Chapter 170: Pain
It wasn’t the physical pain of the silver chains biting into his skin that haunted Herod in that moment, it was the echoing finality of his bloodline ending with him. The throne of the North, his legacy, would be left cold and empty. A crown with no head to wear it. Generations of strategy, manipulation, and cold, calculated ambition undone. Reduced to rubble in one night.
Herod looked at the couple moaning in front of him once more.
He could feel the love radiating off them. It was beautiful. Real. So real it made him ache.
Herod’s thoughts turned back. To her. To Edith.
Once upon a time, he had loved too. Deeply. Madly. They had laughed. Whispered secrets. Danced.
But then she disappeared. Taken from him. And when she vanished, so did the last good thing in him. After that, there was only the void and he filled it with hate. Hate was easier than grief. Hate gave him purpose. But now, faced with this moment, this unbearable intimacy before him, he couldn’t help but wonder if hate had only ever been a crutch for the broken-hearted.
Ava’s soft moan broke through his thoughts.
"Now, Lucas."
Her legs wrapped tightly around him, her body arched in perfect surrender. And Lucas bit down gently into her neck, right beneath the full moon’s glow.
The mating.
Her skin shimmered with otherworldly brilliance, glowing. The power surged from her and crashed directly into her mate. Lucas growled as if something ancient had awakened inside him. The room vibrated with the force of it.