All Chapters of His Regret, The Crown's Claim : Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

~ Zara's POV ~Shit! Is this how I'm going to end? After everything I've done to claw my way out of dirt….fuck! I can't end like this. At first, the sound of the gunshot didn’t register in my brain until the violent agony flared in my body.It wasn't a dull impact…not by a longshot, it was an explosive, tearing pain that shattered the bone of my left shoulder. The bullet probably ripped through muscle and nerves, instantly turning my entire left side into a useless mass of screaming torment. But funny enough, the pain I felt in that moment, wasn't the most pain I have felt in my miserable life. Hah! How ironic. The sheer momentum of the heavy bullet jerked me backward. My breath caught in my throat, a choked, wet gasp of shock as the night sky tilted violently to an impossible direction.My boot slipped on the wet, muddy clay of the ledge and for one agonizing fraction of a second, my fingers clawed frantically at the empty air, my eyes locking onto Risa’s bloodied face on the dir

Living in a house that lacked love is one of the most horrible things that could ever happen to you. I was bullied by my entire family, and even the head cook, a bitter woman who had once been forced to bow to my mother, took her revenge on me. She would hand me the pots with the burnt, blackened bottoms, forcing my small fingers to scrub until they bled, all while withholding my meager rations of food. "Your mother thought she was a lady in this household," the cook would spit, shoving me into the cold pantry. "Now you can eat the scraps like the dog you are."The other servants would laugh and take turns to bully me. But the worst part of the nightmare wasn't my sisters, or my father, or the servants.It was my mother. She was the worst monster in my childhood. The complications from my birth had left her in constant pain, and her beauty withered like it never even existed. She seemed weak and frail but her spite only grew stronger. She spent her days h

Over the next three years, the secret back garden became my only place I could ever truly find peace and Cade became the center of my entire universe. Every few weeks, whenever the Grayson Pack affairs brought his father to the mansion, my heart would leap with joy. The steward would give me the usual hateful warning to vanish into the lower parts of the mansion and to not be seen, but I no longer minded the isolation. The moment the heavy doors of the hall closed for the long diplomatic meetings, I would fly to the willow tree, my chest bursting with an anticipation I had never known before.And like clockwork, a rustle in the ivy would announce his arrival. He grew faster than I did, his shoulders broadening, his eyes shifting with the sharp intelligence of a rising Alpha. Yet, the moment he dropped into the dirt beside me, he was just Cade."I brought you something from the capital," he said one autumn afternoon, dropping a heavy, leather-bound book onto my lap. It was an illustr

Was I getting a new life? I kept thinking about this. But what would this guard do with my hate for my family, and why was he after them? These were things I didn't quite understand yet. I stayed in that cramped, windowless room for nearly two months. The soldier, whose name I later learned was Silas, treated me not with kindness, but as if I were a chore. He'd go to the main house and carry out his duty, then come back later to see if I had recovered.At least he fed me well and gave me change of clothes. He was never kind and he never asked how I felt, nor did he offer a single word of comfort when the fever from my infected back made me thrash and weep in the dead of night. He simply pinned me to the mat with his heavy hands, forced bitter liquids down my throat, and scraped away the dead tissue with a blade. To him, I was not a child or a person, I was just a piece of iron he was tempering in a forge.But at least, he treated me better than my own real family ever did. Apart from

The room went completely still as the only sound left was the sharp, panicked intake of my own breath as Silas’s words hung in the air. “Murder everyone?” I gasped the words out. I felt a shock, far more paralysing than the freezing rapids of the mountain river, my muscles reacted before my brain did. I scrambled backward on the bed, my barefoot tangling in the heavy wool blanket as I shoved myself away from him until my back slammed hard against the rough stone wall behind the mattress. The fresh stitches in my thigh twitched with a painful warning, but I barely felt them."What?" I whispered, my voice rising, trembling with terror. "No... no I can't do that."He stood over the table, his rough hands resting flat against the wood, leaning forward like a predator cornering a stray toothless dog. "Don't be afraid, girl and don't play the innocent with me. It’s a pathetic look on a face that was just swimming in malice.""I'm not afraid!" I shot back, my chest heaving as I clutched the