Chapter 178

Isabella couldn’t breathe.

She sat at the edge of the massive bed, fingers trembling as they clutched the lapels of her silk robe, her gaze locked on the scars carved across Lucian’s chest.

Three long, silvered lines. She knew those marks. She had seen them refuse to heal. She had touched them. But she had never—not once—allowed herself to imagine she was the one who put them there.

Across from her, Lucian stood motionless, shirtless, his damp hair clinging to his neck, his expression stripped of everything but truth. The silence between them wasn’t quiet. It was suffocating.

"You’re lying," she whispered, a small, breathless laugh escaping her—a sound of pure, high-pitched denial.

"Lucian, you’re lying, right? This is... this is some sort of dark joke. You’re trying to deflect again?" She searched his face, waiting for the smirk, for the cold glint of amusement that would tell her he was just trying to shock her into focus.

But Lucian’s stormy grey eyes remained fixed on hers, steady and devastatingly honest. He stood perfectly still, yet the way his muscles tensed showed he was bracing for her to shatter.

"I’m not, Isabella," Isabella felt a wave of nausea roll over her. She looked back at the scars, the physical proof of a violence she couldn’t remember.

"I did that to you?" she murmured. It was a question, but her mind was already rejecting the answer.

She shook her head, her damp hair lashing against her cheeks. "No. No, that’s impossible. Look at me, Lucian! I’m barely five-foot-five. I’m ’wolfless’. I’m the girl who couldn’t even shift at her own Rite."

She stood up abruptly, her legs feeling like water. She paced a small circle, her hands gesturing wildly.

"You are telling me my eyes were red and gold... okay, fine. I can almost understand that because I’ve seen the way they change in the mirror lately. But you can’t tell me I was six and a half feet tall. You can’t tell me I stood on two legs and tore into flesh like I was dissecting a piece of fruit."

She stopped, pointing a trembling finger at the marks on his chest. "That is a nightmare, Lucian. That is a story told to frighten pups in the nursery. You’re describing a Lycan. They’ve been extinct for centuries. I’m just... I’m just Isabella."

"Not anymore," Lucian countered, taking a single step toward her. The air thickened. "I don’t know how it happened or why you had transformed then but my only guess would be Elena and Caleb must had triggered you into a corner until the blood of the First Predator had no choice but to answer."

Isabella was speechless at what she’s hearing, trying her best in reaching into the foggy depths of her memory, searching for the orange lights. She looked for the moment the world broke.

There should have been something. A scream. A flash. A moment where she lost herself.

But there was nothing. Just a yawning void between the moment she’d foolishly believed Caleb, Elena fraying her bond with Lucian and the moment she had woken up in Lucian’s bed, safe and sore.

"I don’t... I can’t remember" she barely whispered, her voice thinning as she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force her mind back to that night.

A hand to her shoulder pulled her out from the swirling, lucain looks down at her as her eyes flattered open to meet his

"Your mind must be protecting itself" Lucian voice was steady. "The transformation was unstable. You were reacting on pure, ancestral instinct. There was no ’you’ left to record the memory."

"That’s convenient," she shot back, her denial flaring up while she paced again. "I turn into a monster, nearly kill you... and somehow I forget?"

Her laugh was hollow. "Do you hear how insane that sounds?" Lucian didn’t flinch at the accusation. He simply watched her, his patience as vast and cold as a frozen lake.

"It sounds like you’re trying to make me into something I’m not so you can justify why you have been silent about that night!" She snapped but Lucian didn’t answer her immediately.

He stood there, unmoving, the silence stretching between them until it became something alive—something pressing against Isabella’s chest, tightening with every second he refused to speak.

That, more than anything, made something in her snap. "So you knew."

The words came out quieter this time. Not a shout. Not an accusation thrown in anger. Her arms dropped to her sides, her fingers curling slowly into her palms as her breathing steadied into something colder, more controlled.

Her eyes didn’t leave his. "You knew something was wrong with me," she continued, her voice gaining strength with every word. "Since the moment you rescued me and yet, you said nothing!"

Lucian’s jaw tightened. She took a step closer. "All the avoidance, the lies, the overprotection and hiding, it all could have been avoided."

Another step.

"But instead of telling me," her voice cracked—not from weakness, but from the strain of holding herself together, "you locked me in a room and told me to breathe you in like that would fix whatever is happening to me."

Lucian’s gaze hardened, but he still said nothing. Isabella let out a short, disbelieving breath, shaking her head as she turned away from him, dragging a hand through her damp hair.

"I thought something was wrong with the house," she said, her voice quieter now, but no less sharp. "I thought we were under attack. I thought..." She laughed bitterly. "God, I thought the Council had come for me."

She turned back to him, her eyes shining—not soft, not fragile, but furious "Isabella..."

"No." She held up a hand, stopping him. Her chin lifted, stubborn and unyielding. "Don’t."

Something flickered in his eyes, something darker than anger. Not guilt. Something closer to conflict.

"You don’t get to soften this now," she continued. "You don’t get to stand there and act like this is just another situation you can manage."

Her voice dropped "This is about me." The bond between them pulsed. She could feel him there, feel the way he was holding back, the walls he was reinforcing in his mind.

And that hurt more than anything he had said. She took a deep breath and turned her back to him while whispering. "Please, give me some space."