All Chapters of Marked by the Enemy King: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The ceramic toilet bowl in the master bath was cold against Nikos’s forehead as he dry-heaved for the third time in an hour. His stomach was a tight, twisted knot of acid, throwing up nothing but bitter bile that left his throat feeling like it had been scraped with rusty wool. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, shivering in the silent, suffocating gold of the bedroom. The phantom weight in his lower gut felt heavy, pulsing like a localized fever.A Petros heir. A literal glitch in the matrix. He was carrying the DNA of his family’s executioner, a genetic fusion so rare it sounded like complete cap.The double doors of the suite hissed open with a hydraulic hum that made Nikos scramble to his feet, splashing cold water over his face to mask the ghostly pallor of his skin. He stepped back into the bedchamber just as the security terminal near the entrance blinked a harsh, authoritarian purple."Step back, Stavros," Eleni Markos commanded, her voice slicing through the static

The sulfur-yellow scent of the burning wood in the parlor hearth made Nikos’s lungs spasm the second the master bedroom doors clicked shut behind Andreas’s armored guard detail. He stumbled toward the heavy marble washbasin, gripping the gilded edges with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. He gagged, his dry-heaves echoing off the stone walls, but his stomach had nothing left to yield. He was gassed. Physically and mentally spent from running a twenty-four-hour circus for the King, playing the submissive prize while a literal genetic time-bomb thrummed inside his lower belly.The door behind him opened with a whisper of expensive silk. Nikos scrambled to his feet, wiping his wet mouth on his sleeve, expecting the King’s towering shadow to loom over him once more.It wasn’t Andreas.Eleni Markos stood there, her sharp gray wool uniform perfectly aligned, but her hand wasn't on her digital pad. She’d bypassed the external security sensors using her High Seneschal authority codes. She clo

The gold-dust powder under Nikos’s eyes did absolutely nothing to hide the dark, bruised circles underneath, but as long as he was draped in five thousand credits of crimson velvet, the court didn't care about the cracks in his skull. His skin was pale, looking almost translucent against the rich fabric of his tunic, which was cut with a plunging neck that exposed his collarbone and the dark, telltale bite-marks left by Andreas the night before.He was gassed. Every joint in his body felt like it had been soaked in concrete after the cellar skirmish. Andreas hadn’t killed him on the furnace floor; instead, the King had seized the black leather ledger case, thrown Nikos over his shoulder like a sack of grains, and ordered the personal dressers to wash, paint, and package him for the grand unification banquet. The show had to go on. In this palace, a public display of dominance was worth more than a tactical unit at the gates."Hold it together, Nikos," Eleni whispered, her hand briefly

The royal bedroom was no longer a sanctuary; it was a pressurized chamber of conflicting heartbeats. Even as the curtains rattled from the muffled thuds of mortar shells hitting the North Ramparts, the only sound that registered for Nikos was the erratic, dangerous rhythm of Andreas Petros’s breathing.The King had pulled back, his knuckles white as he braced his weight over Nikos, his eyes roving over his pale, exposed skin with a mixture of predatory obsession and unresolved suspicion. His tactical harness lay scattered like debris from a shipwreck. He didn't speak. He just stared, his eyes tracking the shallow, painful rise and fall of Nikos's stomach—a target he couldn't quite identify."Andreas, please," Nikos whispered, his voice catching. The weight of his body—that tiny, impossible life—was vibrating under the scrutiny of the man who would surely destroy it. "If you’re going to kill me, do it. But don't look at me like I’m a puzzle you have to solve."Andreas’s eyes flickered,

The air in the subterranean safehouse didn't just vibrate; it hummed with a low-frequency, ionic growl. Nikos was locked into the heart of the machine, his spine flush against the granite support beams, his fingers splayed against the primary nexus of the Palace shield-gate. He wasn't just controlling the architecture; he was feeling the nerves of the entire complex—every camera feed, every heat sensor, every locked bulkhead.He let out a ragged gasp as the surge of power ripped through his bloodline. The Petros energy was hungry, tearing into his cellular walls like a localized thunderstorm. It collided with the ‘ghost’ of the child growing inside him, the mirror-blood reaction surging in a feedback loop that made his nerves ignite."Don't trip," Andreas muttered, his voice dropping into that deep, lethal cadence he reserved for the battlefield. He didn't hover anymore. He was crouched by the entry vent, his ears twitching at the frantic rhythm of heavy boots hammering on the floorbo