Chapter 6: The King’s Primal Peak

Veya’s POV

His hands trembled. Then his nails lengthened into claws. The sound of bones shifting cracked through the air, merging with the rumble of a long, savage howl. His black fur cloak split apart as his body expanded, muscles bulging into the monstrous form of a lycan.

I didn’t even have time to warn the noble. The King lunged with the speed of a starving beast.

His claws tore through the man’s body, shredding him apart. Blood sprayed across the stone floor and up the walls. The snap of breaking bones and the man’s final scream were so horrific that I clamped my hands over my ears.

Armored guards burst in. But the moment they saw the mangled remains of a noble in the King’s grasp, they froze, terror written across their faces.

Before they could react, the King turned on them.

It wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter. Claws and fangs ripped through flesh like wet paper. Their blood pooled warm around my feet, sticky and sickening.

“Your Majesty, stop!” I screamed, but my voice couldn’t reach him.

“This is what we feared tonight.” The voice came from behind me. I spun to find an old woman in a deep violet hood standing in the doorway.

“Who are you?”

“I am Vesska, the royal oracle. Listen to me; you are the only one who can stop him!”

“I don’t know how!” Panic and fear tangled inside me until my eyes stung. “I have no power to make the King stop killing his people.”

She shook her head. “You are the only reason he hasn’t already torn the entire palace apart. Tonight, his primal wave reaches its peak. Every Lycan King experiences it once a month, a phase where they lose all control and become a monster that doesn’t even recognize its blood.”

“Then why me?” I whispered, my body drained of strength.

“Because only you can.” Her words were little more than a murmur before she vanished into a curl of mist.

I turned my focus back to the King, who was still ripping through the soldiers. Somehow, I was certain there was still awareness buried deep inside him.

Closing my eyes, I tried to bridge the space between us to reach him. “Your Majesty, it’s Veya. Please… come back to yourself.”

A wolf’s roar tore through my mind. Then suddenly the thread of our mind-link snapped into place.

“I’m here. I see you.” His voice was hoarse and heavy. But beneath it was a sharp, aching note of desperation.

“Your Majesty, please… return. Calm yourself.” My whisper trembled with hope.

The King roared so loudly that the ceiling above cracked. He flung a soldier’s corpse against the wall, then turned slowly toward me.

I forced myself to step forward, trusting he would regain himself. “Your Majesty, are you all right? You… you’re back, aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer my plea. Instead, he lifted me easily into his arms.

“What are you doing? Please, put me down.”

His massive lycan frame shuddered. The black fur along his body bristled, and his hot breath fanned over the bare skin of my neck.

Still fully in his lycan form, the King suddenly bolted, carrying me out of the blood-soaked ruin of the wine storage.

***

Bloody footprints trailed down the marble corridor, each one a brutal mark of his passing. My body jolted with every step the King took.

His claws clamped around my waist, the grip so fierce it carved deep scratches into my skin. The sharp tang of blood seeped into my pores, choking me until I wanted to retch.

“Mercy… p-please, stop…!” My voice cracked, shattering under the flood of tears streaming down my face.

I screamed, kicked, and pounded my fists against his solid chest, but the lycan didn’t even flinch.

His eyes burned, glowing a molten red like embers ready to consume. His breath came in heavy, ragged bursts through a muzzle slick with fresh blood.

Anyone who dared to cross his path was shredded apart or crushed with a single swipe of his hand.

Screams, the crunch of shattering bones, and the groan of collapsing stone followed us like the drumbeat of hell.

“Stop! Please, Your Majesty! You’ll kill them all!” My voice broke into desperation.

No answer. Only a roar that shook the castle walls.

“Please… come back to yourself, Your Majesty. I’m begging you…” I didn’t know if my voice could even reach him.

Then I heard him.

“Don’t let the primal lycan consume me.” His words slipped into my mind through the mind link.

My chest tightened painfully with a mix of fear and something dangerously close to pity.

Could he still be aware of what he was doing?

“If you can still hear me, then please let me go. Don’t give me another reason to fear you.”

I didn’t realize where he was taking me until he hurled me onto a massive bed. Curtains tore and pillars splintered beneath the violence of his movements.

I glanced around the unfamiliar room, lit only by the flicker of candlelight. I gasped when the King dragged me into his arms, his hold swallowing me whole.

I screamed when his claws shredded my gown. The ripping of fabric was louder, more violent than any blade’s thrust. My hands flew to cover my bare chest. And in my panic, I tried to crawl away.

“No! Please, don’t do this to me!” My plea was drowned in his guttural growl. His claws locked around my knees, pinning me in place.

I prayed the monster before me wasn’t King Rael. Foolishly, I wished he wasn’t the same man who had once fastened a silver wolf-head pendant around my neck and the same man who had granted me the mercy of meeting Ameera.

“Veya, stop fighting.” Ameera’s voice slid into my mind like a ghost. “If you keep resisting, you’ll die. And he’ll kill even more. You’re the only one who can stop him. You’re the only anchor he has left.”

A sob tore from my throat. My hands trembled as they fisted in my hair, pulling hard enough to sting.

“Why me? I’m nothing!” My scream was half despair, half terror.

Never once, even in my worst nightmares, had I imagined losing my virginity beneath the claws of the Lycan king, lost in the throes of his primal peak.

My life may have belonged to him since the day he bought me, but my greatest hope had been to give my first time to a man I loved.

“I hate you,” I whispered, as his furred hand dragged me into the dark abyss waiting to devour me whole.

I fell into it, shattered beyond return.

The pain between my thighs defied description. My body felt torn in two, ripped open from the inside.

I bit my lip until blood filled my mouth just to keep from passing out. “Your Majesty… enough… please…”

But the King only growled harshly against my neck. I didn’t know how long I held my breath, screaming silently until my body went numb.

“Your Majesty, you’ve killed the best part of me,” I whispered, hollow and broken.

The ceiling swam in my vision. Blood spattered the walls like a constellation of death.

The silver wolf-head pendant on my neck felt like a shackle, a reminder that as a slave, I had no right to choose.

Before the darkness swallowed me whole, I reached for his face with what little strength I had left and prayed for a shred of humanity to return to him. “Just kill me.”