🪷🪷 CHAPTER FIVE

“You always hide here, don’t you?” I said, stepping into the ruined throne room.

Kael didn’t turn. He stood with his broad features back facing me, bathed in fractured moonlight seeping through a broken stained glass window. Shadows of old portraits loomed behind him, the faces twisted by time, maybe war or maybe regret.

“Hide?” His voice was flat and neutral. “I don’t hide.”

“Right,” I muttered, stepping further into the ruined throne room. “You just brood with dead people watching.”

“I don't. I mourn...”

“Over people you murdered due to your breakless anger.”

He glanced back, his eyes unreadable. “They were my family.”

“Ohh!” That made me pause. My chest tightened, I don't know the reason or if it's the mate bond but I held onto the reason I came here. Sympathy had no place in negotiations.

“I’m not here to tiptoe around your pain,” I said. “I’m here because I’m done running.”

His brow arched slightly. “You’ve decided, then?”

I nodded, crossing my arms. “I’ll help you. But only on my terms.”

He finally turned fully. The silver glint of his armor caught the moonlight like a threat. “You’re making demands now?”

“I’m setting boundaries,” I corrected. “You want me alive, you want me useful,fine. But this isn’t going to be your curse-saving mating fantasy. I’m not a sacrifice.”

Something flickered behind his expression.

Maybe Surprise,Annoyance or Amusement,I don't care.

“Speak, then,” he said, voice low. “What do you want?”

“First—” I raised a finger, “—when I find a way to heal you, you let me go. No strings attached, no debts. No blood oaths. Just freely… gone and gone forever.”

Kael’s jaw clenched. “You think you’ll want to leave.”

“I know I will.”

He didn’t argue.

“Second, you help me avenge my friend.”

His gaze sharpened.

“She died because of me,” I said, my voice tight. “Because the Alphas were after me. You’re the only one powerful enough to make them stop. You protect me—and you help me make them pay.”

“Revenge,” he murmured. “And protection. Is that all?”

“No,” I said, stepping closer, closing the space between us with defiance. “We don’t act on the mating heat. There should be No touching,No claiming and No fate-bound urges.”

Kael stared at me, long and silent.

“You think that’s something we can control?” he asked.

“I don’t care,” I snapped. “Control it. Or chain yourself down. I won’t be coerced into sleeping with a monster.”

That word—monster—hung in the air between us. Like a time bomb, about to explode.

He didn’t flinch. Maybe he’d accepted it.

“Anything else?” he asked quietly.

“I want full access to your library. The magical one,” I added, noticing the twitch of his brow. “No guards breathing down my neck. I come and go within the castle grounds freely anyhow I want. And I want complete honesty about this, your curse of a thing. No riddles. No manipulations. Just the truth.”

“And?” he asked, folding his arms.

“And you never, ever use our bond to mess with my emotions. No guilt-trips. No emotional pulls. I don’t care if it’s instinct. You don't use it. If I feel something, it’s going to be mine.”

He let out a low whistle, something sharp and sardonic.

“Do you usually come prepared to negotiate with your soul?”

I met his gaze squarely. “Do you usually wait for girls to be broken before binding them to you?”

“I don't think that's what it looks like.”

“Then what's the meaning then?”

There was Silence.

Then Kael nodded—slow, measured.

“You have my word.”

Something about hearing that made my lungs expand for the first time in days. But I wasn’t done.

“Say it properly,” I said, feeling like the queen.

His head tilted.

“Swear it. On your blood.”

Kael stare at her with a look of something unexplainable.

A flash of something dark crossed his features. A predator pulled back by pride. But he stepped forward anyway and bit into his palm. Blood welled instantly.

“I, Kael of the Forgotten Throne, swear on my blood, my name, and my curse… that I will uphold our agreement as you’ve stated it. Should I break it, may the ruin that hunts me devour what’s left of my soul.”

He held out his hand.

I didn’t hesitate. I cut my thumb—quick, shallow—and pressed it to his palm.

Our blood mingled. The air snapped like a wire pulled too tight.

“I’m not yours,” I said, staring up at him.

“I never said you were.”

His words should’ve calmed me. They didn’t.

A knock echoed through the broken room.

Beta Thane stepped in, rigid as ever. His presence snapped Kael’s attention like a command.

“My Lord,” Thane said, throwing me a quick glance with something almost amused in his eyes. “It’s urgent.” He spilled out.

Kael looked at me one last time. Something unreadable passed between us. A beat of mutual understanding—or maybe mutual exhaustion.

He nodded once, then followed Thane out. But not before Thane threw a subtle look over his shoulder and mouthed a silent thank you to me.

When the heavy door closed, silence crept in again, softer now and less threatening.

I walked through the shattered throne room slowly, each step echoing memories I didn’t own. The velvet curtains were ripped. The banners faded. The grand chandelier lay in pieces across the floor. But once… once this place had seen laughter.

I could almost hear it.

Ghosts of a better time whispered through the cracks, not in words but in the way the air remembered. Kael had been something else before the curse. Before the fall.

I stopped in front of a torn portrait. A young man in royal blue stood tall beside a silver-haired woman. They both looked… alive.

My chest ached unexpectedly.

Not with pity.

Not forgiveness.

Just… the weight of knowing. Of seeing the monster through the memory of who he used to be.

I hated him. But I understood the kind of pain that turns people into shadows.

And maybe that was worse.