Chapter 12

SAPHRA'S POV

I do not leave my room.

At first, it is not defiance so much as paralysis.

When morning light filters through the curtains, pale and thin, I am already awake. I have not truly slept; my body lies still, but my mind circles the same burning image over and over—the echo of a woman’s dying breath and a child’s scream.

Elara.

The name sits in my throat like a stone.

I sit on the edge of my bed, wrapped in my sheets, staring at the door as if it might open and spill the entire world into my chamber. My skin still prickles where Lucien touched me. My wrists ache faintly, and I keep rubbing them as if I can scrub away the memory of his grip.

I do not move.

I do not dress.

I do not eat.

The first summons arrives before noon.

A sharp knock at my door.

“Saphra,” Marcus’s voice calls. “Lord Lucien requests your presence in the war room.”

My stomach tightens.

I say nothing.

The knock comes again, louder. “Saphra?”

I stare at the door.

The image of the black X flashes behind my eyes. Rage flares hot and clean. I fold my arms around myself and stay perfectly still.

Footsteps retreat.

I let out a breath I did not realize I was holding.

An hour later, another summons.

This time the knock is firmer.

“Lady Saphra,” a guard says, voice rough. “You are to present yourself immediately.”

My chest tightens with a different kind of fury—resentment. I am not a dog to be summoned.

I remain silent.

There is murmuring outside, then retreating boots.

The silence that follows feels fragile.

By the third summons, the sun is slanting low through my windows, painting my floor gold. My head aches, my body trembles with exhaustion, and my thoughts are a storm I cannot quiet.

The knock this time is sharp enough to rattle the door in its frame.

“Saphra,” Marcus calls again, no warmth left in his tone. “Lord Lucien commands your presence.”

My hands curl into fists.

“I am not coming,” I shout, voice cracking. “Tell him to leave me alone.”

Silence stretches on the other side of the door.

Then footsteps withdraw.

But I know this is not over.

Night creeps in, thick and heavy. I pace the room like a trapped animal, heart racing at every distant footstep. The air feels wrong.

The fourth knock is not a knock.

It is a battering.

Wood shudders. The door frame creaks.

“Open the door,” a guard barks. “Now.”

Panic surges through me, cold and sharp. I spin, grabbing the heavy chair beside my dressing table and dragging it toward the door. I shove it beneath the handle, muscles straining.

“I am ill!” I scream. “If you force your way in, you will regret it!”

The pounding grows louder.

“We have orders to retrieve you by any means,” another voice says. “Stand aside.”

Fear snaps into fury.

I drag the dresser next, scraping it across the floor with a harsh shriek of wood against stone, slamming it against the door as well. My breath comes in ragged bursts, my arms trembling.

The door shudders under another blow.

I press my back to it, heart hammering wildly, palms flat against the cold wood.

“Leave me alone!” I shout, voice breaking. “Leave me alone!”

The blows stop.

For a heartbeat, there is only silence.

Then retreating footsteps.

I slide down the door until I am sitting on the floor, shaking, my chest tight with adrenaline and terror and stubborn defiance.

I do not know it then, but while I barricade myself inside my chamber, something far worse is unfolding across the palace.

—

LUCIEN’S POV

I wake inside the dream already running.

My legs are too short. The floorboards loom like cliffs beneath my bare feet, each step a desperate stumble. Smoke stings my eyes. The air tastes of iron and fear. I try to call out, but the sound that tears from my throat is thin and broken—wrong.

I am not myself.

I am Saphra.

I feel the weight of her body, the frantic hammer of her heart. The world is enormous and hostile, every shadow a threat. The door at the far end of the corridor explodes inward, wood splintering, and men pour through in dark armor, faces hidden, voices sharp and cruel.

My soldiers.

The knowledge hits me like a blade to the ribs, even as the child does not understand it. She only knows terror. She turns, slips, palms scraping painfully against the floor. Tears blur her vision. Someone screams her name, her father.

No.

I try to stop it. I try to wrench myself free of her skin, to tear the dream apart, but I am trapped behind her eyes. A prisoner in her fear.

Her father stands between her and the men. He is tall, broad, shaking with rage and desperation. I feel her love for him like a physical thing, warm and fierce and absolute. It makes what comes next unbearable.

I am there.

My arm rises with a familiarity that sickens me. The weight of my sword is perfect in my hand. An extension of my will.

I want to scream. I want to drop it. I want to tear my own arm from my body.

Instead, the blade moves.

It slides forward, precise and efficient, into her father’s chest. His eyes widen, not in surprise, but in understanding. His body jerks. A sound escapes him—half breath, half prayer.

Warmth splashes across her face.

I feel it.

I feel everything.

Her scream rips through my skull as the world shatters. She collapses to the floor, hands clutching at him, sobbing, choking, trying to push the impossible back into place. Her lungs burn. Her heart feels like it is being crushed from the inside.

This is the moment her life ends.

This is the moment I destroy her.

The grief is a weight I cannot escape. It presses down until I can’t breathe, until I am drowning in it. It is not distant or dulled by time. It is raw, endless, consuming.

And then—

I wake.

I bolt upright in my bed, gasping, air tearing painfully into my lungs. Sweat soaks my skin. My heart hammers as if it is trying to break free of my ribs.

“Saphra,” I gasp, the name ripped from me before I can stop it.

The chamber is dark, lit only by the low glow of the hearth. For a heartbeat, I don’t know where I am. I expect to see blood on my hands, to feel a small body curled against me, shaking.

Instead, I see Marcus.

He sits in the corner chair, as he often does when my nights grow restless. His posture is relaxed, his expression thoughtful, as if he has been waiting for me to wake.

“You were thrashing,” he says calmly. “Another nightmare.”

I swing my legs over the side of the bed, hands trembling. The dream clings to me, sticky and suffocating. My chest still aches with borrowed grief.

“She is a problem,” Marcus continues, tone measured. “One that grows more dangerous the longer she remains alive. Execution would—”

I don’t hear the rest.

Something inside me snaps.

I launch myself across the room with a snarl tearing from my throat. The floor blurs with Marcus beneath me. Power surges through my limbs, hot and uncontrollable. I feel my bones shift, muscles stretching painfully as claws burst from my fingers.

Marcus’s eyes widen as he scrambles back, chair toppling behind him.

“Lucien—”

My hand slams into the wall beside his head, stone cracking under the force. My claws hover inches from his throat. I can hear his pulse, fast and sharp. I can smell his fear.

I have never lost control like this.

The realization cuts through the rage like ice.

I force myself to stop.

The effort is excruciating. My wolf fights me, the beast roaring for release, for blood, for an outlet for the agony still echoing in my bones. I grit my teeth and drag the shift back down, claw by claw, breath by ragged breath.

When it’s over, I’m shaking.

Marcus stares at me, pale and silent, his confidence shattered. He has seen me angry before. He has never seen me like this.

“Get out,” I say hoarsely.

He hesitates, then thinks better of it. Without another word, he backs toward the door and leaves, closing it softly behind him.

The silence that follows is deafening.

I stagger to my desk and grip its edge, fingers digging into the wood until it splinters under the pressure. I welcome the pain. It is something I can understand. Something that belongs to me.

Her terror still coils inside my chest.

I had always known Saphra’s past in the abstract. A necessary purge, justified by rebellion and order. I had carried it like any other decision a ruler must make.

This was not distant.

I did not witness her trauma.

I lived it.

I felt her fear as if it were my own. Her grief crushed my lungs with the same merciless force as any blade. The bond, whatever cursed, impossible connection ties us did not merely show me memories. It dragged me into them and locked the door.

I press my forehead against the cool surface of the desk, breath shuddering.

What does it mean that I can feel her pain?

What does it mean that my body responded to the mere suggestion of her death with uncontrollable rage?

I see it again when I close my eyes: her father’s eyes as the life left them. I can see the sorrow in them.

My hand tightens in the broken wood.

I have ordered executions without a flicker of doubt. I have sentenced men to die with steady hands and clear purpose. I have never dreamed their deaths through their children’s eyes. I have never woken with someone else’s scream lodged in my throat.

The implications spread through me like a slow poison.

If I can feel her trauma as intimately as my own, then this bond is far deeper than I ever allowed myself to consider. She is not merely a prisoner. She is not merely a threat to be eliminated.

She is a wound I cannot escape.

And if I am not careful, she will destroy me as surely as I destroyed her world.

I straighten slowly, forcing control back into my spine, into my breath. I am Lucien. King, commander and Alpha. I do not lose myself to dreams or ghosts.

Yet her fear still echoes in my bones, undeniable and alive.

For the first time in years, I am afraid.

Not of my enemies.

But of what I have become and what this bond may yet demand of me.