Chapter 22: The Weight Of Reality

"I just told you!" I snapped, angrily shoving a thick sweater into my bag.

"No, you told me the politics," Maren corrected, her steel-grey eyes locking onto me. "I want to know about the Vanguard. The entire fortress is shaking. The soldiers in the corridors are terrified. Tell me how a wolfless, unhealed girl managed to reduce five elite, fully-armored Lycan guards into three-inch boxes of meat and bone."

I paused, my hand hovering over the zipper of the rucksack.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. The image of those floating guards—the horrific, wet crunching of their armor folding inward—flashed behind my eyelids. My stomach rolled. In my sheer panic to escape, I had completely blocked out the logistics of what had actually saved me.

"I... I didn't do that," I stammered, shaking my head aggressively. "I couldn't have! I just closed my eyes and waited for the swords to hit me."

"Then who did?" Maren challenged quietly.

"I don't know!" I threw my hands up in frustration. "It must have been Riven! He probably realized how bad it would look if his guards butchered an infant on the assembly floor! Or... or maybe it was Thorne. Kaelen’s Beta. He was looking at me with pity. Maybe he snapped and used his aura to protect us!"

Maren stopped rocking the baby. She stood perfectly still in the center of the room, looking at me like I was a child who couldn't grasp simple math.

"Or maybe it was you?" Maren suggested softly. "Or your pup?"

I let out a harsh, wet laugh. "Right. The dormant wolf and the human baby. Sure."

"Listen to me very carefully," Maren said, her tone suddenly dropping into a heavy, deadly serious register that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. "No Alpha alive is physically capable of controlling a Lycan's body mass like that. The power you witnessed is called The Sovereign’s Crush. It is a kinetic manipulation of raw aura, heavy enough to warp gravity and fold steel. It is a strictly royal bloodline trait."

I stared at her, my pulse pounding in my ears.

"Only the Lycan King has that power," Maren continued, taking a slow step toward me. "And even Riven—the most lethal, ancient predator on this earth—has a physical limit. He can use the Crush on a maximum of three men at once before his own veins begin to rupture from the atmospheric pressure."

Maren tilted her head, her eyes boring directly into my soul.

"Five guards is biologically impossible for him, Liora. Let alone an ordinary Beta like Thorne. The only two beings in that room who didn't have their auras severely restricted by the King's presence... were you. And him." She looked down at Mael.

I froze. My breath caught in my throat, a suffocating knot of confusion and dread tightening my chest.

Five guards. Riven couldn't do it. Thorne couldn't do it.

"What... what are you saying?" I whispered, my voice trembling as I backed away from her. "What do you mean it was us? Are you trying to plummet me right back into the same delusions? You want me to believe that I am somehow stronger than the hundreds of Alphas who just sat there and legally sealed my fate? If I have this god-tier power, Maren, why couldn't I fight back when Kaelen abused me for three years? Why am I bleeding through my stitches right now?!"

I grabbed my rucksack, yanking the zipper closed with a harsh, metallic rip.

"You're lying to keep me here," I spat, the anger flaring hot and fast. "You're just covering for the King. Well, I'm not falling for it anymore. Give me my son. I'm leaving."

"Liora—" Maren started.

Before I could take another step toward her, the heavy ironwood door to my chambers didn't just open.

It exploded inward.

The heavy brass hinges snapped like dry twigs, the thick wood slamming violently against the stone wall with a deafening crack that shook the floorboards.

I screamed, dropping the rucksack as I scrambled backward, my spine hitting the cold stone of the vanity.

A massive, terrifying figure completely blocked the doorway, his broad shoulders practically touching the doorframe.

It was Riven.

He didn't look like the cold, calculating King who had sat on the throne ten minutes ago. He looked feral. His chest was heaving under his dark leather tunic. His golden eyes were blown wide, completely swallowed by the blown-out, blackened pupils of his Lycan beast. The sheer, suffocating intensity radiating off his body made the oxygen in the room evaporate.

He locked eyes with me for a fraction of a second, his chest rising and falling in harsh, ragged pants. Then, he turned his lethal gaze to the old healer holding my son.

"Maren," Riven snarled, his voice a guttural, demonic vibration that shook the glass on my vanity. "Out."