her limbs, radiating from her joints to the tips of her fingers.

A sensation so intense it felt as if her very bones had been broken and fused back together in a shape that didn’t quite fit her skin.

Beneath the surface, a strange heat pulsed through her veins, making her blood feel too thick, too electric, and far too hot for her human heart to pump.

It felt as if her body was vibrating on a frequency she didn’t recognize, a humming energy that made her skin itch from the inside out.

“Lucian…” she whispered again, her voice cracking like dry parchment. She struggled to focus, her vision swimming in a sea of colors as the harsh fluorescent light overhead stung her retinas.

Slowly, the dark, blurred shape at the edge of the bed began to solidify, anchoring her to reality.

Lucian was standing over her, his silhouette imposing against the soft light of the room. He had pulled his shirt tight, the fabric buttoned high to his throat to conceal the ruin beneath, though he couldn’t hide the way his hands trembled at his sides.

But as Isabella eyes finally cleared the remaining mist, the breath caught in her throat.

He looked… exhausted.

The man who usually carried himself with the lethal, polished grace of a Sovereign, a monolith of iron and cold beauty, was now a hollowed-out version of himself.

His hair was a wild, dark mess, damp strands clinging to a forehead that was slick with the sweat of a feverish vigil.

His skin, usually the color of fine, flawless alabaster, was a sickly, translucent grey, and the dark, sunken hollows beneath his eyes looked like bruises carved into his very skull.

“Isabella,” Lucian rasped. The sound was raw and broken, a sound produced by a throat that had forgotten how to speak in the silence of her absence.

Isabella’s breath hitched into a sob. She tried to sit up, her muscles screaming in protest, her mind finally latching onto the last thing she remembered before the world went black.

It wasn’t the claws. It wasn’t the shift. It was the crushing realization of her own choices.

The memory of Caleb’s voice, the way she had allowed herself to believe his honeyed lies and manipulated visions over the man standing before her, hit her with more force than any physical pain.

She remembered the moment she had partially rejected Lucian, the moment she had let doubt poison the bond they shared, choosing a stranger over the King of her present.

“Lucian… oh god, Lucian,” she choked out, her hands shaking as she clutched the heavy velvet quilt to her chest.

She didn’t see the blood he had spilled; she only saw the pain in his eyes and assumed it was the wound she had dealt to his heart.

“I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry. I shouldn’t have believed him. I shouldn’t have turned away from you.”

The guilt radiated from her in waves, that Lucian felt through the frayed edges of their bond.

He stood there, frozen, watching her weep for a betrayal of trust while he was struggling to breathe through the physical pain she had no memory of inflicting.

He had covered the marks on his chest, shielding her from the sight of the scars, wanting to spare her the horror of her own nature.

But seeing her drown in remorse for Caleb was a different kind of agony. “I thought….I thought…” The words tumbling out was in a frantic, disjointed rush.

Her chest began to heave with urgency, the air in the room feeling too thin to support the weight of her panic.

Her lungs seemed to seize, refusing to expand as the memory of her rejection of him—of that cold moment where she chose Caleb’s lies over Lucian’s truth—clawed at her throat.

“I…I’m so sorry….I..called you a monster…thought you were… because I didn’t believe… I can.t.. breathe…”

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