Chapter 143: It hurts
Chapter 143
The silence of the mansion was a suffocating shroud that seemed to press down on Isabella’s lungs even as the smoke began to thin.
Every breath was a struggle. Her throat felt as though she had swallowed glass, and the metallic tang of the air—part smoke, part her own blood—was making her stomach churn.
Isabella sat slumped against the wall opposite the grand staircase, her legs pulled weakly toward her chest.
Her eyes, wide and stinging from the soot, were fixed on the tear in her arm. The puncture wounds from Lucian’s fangs were deep; the flesh had been jaggedly pulled in his frantic, violent haste to retreat.
The crimson was still wet, hot, and pulsing slowly, staining the skin of her cloth and dripping onto the floor in a silent accusation of what had just happened.
He bit me. The thought was a cold stone in her gut, heavier than the smoke in her lungs. He really bit me.
She watched the wound in pure, unadulterated agony. It wasn’t just the physical sting—though that was a white-hot scream along her nerves—it was the realization that the man who had promised to protect her had looked at her and seen nothing but a vessel.
A source. A temporary fix for a King’s hunger. She waited for him to come back. Every second that ticked by, she expected to feel the cold, regal air that followed him, to hear an apology or even a roar of frustration.
But there was nothing. Just the distant, mocking hiss of the dying fire in the kitchen and the smell of charred eggs.
He had run without blinking, had looked at her bleeding arm and fled like she was a disease. Like the sight of her, the sight of what he had done, was too much for his royal conscience to bear.
"Lucian?" she whispered. The name felt wrong on her tongue. She looked down at the blood on her hands, her fingers trembling as she tried to apply pressure to the wound.
It hurt. It hurt so much she wanted to scream, but the smoke had stolen her voice, leaving her with nothing but a wet, rattling cough.
Why did he leave? The question circled her mind like a vulture. Was she that revolting to him once the hunger was gone? Or was he so ashamed that he’d rather let her suffocate in a smoke-filled kitchen than face the monster in the mirror?
She felt small. Smaller than she had ever felt since arriving at the mansion. She wasn’t his mate in that moment; she was just a mistake he had made in a moment of weakness.
The stairs loomed above her, dark and empty. The hallway stretched out like a long, hollow throat.
For the first time since she had met him, Isabella realized that being chosen by a King didn’t mean you were safe.
It just meant you were the closest thing to him when he finally decided to snap. A fresh sob threatened to claw its way out of her chest. But Isabella bit her lip so hard she drew even more of her own blood, the copper tang grounding her.
No. She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t sit here and bleed out on the floorboards like a discarded scrap of meat while he was off to God knows where after almost cutting a vein from her.
She forced the sob down, the effort resulting in another racking cough that made her ribs ache. She wasn’t a victim. She was many things—confused, hurting, and currently smelling like a grease fire—but she refused to be weak.
With a grunt of pure, stubborn defiance, she pushed herself away from the wall. Her legs felt like they were made of water, and the world tilted dangerously for a heartbeat, but she shoved through the dizziness.
She used the banister as a crutch, her uninjured hand white-knuckled against the polished wood as she began the slow, agonizing ascent toward the master suite.
She needed to treat the wound. The punctures were deep, and the way the air hit the exposed nerves made her vision swim.
If she didn’t get this cleaned and bandaged now, she fear an infection from the soot-heavy air would finish what Lucian had started.
As she climbed, her hand instinctively went to her neck, searching for that familiar heat of the bond mark.
Usually, even in their smallest moments, there was a low-frequency vibration of his moods, his irritation, or his possessive warmth.
But as she pressed her fingers against the skin where the mark should be pulsing, there was nothing.
The silence was absolute. The bond had been failing since the Veiled Space, flickering like a dying candle, but now it felt as though the flame had been snuffed out entirely.
She couldn’t feel his emotions and she began to doubt he would even feel hers. It was as if the connection had been severed the moment his fangs tore into her flesh, leaving her adrift in a vast, empty sea.
He had retreated so far into himself that he had locked the door behind him, leaving her with no way to reach him and no way to understand why he had left her to suffocate.
She reached the landing, her breath coming in shallow gasp. The master suite door was swung off its hinges, and Isabella’s pace halted as if she had walked into a wall of ice.
Her heart, already struggling against the trauma of the kitchen, gave out in a lurch against her ribs.
She stared at the heavy oak, her vision blurring at the edges. When they had gone down to the kitchen, back when he was her "assistant," back when the world was still sane—that door had been perfectly intact.
No one else was in the mansion. Clara and Marco were gone. A cold, prickling dread washed over her, more terrifying than the fire.
She looked at the frame again, her eyes tracing the splintered wood. It wasn’t just open; it was hanging at a broken, weird angle, the metal of the top hinge twisted as if a force of nature had tried to rip the room out of the house.
"Lucian?" she whispered, the name barely a breath. Her heart rate picked up, clutching her bleeding arm tighter, the gauze of her own makeshift pressure-hold already soaking through.
Every instinct she had, every nerve ending that had survived the morning, screamed at her to turn around and run.
But where? Where could she go when the King was a monster and the house was a tomb?
Trembling, her barefoot silent on the floorboards, she forced herself toward the threshold.
Her bruised and burnt palm pulsed as she reached out to push the door further. She stepped inside, and the little breath left in her lungs nearly froze.
The room looked like a massacre had occurred. The opulent sanctuary was gone, replaced by a scene of mindless, brutal destruction.
The heavy velvet curtains had been shredded, hanging from the rods, the massive mirrors were shattered, thousands of silver shards glinting like diamonds in the morning sun, reflecting her own terrified, soot-stained face back at her a hundred times over.
Isabella stumbled forward, her eyes landed on the bed. "When....when did all this happened." The whisper was barely heard, All these had happened and she hadn’t heard a single sound from downstairs?
Isabella’s knees buckled, and she had to lean against the ruined doorframe to stay upright. The confusion in her head was a roar now. Had someone broken in?
The pristine linens on the bed were ripped to shreds, the mattress dragged halfway off the frame.
And there, stark and shocking against the pale fabric, was a spray of dark, fresh blood. Not the slow drip from her arm, but a smear, as if someone or something had been thrashed against the pillows.
The room was silent, save for a sound that made her skin crawl. From the ensuite bathroom, the door was cracked just a few inches and came a steady sound of running water.
Someone was having a shower!