Chapter 182

The heavy furs felt like lead. Isabella didn’t know how long she had been staring at her palm, but the image of her skin fusing back together was burned into her retinas.

It was an impossible kind of miracle, a biological glitch that her mind kept trying to reboot, hoping to find a version of reality where the blood stayed on the surface and the skin stayed parted.

She lay curled on the mattress, her knees pulled toward her chest. The silence of the room was no longer comforting.

’Why now?’ The question pulsed in her mind, timed to present rhythm of her heart. For eighteen years, she had been the "broken" girl.

She had been the disappointment of the pack, the one who couldn’t shift, couldn’t heal, and couldn’t fight.

She had built a life out of the scraps of being "wolfless," wearing her fragility like a second skin because it was the only thing she truly owned.

And now, in this mansion in the North, under the shadow of a man who was a myth made of scars and secrets, the "nothing" inside her was waking up.

Click.

The sound of the door latch was a resounding echo in the stillness. Isabella didn’t flinch. She didn’t have the strength left for a physical reaction.

Even before the heavy oak swung open, the scent hit her. It was a sensory invasion she couldn’t block out.

Sandalwood, the biting frost of the Northern peaks, and that deep, pheromonal musk that belonged only to him, a scent that used to mean safety but now smelled like a beautifully wrapped lie.

But there was something else, something that smelled of warm and sweet porridge and the acidic tang of sliced citrus.

Lucian entered the room with a silence that shouldn’t have been possible for a man of his size. He moved like a shadow across the rugs, he didn’t demand her attention.

He didn’t use the booming voice of the Sovereign to command her to sit up. He simply crossed the floor, his presence dimming the morning light, and set the tray down on the nightstand.

Isabella felt the mattress dip. He was close. Close enough that the coldness radiating from his skin brushed against her shoulder.

A few hours ago, she had screamed at him to leave. She had demanded space with a fire she didn’t know she possessed.

Now, as she felt his heavy gaze tracking the curve of her spine, she wanted to scream at him. She wanted to conjure a curse, a string of hateful words that would drive him back into the hallway and lock the door forever.

But her lungs felt too small to hold the breath required for a shouting match. She was extremely exhausted, her energy drained by the sheer violence of her own body healing itself.

The effort of hating him felt like trying to lift a mountain with a broken lever. She watched her hand.

The skin of her palm was so perfect it looked fake. No scar. No redness. Not even a faint line to mark where the blade had tasted her.

She thought about the weeks they had spent together. The way he had watched her eat, the way he had checked her for bruises after the smallest stumble, the way he had held her as if she were made of spun glass.

Every touch now felt recontextualized. He wasn’t protecting her because she was fragile; he was monitoring her because she was changing.

She felt the prickle of tears, but they were cold. She hated that she could still smell the porridge he had made.

She hated that even now, knowing he had gaslit her for weeks, her body recognized his scent as ’safety’.

She let her hand drop an inch, her fingers curling slightly. The silence between them stretched, thick and suffocating, until the air itself seemed to vibrate with the things he wasn’t saying.

He was waiting for her to break. He was waiting for her to look at him so he could offer a justification she didn’t want to hear.

Finally, she forced her dry throat to work. She didn’t turn her head. She didn’t move a muscle in her body.

She just stared at that flawless, terrifying palm and let the question fall into the space between them. "Why didn’t you tell me?"

The words were thin, barely more than a breath, but they carried the weight of every lie he had ever told her.

Lucian didn’t answer immediately. The sound of his breathing was the only thing filling the room. When he finally spoke, his voice was stripped of its usual authority.

"I wanted to give you a choice, Isabella."

"A choice?" She finally turned her head, her golden eyes—now ringed with that haunting, hungry red—snapping to his. "You took my choice the moment you decided my history was your secret to keep."

She sat up slowly, the heavy furs sliding down her body. She didn’t care that she was exposed. She felt like a stranger in her own skin anyway.

She gestured to the tray of food, her lip curling in a ghost of a sneer. "Is this the plan, Lucian? You feed me, you give me ’space,’ and you wait for me to forget?"

Lucian’s jaw tightened, a muscle leaping in his cheek.

Lucian looked down at his large and scarred hands which was capable of ending lives with a mere flex of his fingers.

"No," he finally says. "There is no plan, Isabella." He shifted on the bed, the wood groaning under his frame.

He didn’t reach for her. He knew better than to bridge that distance when her eyes were burning with that newfound fire.

"I was wrong," he admitted, the words coming out slow, "I made myself the architect of your reality because I was afraid of what the truth would do to you. I told myself it was protection. But it was just control. I robbed you of the right to know who you are, and for that, I have no excuse. I thought I was being your shield, but I was just another wall keeping you in the dark."

Isabella felt the air leave her lungs. She had expected a lecture. She had expected him to justify it with talk of safety or security.

Hearing him simply take the blame was more disorienting than the lies themselves. She looked away from him, her gaze drifting back to the silver tray.

The silence that followed wasn’t the intense tension of the moments before. She felt the demand of hunger from her stomach that made her lightheaded.

Her body was working overtime, weaving new strength into her bones, and it was demanding payment in calories.

"You need to eat," Lucian’s voice was a low rasp, stripped of its usual commanding edge. It was a plea, not an order.

Isabella let out a tired breath. The energy required to keep him at a distance was fading. Her gaze flickered to the meal but she still needed to get things off her chest.

"So," her voice creaked. "It’s really true." The question sounded like a thunderclap in the stillness.

Lucian didn’t move. He stood—or rather, sat—in her shadow, his massive form silhouetted against the morning light.

"Is what true, Isabella?"

"The healing," she said, finally turning her head fully toward him again. Her golden eyes were wide, the red ring around the pupils pulsing.

She held out her hand, palm up, offering it like a piece of evidence in a trial that had already reached its verdict.

"I cut myself. Deep. I watched it happen." Her voice shook, the reality of the memory finally catching up to her. "I felt the blade. I saw the blood. I was waiting for the pain to stay."

She saw the way his jaw tightened, the muscle leaping in his cheek as he stared at her unblemished skin.

He didn’t look surprised, rather he looked a bit annoyed with the fact she had cut herself but he didn’t say anything.

"It closed in seconds, Lucian," she whispered, her voice barely rising. "I watched the skin knit back together like... like magic. Like I was never hurt at all. Like I was..."

She choked on the last word, the weight of it too heavy to speak. "Like me," Lucian finished for her.

His voice was thick with a complicated mix of pride and profound regret. "Yes," he said, reaching out a hand, then pulling it back before he could touch her.

"Like me. The Lycan blood might not be an unholy type but it isn’t just a part of you, Isabella. It is you. It’s been waiting for the right moment to claim the space the world tried to deny you. Your body isn’t human anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time."

Isabella looked at her hand, then back at the man who had known this all along. The silence returned, but this time, she reached out and pulled the tray toward her.

She didn’t look at him as she picked up the spoon, but she didn’t tell him to leave either. The distance between them was still a chasm, but for the first time, the bridge of the truth—however terrifying—was beginning to form.