chapter six :No one Believes In Kings Anymore.

Nyra

The clip cut off mid-breath.

I remembered that message. Three weeks ago, Kyrell had gone cold for days, left my texts unread, and finally told me he was “thinking about ending things.” all because I refused him sex. I had begged him not to. He’d said then, the  only way to prove I meant it was to send a voice recording of me touching myself. So I recorded that voice note, shaking, thinking I was saving the only good thing in my life.

There had been more after touch me. Whatever he’d cut, it was the part that mattered.

Nobody in that courtyard knew that. The silence stretched, and then the whispers started, low and ugly, rolling through the crowd like smoke.

Wolfless and desperate.

Of course she is.

“There you have it.” Kyrell lowered the phone, shaking his head with a performance of regret that made my stomach turn. “A starving girl who’ll do anything for a little attention. She spent months groveling at my feet because she cares more about what people think of her than who she hurts. And somehow, I don’t know how, she’s gotten you wrapped around her finger.” He swept his gaze over the crowd. “But I must tell you, she is not who you think she is. She’s a slut, a liar, and a manipulative bitch, and she’ll ruin you the way she’s ruined everyone who’s ever been kind to her.”

Every head turned to Eramon. They were waiting for him to speak, and I could see how it would go. Any second, he’d glance back at me with the same disgust my parents had worn all my life, and I’d be shipped back to Corrick before sunset.

My eyes were on Kyrell all through, the same bitter man from the barn, pacing and sneering and calling me a fat pig. Now he was wearing an injured-boyfriend mask, and the crowd believed every thread of it.

I opened my mouth. “How could you—”

“Want me to play it again?” Kyrell raised the phone, smiling. “I have plenty more, sweetheart.”

“No! You told me to—”

“There she goes, making things up again.” He shook his head at the crowd. 

I looked at Eramon’s back and waited. Any second he would turn around wearing the look I’d seen my whole life, the one that said I should have known.

“Enough.”

One word, not loud, but Kyrell’s mouth snapped shut.

I stood frozen. His jaw was tight and his shoulders were stiff, and the annoyance rolling off him was so obvious that I braced for him to say something unforgivable.

“And who,” Eramon said, still without turning, “told you to leave your room?”

My brain stalled. “What?”

He turned then, and his silver eyes dropped to my bandaged leg, then rose again, cold with irritation. “Your wound has not healed. I told you not to move.”

The whole courtyard went still. I had braced for contempt. I had not braced for that.

“Have you lost your—” Kyrell stepped forward. 

“I do not recall asking you to speak.”

Kyrell froze.

“Nor do I recall inviting you here. I woke to grown men barging through my gates and shouting like animals. Do you know how much of a nuisance you are making?”

“I only wanted to see that lying bitch for myself…”

“Is that everything he has?” Eramon asked me, as if Kyrell hadn’t spoken.

I swallowed completely dumbfounded before shaking my head.

“Good.”

He crossed the courtyard, plucked the phone from Kyrell’s fingers like fruit from a branch, and closed his hand. The screen cracked, then the casing, then the whole thing folded in on itself with a sound like breaking bone. Eramon dropped the pieces on the stones. “That was the only copy I will allow.”

“You can’t touch my property!” Kyrell’s face flushed. “I’ll take this to the Alpha Council. You’ll be in chains by the end of the week.”

“Then you will want my name for the report. I am Eramon Morrgaith. I am the Lycan King. And Nyra is my mate.”

For a moment, everyone froze.

Then someone snorted, and the laughter rolled through the yard in a wave.

“Morrgaith’s a bedtime story!”

“My grandmother used it to scare me into bed.”

The estate guards hadn’t laughed. They stood rigid, but one glanced at the man beside him, and I saw doubt flicker between them. They had followed Eramon without ever asking why.

Eramon looked mildly bored. He reached out, lifted Kyrell’s wrist, and his torn shirt pulled open to show the scar above his abdomen, long and pale and puckered, like a lightning bolt carved into stone. In daylight it looked worse, like a wound meant to kill.

An old man at the back of the crowd cleared his throat. He was a gatekeeper, white-haired.

“My grandfather told me,” he said, and his voice shook. “The last Lycan King took a blade through the ribs at Dawnreach and lived. He said the mark never healed. That it looked like lightning.”

The yard went quiet in pieces. The old man lowered himself to one knee, his cane rattling against the stone.

“Your Majesty,” he whispered.

Some wolves stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Others looked at the scar, and I watched the doubt spread one face at a time.

Kyrell looked at the old man, and the color drained from his face.

“This is a sick joke. A scar proves nothing. She’s a mateless fat pig. She can’t be anyone’s mate. You must be mistaken, she must have definitely used some kind of black magic if you believe that.”

I didn’t see Eramon move.

One heartbeat he stood beside the old man, and the next he was in front of Kyrell, nose to nose. Kyrell gasped and then simply stopped breathing, rooted to the stones.

“You will not say one more disrespectful word about my mate,” Eramon said, soft and flat, “or you will not walk out of here alive.”

Kyrell’s lips moved. Nothing came out.

“The next time you enter my compound uninvited, I will break your legs until they are of no use to you. Whatever you had

 with her before is neither your concern nor mine. My bond with Nyra began the moment she woke me. Everything before it does not concern me.” He stepped back. “Get out of here.”

Kyrell still im shock jumbled for words, eventually his face hardened.

Eramon turned, and his eyes found mine in the doorway. “Go back inside. Stay off that leg until it heals.”

 I didn’t understand this man. There was no way in the moon he thought I would just walk away like that.

 “No. You can’t!” Kyrell howled as they dragged him toward the gate. “Nyra belongs to me. We have been too together for months!”

Eramon raised a brow, mocking him. “Well she belongs to me now.”