WOLFLESS: Accidentally Marked By The Devil's Son-Chapter 93: Price of remembering

Chapter 93

Lucian’s eyes snapped open, and the vibrant, starlit forest from centuries ago vanished in a sickening blur.

He wasn’t leaning against an oak tree. He was flat on his back on the cold, unforgiving stone of the East Wing room.

The transition was like being thrown from a cliff. The searing white light of the Goddess was replaced by a suffocating, heavy darkness, broken only by the dying flickers of the ritual candles.

The physical pain hit him a second later. It felt like his veins were filled with molten lead. Every muscle in his body seized, his back arching off the stone in a silent, agonizing spasm.

A thick, dark trail of blood leaked from his nose, staining his lips and pooling in the hollow of his throat.

"Clara..." he tried to rasp, but his voice was gone. He turned his head slowly, his vision swimming in shades of red.

A few feet away, Clara lay slumped over her books. She was motionless, her face pale and her breathing shallow.

The strain of the ritual—of pushing a king’s mind through a divine block—had been too much.

She had fainted, the circle of protection around them now nothing more than cold ash and broken chalk.

Lucian lay there, gasping, as the memories settled into his brain. He remembered the smell of the jasmine in the royal gardens. He remembered the specific, heartbreaking way Bella used to tilt her head when she laughed.

He remembered the cold weight of her hand in the clearing. But as the memories solidified, a terrifying clarity took hold.

He was a Sovereign. His mind was a fortress, protected by centuries of dark power and ancient shielding.

There was no way he would have simply "forgotten" the most important person in his existence.

Not after thousands years of waiting. Someone had been in his head. Someone had reached into his mind and carefully, surgically, cut Bella out.

They had left a void where her name should be, filling it with a vague, lingering ache that he had never been able to explain.

Caleb.

The name was a snarl in his mind. Caleb should have been dead. He killed him but seeing him again and having powers of a demon.

Lucian forced himself to sit up, a painful groan escaping his blood-stained lips. The pain in his body was immense—a protest from his very soul for diving so deep into the forbidden—but his rage was stronger.

He looked at his hands. They were shaking, but as he focused, the shadows in the room began to crawl toward him.

Meanwhile, miles away from the crumbling atmosphere of the East Wing, the world had turned into a suffocating, silent grey.

Isabella stumbled as her feet hit solid ground, her lungs burning from the sudden shift in pressure.

The air here didn’t feel like air; it was stagnant, tasting of old dust and forgotten things. "Careful, Bella," Caleb murmured, his voice a soothing balm that felt jarring against the gloom.

He caught her by the waist, his touch light and reverent, as they materialized in the center of a windowless room.

With a graceful flick of his hand, a dozen iron wall-lamp flared to life. The light was dim and orange, casting long, dancing shadows against walls made of heavy, unpolished stone.

Isabella didn’t move from where he placed her on the edge of a high-backed bed. The furs beneath her were soft, but they felt cold, as if they hadn’t held warmth in centuries.

She wrapped her arms around herself, her fingers instinctively digging into the skin of her shoulder, just above the collarbone.

The mark. It was stinging, pulsing with heat that felt like a needle being driven into her nerves.

It wasn’t just a physical sensation anymore, it was a mental scream. It was the bond, the tether to Lucian, thrashing in the dark, demanding she turn around and run back to the man who had claimed her.

Mate. The word felt like a curse.

"Does it hurt?" Caleb asked softly. He knelt before her, his expression a mask of profound concern.

Isabella sat up slightly, her breath still uneven as her eyes moved across the room. It wasn’t large. And it certainly wasn’t modern.

The walls were made of rough stone, uneven and aged, the mortar darkened by time. The ceiling was low, supported by thick wooden beams that looked older than the house itself.

There were no decorations. No paintings. No luxuries.

Only the essentials. A wooden table scarred with old knife marks. A narrow wardrobe. Shelves holding glass bottles filled with dark liquids and dried herbs tied in bundles.

The air smelled faintly of dust, wax, and something medicinal.

A place meant for hiding. Or surviving. Isabella swallowed, unease settling in her chest.

"Where are we?" she asked quietly, unintentionally ignoring Caleb concerned face. Caleb did not answer immediately.

He looked deeply at the mark on Isabella’s neck. "Somewhere safe," he said at last.

The words should have been reassuring to Isabella but they weren’t. The mark on her neck pulsed again.

Hot. Insistent. Go back. Her breath hitched as the sensation spread down her spine, a deep, aching pull that felt almost like homesickness—except the place it wanted to take her was the last place she ever wanted to return.

Lucian. The bond did not care about her fear. It did not care about her anger. It only cared that her other half was somewhere else.

Isabella pressed her palm harder against her throat, as if she could physically hold the feeling in place.

"Why am I fated to him instead of you," she unknowingly whispered out loud. Caleb’s jaw tightened for a fraction of a second—a flicker of something sharp and ugly passing through his gaze before he smoothed it over with a smile of controlled concern.

He reached out, gently taking her hands in his. His skin was cool, lacking the feverish, magnetic heat she always felt with Lucian.

"Bella." Caleb said, his voice dropping to a persuasive whisper. "I gave up everything to bring you back. My soul, my humanity... all of it. I am no longer a child of the light."

Isabella’s eyes widened, her fingers trembling in his cool grasp. "You... you sold your soul? For me?"

The weight of the statement crashed down on her. To give up one’s soul was a finality she couldn’t even comprehend.

It explained his smoky form and the vision she was shown. "I had to," Caleb whispered, his thumbs brushing over her knuckles. "When I saw you slit your throat, when I saw the life leave your eyes because of me... I couldn’t let it end. I made a pact with the shadows. I became this—a creature of the in-between—just to ensure you could breathe again."

He looked up at her, his expression a masterpiece of tragic devotion. "But fate is a cruel, twisted thing, Bella. It saw fit to bond you to the very man who drove you to that blade. I don’t understand why it tied your soul to Lucain of all people. Maybe to punish us?"

Isabella felt a tear prick at her eye. The stinging on her neck felt like a betrayal now. How could the universe be so heartless?

To link her to a Monster while the man who had traded his divinity for her sat at her feet, un-fated and un-marked?

"It isn’t fair," she choked out, the bond giving a violent, angry thrum in response to her thoughts.

"I don’t want to belong to him. I feel him, Caleb. Even now, he’s... he’s in pain. He’s angry. It’s overwhelming."

Caleb’s grip tightened just enough to be felt. "I know. The bond is a tether, a leash he uses to drag you into his darkness. But Bella, look at me."

He leaned closer, the orange candlelight making his pale features look almost angelic despite the darkness he claimed to serve. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

"Don’t be scared. I have spent centuries in the shadows, watching, learning. I have mastered the act of rejection. I have found the way to sever a fated bond from the inside out."

Isabella’s breath hitched. "You can break it?"

"I can," Caleb promised, his voice a low, rhythmic hum. "I can snap the thread he holds over you. But it requires you to choose me, fully and without doubt. You must reject the pull, Isabella. You must tell the bond that it has no power over you. Once you do that, I can step in and shatter the connection for good. Then, the two of us... we can truly be together. No kings, no monsters, no marks."

He reached out, his hand hovering near the stinging mark on her neck, not quite touching it. "Do you trust me, Bella? Will you let me set you free?"

Isabella looked into his eyes, wanting so desperately to find peace. But beneath the relief, a small, quiet part of her soul—the part that remembered the warmth of the sun and the true weight of Lucian’s grief—shivered.

Far away, in the East Wing, Lucian’s blood hit the stone floor, and through the bond, Isabella felt a sudden, sharp surge of betrayal that wasn’t her own.

It was a roar of pure agony of hurt and humiliation. "I..." Isabella hesitated, the silver chalice on the table catching the light. "I want to be free."

Caleb smiled, and for a fleeting second, the shadows on the wall seemed to grow like claws. "Then let us begin."