Chapter 111: Shame

Chapter 111

Meanwhile, the King of the Unholy was no longer the monolith of iron and grace the world knew him to be.

Lucian had barely made it through the back entrance of the mansion, his boots dragging against the steps with a heavy sound that would have horrified his ancestors.

Every step was a battle against the darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision. The air in the hallway felt too thick, too stagnant, and far too distant from the raw elements he needed to soothe the fire in his chest.

He didn’t stop to call or signal for Marco. To be seen in this state, staved out, trembling, and smelling of his own blood—was a vulnerability he could not afford, even within his own walls.

He stumbled past the doors that led to the rear gardens, his hand leaving a faint, smeared trail of red against the cold metal.

The moment the night air hit his face, his lungs expanded in a pained gasp. But the scent of the forest, usually a comfort, was now a torment.

It carried the heartbeat of every living thing within a five-mile radius—the frantic pulse of a nesting bird, the warm, rhythmic thud of a deer moving through the brush, the sweet, metallic promise of life.

His body demanded blood. Not just a sip to sustain him, but a deluge to drown out the unholy fire that Isabella’s Lycan claws had sown into his marrow.

“Just… a little further,” he rasped, the words catching in a throat that felt like it had been seared with lye.

He didn’t follow the manicured paths of the garden. He veered straight for the dense, treeline where the shadows were thick enough to hide his shame.

He moved with a desperate, animalistic urgency, his fine silk shirt—the one Isabella had just been crying into—now clinging to the ruin of his chest like a second, bloodied skin.

As he crossed the threshold into the deep woods, his knees finally gave out. He collapsed into the damp earth, his fingers digging into the soil and rotting leaves, his head hanging low as a silent snarl ripped through his lips.

The moonlight filtered through the canopy in broken, silver shards, illuminating the sickly, translucent grey of his skin.

He was the King of his kind, yet here he was, reduced to a starving beast crawling through the dirt because he had used the last of his strength to anchor a girl who thought he hated her.

A twig snapped nearby—the unmistakable sound of a large animal startled by his presence.

Lucian’s head snapped up, his eyes bleeding into a solid, terrifying crimson that eclipsed the iris entirely.

His fangs slid down, aching and sharp, as the primal instinct to hunt finally overthrew the remains of his regal restraint.

He couldn’t wait for a clean kill. He didn’t care if it was an animal. He didn’t care that for centuries he had looked upon the act of drinking from beasts with a loathing that bordered on religious fervor.

To Lucian, animal blood was thin, bitter, and beneath the dignity of a Sovereign—it was the desperate scrap of a scavenger, a foul liquid that tasted of dirt and cowardice.

He had once pinned Marcus to a wall for even suggesting it, nearly taking the younger vampire’s life for the insult of offering him the “carrion” of the forest.

But the fire Isabella had left in his chest was a hunger unlike any he had known in years.

It was a searing, poisonous void that was eating his immortality from the inside out.

The deer—a massive buck with antlers that branched toward the moon—froze only ten feet away, its nostrils flaring as it caught the scent of the predator.

Usually, the animal would have bolted, but Lucian’s aura was so heavy, so thick with the stench of ancient death and unholy blood, that the creature remained paralyzed in a state of primal terror.

Lucian didn’t rise to his feet with the lethal, polished grace of a King. He lunged from the dirt like a shadow torn from the ground, his movements desperate.

He struck the buck with a sickening thud, his weight slamming the animal into the base of a tree.

A silent, pained snarl ripped from his throat as his fangs, elongated to a terrifying degree, sank deep into the deer’s neck.

The blood hit his tongue—and he nearly gagged. It was exactly as he remembered: thick, musky, and tasting of raw earth and wild grass.

It lacked the celestial sweetness of human life, the intoxicating high that usually fueled his veins. It was like drinking salt water when one was dying of thirst.

But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. He drank urgently, his hands clutching the animal’s fur so tightly he tore the hide.

He felt the buck’s heart give a final stutter beneath his palms before it went still, but Lucian remained buried in its neck, forcing the lukewarm, bitter liquid into his system.

It was an act of absolute humiliation, a betrayal of his own regal nature, performed in the dark where no one—not Marcus, not the Council, and especially not Isabella—could see the King of the Unholy reduced to a common parasite.

As the meager sustenance began to hit his system, the white-hot agony in his chest didn’t vanish, but it dulled to a manageable throb.

The grey, translucent tint of his skin began to recede, replaced by a ghastly, unnatural flush.

Miles away, tucked safely in the master suite, Isabella let out a sharp, choked gasp. Through the bond, she felt it—the sudden, jarring rush of humiliation.

She felt the bitter and self-loathing emotions pouring through in waves. She didn’t know he was in the forest.

She didn’t know he was feeding on a beast. All she knew was that Lucain was in a bad state of mind.

Lucian finally pulled away from the carcass, his face smeared with the dark, musk-scented blood of the deer.

He wiped his mouth with the back of a trembling hand, his crimson eyes glowing with a mixture of restored strength and deep-seated disgust.

He looked down at the lifeless animal, then at his own stained, ruined clothes. “Carrion,” he hissed, the word a bitter rasp against the night air.

He stood up, his legs still shaky but finally capable of supporting his weight. He was no longer the corpse he had been ten minutes ago, but he felt more like a monster than ever before.

He had survived, but the cost was a piece of his pride he wasn’t sure he could ever reclaim. He turned back toward the mansion, his gaze fixed on the distant, glowing windows of the master suite.

He had to go back. He had to face her. But as he looked at the blood on his hands, he realized that the iron wall he had built between them wasn’t just to protect her from his wounds.

it was to protect himself from the shame of what he had to become just to stay alive for her.

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