Chapter 121: Protecting you.

Chapter 121

Lucian took one last steadying breath, his fingers fumbling slightly as he held the door handle of the master suite, his chest felt like it was being held together by nothing but sheer, agonizing willpower.

He turned the handle and re-entered the bedroom. The air was still thick with the ghost of their intimacy, the scent of her arousal and his blood mingling in a way that made his stomach flip.

Isabella was still there, sitting on the edge of the mattress. She had pulled the silk shirt he’d given her back over her shoulder, but she hadn’t moved an inch.

Her eyes tracked him the moment he stepped into the light. She noticed the new shirt—identical to the last, but clean, crisp, and devoid of the deathly red stain

She didn’t mention it. She didn’t ask why he had changed. “You’re back,” she said softly, her voice barely more than a whisper in the vast room.

“I promised I would be,” Lucian replied. He crossed the floor, his movement slightly stiff, and stopped a few feet from the bed.

He wanted to reach out to her, to finish what they had started, but the phantom pain in his chest acted like a barrier he couldn’t cross.

Isabella looked at his hands, then up to his face. She could see the subtle strain around his eyes, the way his jaw was set just a little too tight.

She felt the lie sitting between them. “Come here,” she said, patting the space on the bed beside her.

Lucian hesitated. The predator in him wanted to flee, to hide in the dark until the wound stopped weeping, but the mate in him was anchored to her.

Slowly, he moved forward and sat, keeping a careful distance so as not to let her feel the unnatural heat radiating from his bandages.

Isabella didn’t push. She didn’t reach for his buttons. Instead, she leaned her head against his shoulder, closing her eyes as she breathed in the scent of him—now masked by the fresh silk and the faint, sharp smell of the washroom.

“Don’t do that again,” she murmured against his arm.

“Do what?”

“Make me feel like I’m the reason you’re hurting,” she said, her voice cracking just a little.

Lucian’s breath seized but he reached up, his hand trembling as he stroked her hair, his touch feather-light.

“You are not and you’ll never be. No matter what, Isabella. Never forget that.” They sat in that fragile silence for a long time.

The only sound in the room being the ticking of the clock on the mantle. Lucian’s hand continued its slow stroke through her hair, his touch careful, as if he were afraid she might shatter under the weight of his palm.

Isabella stared into the darkness of the room, her mind drifting back, peeling away the layers of the fog that had settled over her memory since the kidnapping or rather, her stupidity.

The heat of the bed was fading now, replaced by a cold curiosity that she couldn’t suppress any longer.

“Lucian?” she murmured, her voice small against the expanse of the suite.

“Yes, Isabella?”

“How did you do it?” she asked, her brow furrowing as she leaned further into his side. “How did I get back here? From Caleb and Elena?”

Lucian’s body went rigid instantly. The fluid motion of his hand in her hair froze, his fingers snagging slightly on a golden strand before he forced himself to continue the motion, though it was now stiff and forced.

The air in his lungs seemed to turn to lead.vIsabella didn’t see his face, but she felt the sudden tension vibrating through his arm.

She didn’t stop. “The last thing I remember… it was that orange lighted room. I remember Elena… the look in her eyes.”

She shivered, the memory of the dark witch’s cold smile cutting through her. “She pressed her finger right into the mark on my neck. It felt like white-hot needles. Everything just… went black. I felt like I was falling into a void where I couldn’t breathe. And then I woke up here. I was back in the mansion, in this bed, like it was all a nightmare.”

She pulled back just enough to look up at him, her eyes searching his shadowed features. “What happened after the blackness, Lucian? How did you find me?”

Lucian stared straight ahead, his jaw locked so tight it looked like it might snap. The pain in his chest flared, a white-hot reminder what really transpired before he was able to pull her back from the brink of that void.

“It doesn’t matter,” he rasped, “You are here now. You are safe. That is the only reality that carries any weight.”

“It matters to me,” she countered softly, her hand moving to rest on his knee. “I was gone, wasn’t I? I felt the bond snapping. I felt… nothing. And then I felt you. Tell me the truth, Lucian. What did you have to do to bring me back?”

Lucian shut his eyes tight, the vision of that night clawing at the back of his mind. He could still hear the sound of her growls and the agonizing heat of her claws as they sliced through his chest.

He couldn’t tell her about the transformation. He couldn’t tell her that she had become the very thing every supernatural feared most, or that the “mangled earth” she felt beneath his shirt earlier was the mark of her own strength used against him.

“I took you back,” his voice dropped down to that tone that usually ended all arguments. “Caleb and Elena should no longer be a concern you need to carry. They are handled, Isabella. That is all.”

Isabella watched the flicker of a muscle in his cheek, her frustration bubbling up like acid. He was doing it again—burying the truth under his titles and his power, treating her like a fragile porcelain doll that would shatter if he spoke a word of reality.

She was getting tired of the gaps. Tired of the half-answers and the “King” mask he wore whenever things got real.

“Handled?” she echoed, pulling her hand back from his knee. The warmth of the moment was officially dead.

“That’s it? I feel like my soul was ripped out through my throat, I wake up in a different house with zero memory of how I got here, and all you have to say is that it’s ’handled’?”

Lucian didn’t flinch, but his fingers tightened ever so slightly against the mattress. “Isabella, some things are better left in the dark.”

“Not when they’re living in my head, Lucian!” she snapped, her voice rising. She stood up from the bed, the oversized silk shirt fluttering around her thighs.

“I’m not a child, Lucain. Stop, just stop. If you had to kill them, tell me. If you had to make a deal, tell me. But don’t sit there and act like I’m too weak to hear the story of my own life.”

Lucian looked up at her then, and for a split second, the mask slipped. Behind the crimson glow of his eyes was a raw exhaustion that made Isabella’s breath hitch.

“You think I’m protecting my pride?” he rasped, the words coming out broken. “You think this is about my power?”

He stood up slowly, his movements guarded and stiff as he fought the fire in his chest. He took a step toward her, his shadow towering over her, but there was no threat in it—only a desperate, heavy sorrow.

“I am protecting you, Isabella. Not from the world, and not from Caleb. I am protecting you from the things you aren’t ready to remember. Please… just for tonight… let it be enough that you are here. Let it be enough that I can touch you.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep