Chapter 122: I’m sorry.

Chapter 122

Isabella looked into his eyes, searching for the lie, but all she found was a devastating sincerity.

She saw the way he was standing, shaking slightly in front of her because he was terrified of a few words.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to demand the truth. But as she looked at the exhaustion lining his face, she realized that pushing him further might actually break them more

“One day,” she whispered, her voice thick with a mix of anger and defeat. “One day, Lucian, you’re going to have to stop lying to me. Because the silence is starting to hurt more than whatever the truth is.”

Isabella didn’t wait for him to respond. She didn’t want to see the flicker of pain in his eyes or the way his jaw would tighten with yet another unspoken secret.

She climbed back onto the expansive bed, the mattress dipping under her weight. Without a single glance back at the man, she pulled the heavy duvet up over her shoulders—not for warmth, but to put something between them and turned onto her side, facing her back to him.

The movement was deliberate. A wall of silk and silence. Lucian stood in the center of the room, his hand still half-extended toward the empty air where she had been standing seconds before.

He let out a long sigh that seemed to rattle the very foundations of his chest. Here he thought they were finally on good terms—that the kiss, the touch, and the shared heat had finally bridged the chasm between them.

But he had been a fool. Power and desire couldn’t fix a foundation built on shadows. He felt the familiar throb of the wounds on his chest, a burning reminder that he was literally carrying the weight of her forgotten trauma on his skin.

With a stiff, pained grace, he sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn’t lie down; he couldn’t bring himself to bridge the distance she had so clearly marked.

He just sat there in the dim light of the room, watching the slow rise and fall of her back. He looked at the way the charcoal silk of his shirt—the one she was still wearing—bunched around her waist.

She looked so small, so deceptively fragile, and yet she was the only creature in existence who could make the Great King of the vampires feel like a beggar in his own palace.

“Isabella,” he whispered, the name barely a breath. She didn’t move. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of a sigh or a shift in the sheets. She remained a statue of frozen anger and hurt.

Lucian’s shoulders slumped. He wanted to reach out and trace the line of her spine, to pull her against him and tell her everything.

But the words remained trapped behind his teeth, guarded by a fear that if she knew what she was, she would never look at herself the same way again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words feeling heavy and foreign as they left his lips. “I am sorry for the silence, Isabella. I am sorry that my protection feels like a prison to you.”

The room remained still, the shadows stretching long across the duvet. He didn’t expect an answer, but then, a small, muffled voice came from beneath the layers of the blanket.

“It isn’t an apology I want, Lucian.” She still didn’t turn to face him. Her voice was thick with exhaustion, the kind that reached deep into her bones.

“I don’t need you to be sorry for who you are. I just… I need to know what happened in that darkness.”

Hearing her voice, Lucian felt a flicker of hope ignite in his chest, sharp enough to rival the physical pain of his wounds.

She was still talking to him. She hadn’t completely shut him out. He shifted closer to her on the edge of the mattress, his movements agonizingly slow.

“The truth is a weight, Isabella,” he said, his voice dropping into a convincing tonr, the kind he used when he needed his subjects to believe in a peace that didn’t yet exist.

“And right now, your body is still healing. Your mind is still trying to find its footing. If I told you everything tonight, it wouldn’t bring you peace—it would only bring you more ghosts. I am not keeping secrets to control you. I am keeping them so you can have one night of sleep without screaming. Please… trust me for a few more hours of darkness.”

Isabella didn’t answer. She was too tired to argue, too drained by the adrenaline of the kiss and the crushing weight of the mystery.

The silence stretched out again, but this time, it wasn’t as jarring. Tentatively, Lucian moved. He crawled further up the bed, his muscles screaming in protest as he navigated the soft terrain of the mattress.

He lay down at her side, leaving a respectful few inches of space between them. She was still facing away from him, her back a curved wall of charcoal silk.

Lucian didn’t give up. He waited until he was sure she wasn’t going to push him away. Slowly, he reached out and slid his arm over her waist, pulling her back against his chest.

He hissed under his breath as her weight pressed against his bandaged wounds, but he didn’t pull away. He welcomed the pain if it meant holding her.

Isabella stiffened for a heartbeat, her breath hitching. She should have fought him. She should have demanded he move to his own side of the massive bed.

But the warmth radiating from him was a siren song, and the exhaustion was a heavy veil.

Slowly without much of an effort, she began to relax. She leaned back into the curve of his body.

Lucian buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent of her—jasmine, silk, and the faint, sweet musk of her skin.

He hadn’t told her the truth. He hadn’t healed the rift. But as their breathing finally fell into a synchronized rhythm, the day didn’t end in a battle.

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