Chapter 117: Worthy of being your mate.

Chapter 117

The silence that followed the opening of the door was different from the silence that had plagued the room for the last day. This silence was alive. It was heavy, electric, and smelled of the storm brewing between them.

Lucian didn’t step inside immediately. He stayed anchored in the doorway, his silhouette framed by the harsh light of the corridor.

From Isabella’s position on the bed, he looked like a dark god. The shadows of the hallway played across the sharp, lethal angles of his face, highlighting the hollows of his cheeks and the dangerous, swirling crimson of his eyes.

Isabella’s hand, still clutching the cluster of grapes, trembled. She wanted to say something—anything—to reclaim the defiance she had been nursing like a flame. She wanted to tell him she hated the grapes. She wanted to tell him to stop hiding. But her vocal cords felt like they had been fused together.

Her eyes scanned him with a desperate, frantic hunger of their own. He was wearing black silk—the twin to the shirt she had practically stolen from his closet.

The sight of it sent a jolt of possessiveness through the bond that almost made her dizzy. Lucian finally moved, stepping fully into the master suite and pulling the heavy door shut behind him.

The click of the latch sounded like a death sentence to Isabella’s ears, echoing through the vast room and settling in the pit of her stomach.

She sat rigid against the headboard, her knuckles white as she gripped the silk duvet. Be a hard girl, she lectured herself, her mind racing in a frantic loop.

Don’t you dare cry. Don’t you dare ask for his forgiveness. She had spent the last hours building an armor of anger and indifference, telling herself she was ready for him to cast her out.

She had prepared herself to walk out of this mansion and into a ditch if that’s what he wanted. But as he walked deeper into the room, the scent of him hit her senses, and her armor began to crack.

Her heart was hammering so violently against her ribs that she was certain he could hear it. In the oppressive quiet, each thud felt like a drum, betraying her terror.

Oh God, she thought, her eyes widening as she tracked his every movement. This is it. He’s here to tell me to get out. He’s here to finally reject the bond and kill me. He realized I’m not worth it.

She braced herself, her chin lifting in a defiant line even as her insides felt like they were liquefying.

She wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her crumble. If he wanted to end it, she would meet his gaze with her head held high, even if it was the last thing she ever did.

Lucian stopped a few feet from the bed. He didn’t look like a man about to deliver an execution; he looked like a man who was barely holding onto his own soul.

He didn’t say a word at first, his eyes fixed on the way she was practically swallowed by his charcoal shirt.

The silence stretched, agonizing and thick. Isabella’s pulse was a deafening roar in her ears. Say it, she screamed internally. Say you hate me. Say I’m a burden. Just don’t look at me like that.

“You look…” Lucian started, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sent a shiver down her spine. He trailed off, his gaze dropping to the floor as if the sight of her was physically painful.

“You look like you’re waiting for me to strike you.” Isabella swallowed hard, her throat feeling like it was lined with glass.

“Aren’t you?” Her voice broke a bit, the words coming out sharper and more defensive than.

Lucian’s head snapped up, and the look of raw, bleeding agony in his crimson eyes made her breath catch.

He didn’t step closer, but the energy rolling off him intensified, the bond screaming with a mixture of his shame and a desperate, rising hunger.

“Is that what you think?” he whispered, his voice trembling with a dark, dangerous emotion. “Is that truly what you think of me?”

Isabella opened her mouth to retort, to snap back with a clever, biting remark that would prove she wasn’t scared, but the words tangled in her throat.

“I—I mean, w-what else am I supposed to think?” She stammered, her tongue feeling heavy and clumsy. She didn’t want to lie. She couldn’t. Not when the bond was this raw and open.

She couldn’t pretend the thought hadn’t crossed her mind that he was here to finish what he started the night they met.

Her mind flashed back to that forest—to the terrifying, skeletal figure who had pinned her down, whose fangs had been the last thing she felt before the world turned red.

Their first meeting hadn’t been a fairy tale; it had been an attempted murder. “You’re the King of the Unholy,” she finally managed, her voice steadier but still thin

“And I’m… I’m the one who ruined everything. I thought you finally realized that killing me back then would have been easier than dealing with me now.”

Lucian watched her, his crimson eyes tracing the frantic pulse jumping in the hollow of her throat.

He saw the way she clutched the duvet like a shield, her knuckles white, trying so hard to be the ’hard girl’ she thought she needed to be. He took a long, heavy breath, his chest expanding beneath the black silk of his shirt—a shirt he kept tightly buttoned, shielding the ruin of the scar she didn’t know he was hiding.

He sighed, the sound weary with a thousand years of exhaustion. “It’s alright, Isabella,” he said softly, the gravelly edge of his voice softening into something almost tender.

“I don’t blame you for thinking the worst of me. I haven’t exactly given you reasons to think I’m a man of mercy.”

He looked at her then, his gaze dropping to the floor between them. “I shouldn’t have stayed away. I was the one who avoided you for hours, leaving you to spiral in this room alone.”

“A whole day,” Isabella corrected. Lucian let out a small bitter smile, his lips twitching with a sadness that reached his eyes.

He nodded slowly, acknowledging the weight of his absence. “A full day,” he repeated, correcting himself with a grim sort of honesty.

“You’re right. A full day of my own cowardice while you were left to face your own shadows.” He didn’t step closer, keeping the distance between them.

He didn’t want her to see the way his hands were shaking, nor did he want her to realize how much effort it took to keep his shirt closed over the mark she’d left on his soul—and his flesh.

“I didn’t stay away because I was planning your end, Isabella,” he whispered, finally meeting her eyes again.

“I stayed away because I didn’t think I was worthy of being your mate”

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