WOLFLESS: Accidentally Marked By The Devil's Son-Chapter 51: Vanished

Chapter 51

Elena tasted blood at the back of her throat and hated herself for the weakness of it. The psychic feedback from the bond’s severance had torn through her like a serrated blade dragged across her mind, ripping, shredding.

The scream she had loosed still echoed inside her skull, ricocheting endlessly, mocking her with every pulse of pain that followed.

When she lifted her hollow, eyeless gaze toward the vampire standing before her, she tried—foolishly—to hide the fear clawing up her spine.

It was like trying to smother a wildfire in the middle of a drought. Useless. Obvious. Humiliating. And Elena despised humiliation more than pain.

The air around him felt wrong. Heavy. Pressurized. It bent inward, compressing the space between breaths until each inhale felt stolen rather than given. The room itself seemed to bow under his presence.

This wasn’t just the raw strength of a King.

It was the gravity of a black hole, an inescapable pull that promised annihilation at its center.

Her own shadows, the very darkness she had birthed from the void, fed with centuries of blood, sacrifice, and whispered bargains bled into one another behind him. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

They clung to his silhouette as if they recognized their true master at last.

They weren’t attacking him. They were worshipping him.

Behind Lucian, her hound stood in obedient stillness. Its massive frame was rigid, unnaturally still, its posture no longer hers to command. The beast did not strain against invisible leashes. It did not snarl.

It waited.

Its now-red eye burned with borrowed authority—a cruel, crimson mockery of everything she had carved, stitched, and bled into its bones.

How?

How could he take control of it without witchcraft?

It had taken her hours—hours—waiting for Clara’s magic to dissipate before she could even touch the beast’s will. Hours of patience, calculation, and restraint.

And now...Now Lucian stood there, having snapped the connection as if it were nothing more than fragile thread.

He even wasn’t compelling it. She could feel that much. He had severed the very bond itself. Elena’s fingers twitched at her side, her ancient instincts screaming for retaliation.

To strike. To tear. To unmake the world in front of her before it swallowed her whole.

But when she reached inward, grasping for the well of power she had ruled for ages, it answered sluggishly—resentful, fragmented. Like a wounded beast refusing to rise.

The theft had crippled it.

For the first time since she had fought him centuries ago, Elena felt the coldness of the room not as its source, not as its queen—but as its victim.

The frost kissed her skin, "You," she rasped, moving quickly to stand beside Isabella’s pinned, paralyzed frame. "You took my sight."

The word took scraped itself out of her throat like broken glass.

Elena spat, her hand trembling as she pressed a jagged, shadow-slicked finger against Isabella’s cheek, right beneath the girl’s wide, terrified eye. The warmth of her skin felt obscene beneath Elena’s touch.

"You carved the light out of my face for the sake of a daughter who was never worth the price," she hissed. "Did you think I would forget the darkness you left me in? Did you think I would forgive it?"

The shadows pinning Clara pressed more painfully into her at the Mother’s words, tightening as if feeding on the venom laced through Elena’s voice.

Clara cried out, a broken sound torn from her chest.

Lucian’s eyes didn’t flicker toward her.

They were fixed—utterly, devastatingly—on Isabella’s wide, panicked gaze.

Every instinct in him screamed to rip Elena’s skull from her body before she could draw another breath. Every violent impulse begged to be unleashed.

But he knew exactly what a cornered witch was capable of.

And Elena was ancient.

"I remember the night well, Elena," Lucian said coldly. "I should have taken your tongue along with your eyes. It would have saved us both the boredom of this conversation."

The Mother’s face contorted. The void where her eyes had once been pulsed violently, shadows writhing within the sockets like living things desperate to escape.

"You want to feel?" she shrieked. "You want to know the weight of a loss that cannot be mended?"

She leaned closer to Isabella’s ear, her entire frame trembling with malignant delight. "I heard the call. The moment your pet witch failed that ritual, the rift sang to me. A King with an anchor? A King with a weakness?" Her laughter fractured, ecstatic, unhinged. "Ohhh—what a beautiful day."

She turned her eyeless face back toward Lucian, a horrific grin splitting her features. "I won’t just kill her. I am going to peel the light from her head, just as you did to me. I will give you back exactly what you gave me—a lifetime of staring into the nothing."

"Mother, stop!" Clara shrieked from the floor, her voice cracking, raw with terror. "He will unmake you!"

"He will try!" Elena roared.

The shadows around Isabella’s neck tightened instantly, cutting off her breath. Isabella gasped, her body jerking helplessly against the wall.

Lucian had already calculated his next move.

With a sharp flick of his hand, the sentinel leaped—slamming into the ceiling with devastating force. The impact cracked the beams and sent splinters raining down, the shockwave knocking Elena off balance.

The moment she stumbled, Lucian bridged the distance in a heartbeat.

His fingers locked around Elena’s throat, the sheer force of his movement slamming her back into the wall, wood splintering violently behind her.

The sound of her windpipe groaning beneath his grip shattered the suffocating silence.

Elena’s feet dangled inches above the floorboards. She clawed at his wrist, her nails scraping uselessly against his skin.

Lucian squeezed, his thumb sinking deep into the soft flesh of her neck, his crimson eyes burning inches from her empty, swirling sockets.

"Look at me," he hissed. "Feel the hand that took your sight. Now feel it take your life."

Elena’s face darkened, a sickening violet hue spreading across her skin.

She knew.

She felt the gravity of his intent—the absolute certainty that he was going to reduce her to ash.

The fight was lost. The King was no longer playing.

But as her lungs screamed for air, her eyeless gaze shifted toward Isabella.

A final, wretched twitch of a smile pulled at her lips.

With a desperate, silent surge of her remaining will, she didn’t try to push Lucian away.

Instead—

She yanked the threads.

The shadows coiled around Isabella’s body transformed, surging upward in a fluid, horrifying motion. They abandoned the girl’s limbs and throat all at once.

Isabella opened her mouth to draw a frantic breath—but instead of air, the darkness lunged inside her.

The blight poured into her, forcing its way past her lips and down her throat.

Isabella’s eyes went wide. Her back arched violently off the wall as she began to choke on the liquid shadows.

"Isabella!" Clara’s scream tore through the room, a piercing note of pure horror.

Lucian’s focus shattered.

The bond between him and Isabella flared with sudden, agonizing cold. His crushing grip on Elena’s throat faltered for a fraction of a second as he turned his head.

It was the only opening Elena needed. She vanished with a final whisper. "Enjoy the taste of the void, King."

Her voice echoed—a distant, haunting rasp that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

By the time Lucian’s hand closed again, he grasped nothing but cold mist and the stench of ancient graves.

Elena was gone.

Lucian didn’t spare the empty air a second glance. He blurred to Isabella’s side, catching her as she collapsed toward the floor, her body trembling violently in his arms.