Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Lycan King’s Rogue Queen: Kabanata 91 - Kabanata 100

Riley pov The smile on Kael’s face wasn’t his. That was the first thing my mind latched onto—the smallest, cruelest detail. His lips curved with perfect symmetry, no tension at the corners, no hesitation. Kael never smiled like that. Kael smiled like he was bracing for impact. Like joy was something dangerous he handled carefully. This smile was clean. Manufactured. Wrong. “Asset recovered,” he repeated, voice smooth as polished marble. “Stability restored.” The Heart exhaled. Not relief. Approval. The white room brightened, its angles sharpening, its surfaces settling into obedience. The Ledger’s hum deepened, steadier now, like a machine that had finally found a solution it liked. My stomach dropped. “No,” I whispered. The word barely made it past my teeth. “No, no, no—” Kael rose to his feet with unhurried precision. The way he moved—measured, economical—was a mockery of the man who used to stalk rooms like a storm barely leashed. His gaze didn’t search for me. It didn

Riley pov The Heart didn’t explode. That would’ve been clean. Cinematic. Satisfying. Instead, it unraveled. White peeled away from the walls in long, screaming ribbons, exposing something underneath that looked less like stone and more like muscle—dark, wet, alive. The air thickened, tasting of iron and ozone and old promises breaking all at once. Gravity stuttered. Up forgot what it was supposed to be. Time hiccupped like it had bitten its own tongue. Lumi sagged against me. I caught her without thinking, my arms locking around her as the silver ink continued to tear free from her skin, whipping through the chamber like panicked serpents. Each strand hissed as it struck the air, burning holes through reality where it passed. She was shaking. Not the neat, controlled tremor of someone holding it together—but the violent aftershock of someone who had held too much for too long. “I can’t—” she gasped. “Riley, I can’t feel the edges anymore.” “That’s okay,” I said, my voice low

Kael pov She didn’t vanish. That would’ve been easier. Riley didn’t dissolve into light or fade into myth or leave behind some symbolic echo I could cling to when the nights got too long. She walked away. One step after another. And I stood there like a man who had forgotten how to follow. The path she took curved quickly, swallowed by stone and shadow and distance. No dramatic wind. No final glance over her shoulder. Just the soft, brutal sound of boots on dirt… and then nothing. I stayed where I was long after the silence settled. The cliff breathed behind me. The city breathed below. And somewhere in between, my chest caved in. The bond was gone. Not frayed. Not quiet. Gone. I had known it would hurt. I had prepared for pain the way soldiers prepare for wounds—by convincing themselves they’ve already survived worse. This wasn’t pain. This was disorientation. Like waking up in a body that no longer remembers its own center of gravity. Every part of me kept reachi

Kael Pov The next morning, I woke with blood in my mouth. Not from a wound. From my own teeth. I had bitten through my tongue in my sleep like an animal trying to chew through a trap. The healer who came—wide-eyed, careful, too young to have learned how to lie convincingly—told me it was stress. He dabbed at my lip, asked if I’d been drinking, avoided my eyes as if looking at me too long might invite something to look back. I let him. I let everyone. Because as long as they believed it was exhaustion, they didn’t have to name the truth. And the truth was this: The lycan wasn’t grieving. It was adapting. It began with smells. The palace used to have a familiar rhythm of scent—stone dust and candle smoke, ink, old leather, the faint spice of wine in the cracks of oak tables. Now everything smelled like… absence. Like something had been removed so thoroughly the air hadn’t finished forgiving it. I passed servants in the corridor and caught myself searching them for her. Fo

Riley pov The world didn’t whisper the decree. It snapped. Like a bone breaking somewhere deep under the skin of reality. I felt it before I understood it—before words caught up, before logic bothered to knock. The forest went stiff around me, every leaf holding its breath like it had just been handed a rule it hated. The scar on my wrist flared. Hot. Mean. Personal. “Oh,” I muttered, grabbing my arm. “That’s new.” Lumi stumbled behind me, breath hitching as she caught herself on a rock. She was still shaky, still too thin in the soul, but alive in a way that mattered. I didn’t turn. Because the scent had already hit me. Wolf. Not clean pack-scent. Not ordered. Fractured. Ragged. Rogues. Figures. “Stay behind me,” I said. “I hate when you say that,” Lumi whispered. “Then you’re going to despise what happens if you don’t.” She shut up. Smart girl. I crested the ridge and there they were—five of them, half-shifted, eyes too bright, bodies too lean. The kind of wolves