Chapter 108: Strange heat.

Chapter 109

Isabella began to gasp, a high-pitched, terrifying wheeze that shook her entire frame. Her eyes went wide, the pupils dilating until they nearly swallowed the brown of her irises, as the panic attack took hold.

The strange, celestial heat in her blood surged in response to her distress, making her heart hammer against her ribs like a trapped bird.

Seeing her on the verge of collapse, Lucain abandoned his rigid stance, dropping to the edge of the mattress.

He didn’t hesitate, reaching out with arms that felt like lead to draw her small, trembling body into the circle of his embrace.

“Shhh, Isabella.” He hauled her against him, wanting to anchor her to the earth before her own mind tore her apart.

As he pulled her forward, Isabella collapsed into him, her forehead hitting the center of his chest, burying her face into the fabric of his buttoned shirt.

Lucian let out a sharp, involuntary hiss of agony. The contact was agonizing. The weight of her head pressed directly onto the largest, most sensitive scar felt as if a branding iron had been shoved into his raw nerves, sending a jolt of white-hot lightning through his spine that nearly made his vision go black.

His fingers spasmed against her back, his knuckles whitening as he fought the urge to recoil.

But Isabella didn’t notice. She was too far gone in the throes of her own terror, her hands fumbling with the lapels of his shirt, her face damp with hot tears as she leaned into the only solid thing left in her world.

To her, the hiss was just another sign of his exhaustion, a weary breath from a man who had waited too long for her to wake.

“It’s okay. Breath.” Lucian managed to grind out through clenched teeth, his voice straining under the dual burden of his physical pain and his starving body’s demand for blood.

He forced his arms to tighten around her, ignoring the way his shirt felt like it was fused to his weeping wounds.

He rocked her slowly. The scent of her—sweet, jasmine, and now underscored by that intoxicating, primal Lycan heat—was a siren song to his hunger, making his fangs ache in his gums.

“I’m sorry… please don’t leave,” she whimpered against his chest, her fingers clutching his shirt so tightly he feared she might tear the fabric and reveal the very ruin he was trying to hide.

Isabella’s mind was a chaotic, fragmented mess, a storm of self-loathing that raged more fiercely than the strange heat currently incinerating her veins.

Normally, she was the girl with the iron tongue and the sharp wit, the one who used sarcasm as a shield to keep the world at arm’s length.

But the panic had stripped her bare, leaving behind a raw, primal fear of abandonment that she didn’t know how to navigate.

It was a crushing, existential weight. She felt as though the heavens above—which had spent a lifetime giving her nothing but struggle and the hollow title of “wolfless”—had finally reached down and offered her something divine.

A mate. A destiny that made sense of all her years of being an outlier. And yet, in her blindness, in her desperate need to be right, she had taken her own hands and torn that gift apart before the ink on their bond had even dried.

“I… I ruined it,” she choked out, her voice muffled by the thick cotton of his shirt. “I broke everything. I blindly believed a life I have no memory of….Believed….called you a monster when the only monster was right in front of me….”

She felt like a child lost in a burning forest, clutching at the only tree that wasn’t on fire, unaware that she was the one who had dropped the match.

The thought that Lucian might look at her and see only her rejection, that he might finally realize she wasn’t worth it, made her heart stutter in a way that felt like it might simply stop.

“Isabella, look at me,” Lucian murmured, his voice strained and tight as he battled the white-hot agony radiating from his shredded chest.

She couldn’t. She only pressed closer, her forehead grinding into the very wounds that were pulsing with a dark, unholy heat.

To her, this proximity was her only salvation; to him, it was a beautiful, agonizing torture. “Please….don’t let go,” she whispered, her words dissolving into a series of shallow gasps.

She was spiraling, her mind replaying the moment in the North Wing when she had let Caleb’s manipulated visions cloud her judgment.

She felt as though she had committed a crime for which there was no restitution, a betrayal of the soul that no amount of apologizing could ever fix.

Lucian’s arms tightened around her, his fingers digging into the velvet of her quilt as he leaned his chin atop her head.

“Breathe,” he rasped, his eyes fluttering shut as he fought to remain conscious.

The scent of her jasmine-scented skin was so potent, so close to his fangs, that he had to pull his lips back in a silent, pained snarl to keep from sinking into her.

He shifted her slightly, trying to hard to keep his thirst at bay. Isabella’s sobbing slowed, the sheer intensity of his presence acting as a bulkhead against the rising tide of her panic.

She clung to him, her hands still fisted in his shirt, her mind slowly beginning to settle as she focused on the warmth of him.

But it felt wrong. Lucian shouldn’t have warmth. He was a creature of the night, a Sovereign born of frost and ancient, cold shadows.

To touch him was usually to touch marble polished by winter air, a cooling balm to her own fiery temperament.

Yet, as she pressed her cheek against his chest, she didn’t find the icy comfort she expected.

Instead, a radiating, unnatural heat bled through the fabric of his shirt, concentrated right where her face was buried.

In her haze, Isabella’s mind struggled to reconcile the sensation. Was he ill? No, they don’t get ill.

Had the stress of her disappearance finally broken the immortal constitution of a King?

“Lucian…”

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