All Chapters of Sold to the Lycan King: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Morwenna's POVI smelled smoke before I saw it. The scent didn’t come from firewood or torches, it was old, burning magic, bitter and ancient, like bones crushed under heat. My skin prickled with warning as I stepped deeper into the third trial chamber. My body ached from the bloodletting in the previous rites, my soul thinner than thread. Still, I moved. I had to.The chamber pulsed red, walls slick with shadows that didn’t obey the torchlight. My fingers curled at my sides. I could feel him here. Leofric. Somewhere behind me. Watching. He wasn’t supposed to be, but I no longer cared about rules. Not when this curse wrapped around my heart like a noose.The voice returned, ancient and female. It seeped through the cracks in the stone and slid down my spine. “You seek freedom, but you are still chained.”“I broke the bond,” I hissed, though even I didn’t believe it anymore. “I paid in blood.”The shadows thickened. A mirror rose from the floor. Not glass—liquid obsidian that shimmered

Morwenna's POVI woke in a coffin of salt and ash.Every inch of my skin burned, every breath felt like drawing in fire. My arms were tangled in vines soaked with blood—my own—and my throat was raw from screaming. The trial wasn’t over. Not even close.The third vision had shattered something inside me. Seeing Leofric fall—again and again—crushed beneath the Bone Seer’s jagged blade, had left me broken. But the Seer’s whisper had carved deeper than fear. "You can stop this. Just surrender."No. I wouldn’t surrender. Not to fate. Not to whatever darkness this trial believed I belonged to. I dragged myself from the salt pit, nails cracked and bleeding, and collapsed into the cold pool waiting just beyond it. The water hissed around my flesh like oil hitting fire.I surfaced gasping, and there he was.Leofric. Leaning against the stone archway, arms crossed, drenched in rain, his eyes locked on me like he’d climbed through hell just to get here. And maybe he had."You’re not supposed to

Morwenna's POVI could feel it. Something inside me was shifting—no, waking. The flames had not only purified my blood; they had stirred something primordial. My pace was deliberate and careful, each inhale heavy as I strolled alongside Leofric, acting as if we weren’t heading into chaos.He kept looking at me. I could feel how he was restraining himself—not from fear, but from the same painful doubt that twisted within me. We hadn't communicated since I informed him. Concerning the child. Regarding the perspective. Concerning the Bone Seer revealing truths I preferred to ignore.The trail forward delved further into the forest, into the Seer's Hollow—a location from which no one emerged the same. My skin still ached from the trial flames, the mark now imprinted on my chest like a rune crafted by the deities themselves. I was unsure of its meaning. Just that it had bled when I noticed the cradle in the flames.I ceased walking."I need to talk," I stated, shifting to look at him.Leof

Leofric's POVI watched the flames twist along the horizon like a serpent in pain. The trial had left me hollow, but watching Morwenna nearly die for a curse that wasn't her fault shattered something deep in me. I was never meant to follow her, not into these flames, not into that kind of suffering. But my legs disobeyed long ago. I followed anyway.She lay still in the ash now, her breath shallow but real. Alive. Barely. Her skin glistened with blood and firewater. She looked like a woman forged in the center of the world—destroyed and reborn all at once.I knelt beside her, brushing a lock of charred hair from her cheek. She flinched in her sleep. Even unconscious, she was still fighting."You're stronger than any flame," I whispered, though the words tasted like guilt.The curse had shattered. I'd felt it in my marrow. The bond we'd shared, twisted by blood magic and old vengeance, had snapped. Not cleanly—no, nothing about us had ever been clean—but it was gone. She'd paid the pri

Morwenna's POVFire still licked at the edges of my vision as I struggled to sit upright. My body felt like broken glass stitched together with thread and pain. Every breath burned. Every movement screamed. But I was alive. I remembered the flames. The voices. The curse splintering. Leofric’s hands on my skin. His voice calling me back.I turned slowly, and he was there—kneeling like a prayer that refused to be answered. Blood on his cheek, ash in his hair, eyes locked on mine like I was the only god he’d ever worship.He looked wrecked.And I remembered his words.I lied to you. About your birth. About the first time I saw you.Those words crawled under my skin like thorns."Say it again," I rasped, my throat raw from fire and truth.He didn’t flinch. "I lied. You weren’t born in the village. You were never meant to be offered to the moon cult. They took you from somewhere else. I was there the night it happened. I was a boy, but I knew enough to stay quiet."My stomach turned. "You