Chapter 168

The suffocating silence that followed Isabella’s piercing question was thick with the dying scent of Alaric’s shattered pride and the bitter, lingering taste of Clara’s restraining magic.

The kitchen, for all its gleaming, state-of-the-art lighting and cold, polished marble surfaces, suddenly felt less like a modern sanctuary and more like a cruel, ancient stage of the absurd—a place where the past and present were colliding with violent force.

Lucian’s hand remained anchored firmly onto Isabella’s waist, his thumb tracing the expensive silk of her dark robe in a possessive motion. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Through the thrumming threads of their bond, Isabella could feel the vibrating hum of his suspicion—a dark, cold current that swirled in the back of his mind, questioning why she possessed such an intimate, detailed knowledge of this wolf’s history.

But beneath that layer, she felt his unwavering trust. He was watching her with an intensity that rivaled the sun, sensing her every move and silently endorsing the way she was finally standing up to the shadows of her childhood.

Alaric, who had been collapsed on his knees with the chill of the concrete biting into his bare skin, finally found a shred of his Alpha-born strength.

His blue eyes—bleary and filled with a desperate, shivering shame—momentarily fixed on a singular point near Isabella’s bare feet before he forced himself to rise.

He stood on shaky legs, his nakedness a glaring vulnerability in the light of the kitchen. Lucian’s eyes darkened to a lethal shade of crimson, a guttural growl vibrating deep in his chest as his gaze swept over the wolf’s exposed form.

The King’s lip curled in a sneer of pure, territorial disgust at the sight of another male standing unclothed in the presence of his mate.

Clara, sensing the volatile spike in Lucian’s temper and looking thoroughly bored by the display of wolf anatomy, gave a nonchalant snap of her fingers.

In a shimmer of silver light, a heavy blanket materialized in mid-air and dropped directly onto Alaric’s front.

Alaric caught the fabric with fumbled, desperate hands, wrapping it tightly around his bruised torso. He looked toward Clara, his eyes brimming with profound gratitude for the small mercy.

But the witch didn’t even acknowledge the look; she simply adjusted her stance, looking at him as if he were a specimen.

"Selena’s eighteenth birthday came and went," Alaric whispered at last, his voice steadier now that he was covered, though the shame still clung to him like a second skin.

"The moon rose, the entire pack gathered in the clearing, the elders were waiting with the sacred oils... and nothing happened. No spark. No intoxicating scent that marks a true soul. My wolf... he didn’t even lift his head. It was just silent, Isabella."

Isabella felt the weight of his confession, but she didn’t let it pull her down. Instead of leaning further into Lucian, she straightened her spine and stepped out from under his heavy, protective arm.

She stood on her own, her feet planted firmly on the cold stone, meeting Alaric’s gaze with a steady, haunting clarity.

"Dead silence," she repeated. Her voice wasn’t booming or cruel, it was quiet with a weary kind of sarcasm that only someone who had been ignored for years could master.

"That’s truly something, Alaric. Because I remember how loud you both were. I remember Selena acting like she was already wearing the Alpha’s lunar jewels. I remember the way she looked at me—the ’wolfless twin.’"

That single word hit the room like an explosion. Lucian’s eyes snapped to Isabella as if she had just revealed a forbidden secret. Twin? She was—no, she is a twin?

Clara and Marcus both shifted their gazes to her, their expressions sharpening with a sudden interest in her lineage, but Isabella didn’t look at them.

She kept her eyes on Alaric. She wasn’t trying to be a bully; she was simply holding up a mirror to the man who had let her be bullied and ignored for years.

"While you held her hand high in front of our father and promised the pack a golden age of strength and legacy," Isabella continued, her voice rising in a terrifying crescendo.

"All that ’mighty’ posturing and the way you two paraded your supposed destiny... and now you’re telling me there wasn’t even a spark?"

Lucian’s finger twitched on the air where she had just been standing. He didn’t like the raw intensity radiating off her; he could feel her Lycan heat, warping the air around her skin.

It was a righteous, holy fury, but it was becoming dangerous. Lucian stepped closer, his palm splaying flat against her stomach to feel the erratic, heavy kick of her heart, trying to ground her back into the present before she spiraled into a transition she didn’t understand.

"The more pressing matter," Lucian’s voice cut through the haze, low and resonant, vibrating through her spine to ground her back into the present moment.

He looked past her, his red eyes settling on Clara with a chilling deflection. "Is the sheer absurdity of this situation. Clara, you are a High Witch. Why would a daughter of a coven be tied by the heavens to a child of the moon?"

Isabella took a breath at the cool skin of Lucian’s touch. She looked away from Alaric, her gaze shifting to the powerful witch standing by the island.

The absurdity of the situation finally outweighed her anger. The question hung in the air, shifting the focus from the messy drama of the past to the dangerous mystery of the present.

Clara remained unnervingly still, her fingers tracing the silver filigree of her spellbook as if she were reading a language only the dead could understand.

"The heavens don’t make mistakes, but they do occasionally produce... anomalies." Clara murmured, finally shifting her white, sightless gaze toward the wolf.

To Alaric, the weight of her attention was heavy, but to Clara, he was a puzzle piece that simply didn’t fit. If she hadn’t witnessed the impossible reality of Lucian and Isabella—a vampire King bound by the threads of destiny to a wolf girl—she would have dismissed Alaric as a delusional, grief-stricken child.

But the precedent had been set in this very room, and it was the only thing stopping her from turning him into ash where he stood.

She couldn’t acknowledge the bond. To do so would be to accept a destiny she never asked for. Clara didn’t see herself with a mate, let alone a boy who looked like he had been dragged through the bowels of the earth just to find her.

More importantly, her blood sang with a ancestral bitterness that no "pull" could silence. She couldn’t see herself tethered to the very species that had once hunted her kind into near-extinction, the savages who had helped eradicate her coven’s legacy.

But none of that crossed her lips. She kept her internal walls high and reinforced with ice. "If the bond exists," Clara said, her tone clinical, "it is a malfunction. A biological error in the stars. I have no room in my life for a ’mate,’ especially one who can barely stand on his own two feet without a blanket for a crutch."

Alaric’s face paled, the gratitude he had felt earlier curdling into a sharp, stinging rejection. "A malfunction?" he echoed, the word sounding like a death sentence.

Isabella watched the exchange, her own anger settling into a dull, throbbing ache as she saw the same cycle of rejection she had lived through, only this time, it was the "golden boy" on the receiving end.

She felt Lucian’s fingers twitch against her stomach, his cold skin acting as a heat sink for her rising Lycan energy.

"The stars don’t care about your feelings, little wolf," Clara countered, her voice dropping an octave. "They only care about balance. And there is nothing balanced about a Witch being tied to a creature of the moon. It’s a glitch. And glitches are meant to be ignored."

Lucian chuckled at the situation, never in a million years would he think Clara would be mated to someone. "Ignored... or studied," he mused, his red eyes gleaming with a curiosity. "Perhaps the ’malfunction’ has a purpose we haven’t seen yet."

He looked at Marcus, the playfulness in his voice vanishing in an instant, replaced by the iron-clad command of the unholy king.

"Take the kid to a room," Lucian ordered. "I want him kept alive, but I want him silent. If he is true to his word, we shall see where to from there ."

Marcus gave a curt nod, his disheveled copper hair casting long shadows as he stepped toward Alaric. The air in the kitchen began to circulate again, the heavy magic Clara had been weaving slowly dissipating into the vents.

Alaric didn’t resist. He stood wrapped in his charcoal blanket, his blue eyes—still shimmering with the pain of Clara’s rejection—lingering on the witch for a fraction of a second longer than was safe.

He was searching for any sign of the "honey and lilies" he had traveled a thousand miles to find, but he found only the cold, silver runes of her spellbook.

"Move," Marcus muttered, his voice devoid of sympathy. He didn’t care about mate bonds or pack politics; he only cared about the King’s silence.

As they exited the kitchen, Isabella finally let out a breath she felt she’d been holding since she stepped off the stairs.

The Lycan heat under her skin was still humming, a low-frequency vibration that made her fingers tremble.

Lucian didn’t pull her back into his arms immediately. He sensed her need for space, but his presence remained a constant, grounding force at her back.

He waited until Clara left and the footsteps faded down the hallway before he spoke, his voice dropping into a register that was dangerously soft.

"A twin, Isabella?"He turned her slowly to face him. His red eyes were no longer glowing with lethal heat, but with an intense, probing curiosity.

He reached out, his cool fingers lifting her chin so she had no choice but to look into the crimson depths of his gaze.

"You speak of a ’wolfless twin’ and a pack that paraded a fake destiny. You’ve kept many ghosts in your closet, darling." His thumb brushed over her lower lip, which was still swollen from their earlier encounter. "I think it’s time we discuss the rest of your family tree"