Chapter 138: Assistant.
Chapter 138
Dawn arrived in a pale, sickly gray light that bled through the expansive windows of the master suite.
It had been nearly twelve hours since the moment in the kitchen—twelve hours since the "Councilor" had supposedly arrived and Lucian had nearly surrendered to the beast.
Clara’s words were still swirling through his mind in a persistent, toxic fog. ’You’ll drain her dry and leave nothing but a husk behind.’
After their confrontation, Lucian had coldly dismissed the witch, refusing to acknowledge the biological ticking time bomb inside him.
He had simply looked at her with eyes like flint and told her he had it under control—a lie that tasted as bitter as the animal blood he’d vomited into the sink.
Before he’d left the kitchen, he had commanded her to use her magic to sell the deception, weaving an illusion of a car pulling away from the mansion gate just in case Isabella was watching from the upstairs window.
He was a King, and even in his ruin, he was a master of the theater. He hadn’t gone straight to her. He couldn’t with his ruined shirt and ego.
So, he had spent the better part of the night in an adjacent room, scrubbing the scent of copper and ash from his skin and changing into fresh clothes that didn’t carry the stench of his own blood.
By the time he had finally slipped into the master suite, Isabella had already surrendered to exhaustion, her breathing deep and even as she slept.
Now, as he stood by the window watching the horizon pale, he felt the true weight of his condition.
Isabella was still asleep behind him, a small, warm shape beneath the heavy silk sheets, entirely unaware that the man watching over her was a starving ghost.
Every time the wind shifted, bringing the faint, intoxicating scent of her skin to his nose, the "Goddess marks" on his chest pulsed.
The fire she had left behind in the Veiled Space wasn’t cooling; it was feeding on his lack of sustenance.
He could feel it for a fact—the day his suppression would backfire was no longer a distant fear.
It was a looming shadow, an inevitable reckoning that was drawing closer with every second he spent in her presence.
"Lucian?" The voice was sleep-heavy and soft, cutting through his dark contemplations. He didn’t turn immediately, fearing that the lingering hunger might still be visible in the tightness of his jaw or the haunted depths of his eyes.
He forced his features into a mask of regal calm, smoothing the edges of his internal storm before he looked back at her.
Isabella was propped up on one elbow, her hair a wild, golden-white against the pillows. She looked so human, so vibrant, and so devastatingly alive that it made the fire in his chest flare in a spike.
"You’re up early," she murmured, blinking against the dawn light. Her gaze moved over him, searching for the "grumpy dinosaur" from the kitchen or the predator from the shadows.
"Did you ever get any sleep?" Lucian stepped away from the window. "We don’t sleep, isabella."
Isabella blinked, the lingering fog of dreams clearing as she made a face, her nose scrunching in a way that was far too endearing for Lucian’s current state of mental warfare.
"Right," she muttered in a voice still raspy from sleep. "I keep forgetting you’re a literal creature of the night. My bad, Your Majesty."
She looked so cheeky saying the last part, remembering how she used to call him all sort of endearment when she didn’t know his name then.
Her small frame leaned against the vastness of the silk sheets, her hair a chaotic, silken mess of white and gold that caught the morning light.
Despite the warning bells screaming in Lucain’s head—the ones Clara had practically hammered into his skull—Lucian found himself drawn to the bedside.
His face softening at the sound of her calling him that again. He reached out his calloused hand to smooth down a stray lock of hair that had fallen across her forehead.
The moment his skin brushed hers, Isabella let out a long yawn, her eyes fluttering closed at his touch.
She leaned into his hand like a cat seeking warmth, her skin radiating a heat that felt like a mockery of his own cold, stagnant circulation.
Lucian watched her—really watched her. With her eyes closed, she looked like the Bella he had lost, yet the fierce, stubborn set of her jaw was entirely Isabella.
His head was a chaotic mess of centuries-old grief and modern-day starvation. He could hear the heavy flow of blood from her heart, a sound that was becoming the only music he cared to listen to, and simultaneously, the only sound that made him want to shatter the world.
When she finally opened her eyes again, the yawn subsiding, she found him staring down at her with an intensity that would have withered a lesser soul.
"Good morning," he spoke softly. Isabella offered him a tired, lopsided smile, her gaze soft and uncharacteristically vulnerable in the early light.
"Good morning," she replied in a sleepy voice that made the fangs behind his lips ache with a renewed intensity.
For a heartbeat, the room was still—just a man and a woman in the quiet of a breaking day. But beneath the silk shirt, Lucian felt a fresh, hot dampness spreading against his chest.
The wounds were weeping again, reacting to her proximity like a flower to the sun, or a moth to the flame.
"I should go get you breakfast." he murmured, forcing himself to retract his hand before the urge to slide his palm down to the pulse point of her neck became an irresistible command.
"No..Wait." Isabella grabbed his arm, effectively stopping his movement. Lucian stiffened as her fingers clamped around his forearm.
Every nerve in his body felt frayed, stretched to a breaking point where the line between affection and predation was dangerously blurred.
He looked down at her hand, then slowly back up to her face, his expression tightly controlled into a mask.
"Isabella?" She didn’t let go, she sat up further, the silk sheets pooling around her hips as she gave his arm a playful, stubborn tug.
"I want to prepare my own breakfast this morning....." Lucian’s head tilted, looking at her confused, as if saying ’And’
She smiled, but her fingers didn’t loosen on his arm. "I want you to be my assistant... Your Highness."