Chapter 81
Chapter 81
Asshole had made his stance abundantly clear—there was no room for negotiation. He had orchestrated this conflict, rejecting every opportunity for reconciliation. His arrogance, his stubborn refusal to listen, had led us all to this inevitable confrontation. From the very beginning, when the Fates had woven our paths together, he chose to ignore all counsel. Not even his own brother, who had desperately tried to reason with him and urge him to treat me with decency, could make him see sense.
This was the Alpha King in all his glory: relentless, self-centered, and impervious to logic. His inability to adapt or reconsider his actions had set these events in motion, and now, despite the deep sorrow that weighed on my heart, despite the mourning for what might have been, there was no escaping the reality. The battle was a certainty. There was no other choice.
I had always feared that if he ever ascended to power, he would become a tyrant, a leader driven by his own desires rather than the needs of his people—and, sadly, he had proven me right. He had dragged his army across the land, hunting me into vampire territory for his own selfish purposes. Even after I had repeatedly told him that I didn’t want him, he refused to accept my rejection. He couldn’t bear to face it. His inability to accept the word "no" had led us here, to this dark moment.
I deeply regretted that the man—the wolf that once held so much potential—would meet his end like this. And I mourned for Patrick, who would lose his only brother. But I couldn’t ask Jason to show mercy to someone who had earned none. The world was harsh, and war, even harsher. Mercy wasn’t a luxury afforded to us in these circumstances.
A part of me wanted to close my eyes, to shield myself from the gruesome reality that was about to unfold. I didn’t want my last image of my ex-fated mate to be of Jason’s lethal claws sinking into the skull of the man who had once been my everything. It felt like a cruel twist of fate, but there was no escaping it now. The end was near, and it was too late for anything else.
But then the world spun, and my blood froze as a spear materialized from thin air and formed in Jehg’s hand. Lightning fast, the Alpha King thrust the golden spear into Jason’s chest, burying it deep inside the Vampire King.
I screamed, chaos roaring in my head, terror choking my throat, and denial burning in my chest.
Asshole pinned Jason in the air with his glowing spear.
A flash of genetic memory struck me. The spear infused with dark spells forged by Warren pierced the heart of a winged dark god, Deathroh himself, when Deathroh lost his divine power by falling in love with a Phoenix princess, a forbidden affair.
Warren, who had once ridden a crimson horse in his red armor, had killed my father.
The same spear had pinned me down long ago when I’d been Ollivara.
The spear was the second horseman’s signature weapon.
And now the Alpha King gripped it, the tip protruding out of Jason’s back.
The familiar stench of violence, blood, brutality, and utter evil assaulted me. Ice clogged my lungs, chills filled my bone marrow, and cold rage burned in my blood.
Asshole had allowed Warren to possess him in order to defeat the Vampire King, or he would never have been able to take down Jason even when the my Jason was in his weakest state. That ambitious asshole had no idea that by joining Warren, he’d doomed half of the world. He’d doomed his own species.
“What have you done, you fucking moron?” I cried out and struggled to take in air; it felt like I was inhaling icy needles. I could barely breathe. “You’re dooming your own people and everyone by merging with Sues.”
The battle had frozen for a moment, and the vampires looked on in horror as their king was speared and pinned in the air. The shifters roared their cheers, not realizing that they were doomed as well.
Jason’s blood streamed along the shaft of the spear, agony in his eyes, but he couldn’t escape it. The spear was like no other weapon; it came from Heaven.
“Did you think I’d come unprepared?” the Alpha King snorted, his eerie and malevolent voice sending unpleasant chills up my spine. “Did you think that I wouldn’t research the Vampire King, my immortal foe who took what’s mine, before I brought my army here?”
I breathed in and out to calm the roaring in my head. I couldn’t let fear for Jason, my friends, our warriors, and myself paralyze me. I couldn’t allow myself to freeze when my immortal enemy was right in front of me, hosted by my ex-mate.
I had to keep his attention on me so he wouldn’t focus on Jason. I needed to calculate my next moves very carefully, or his next move might just end my future.
“What do you mean?” I let myself stutter and looked at him through my thick lashes.
“You think you’ve got everything figured out and found the man of your dreams, Ollivara?” he asked. “You know nothing, little girl. Jason betrayed you in the first place. He abandoned you and pointed out to the witches where you were hiding. He sold you out when you were most vulnerable.”
I swallowed hard, my heart pounding. Jason had mentioned a few times that he regretted abandoning me a long time ago and counted it as his sin. It was one of the reasons he kept saying that he wasn’t worthy of me and that he needed to atone for his transgression before he claimed me again.
He might have made a mistake. He could have denied it, since I couldn’t remember it all. And I knew that any being who had a code of honor and a conscience couldn’t be evil, and those self-righteous motherfuckers were more evil and dangerous than anyone else.
“The Vampire King isn’t your savior,” the Alpha King/War continued. “He’s your betrayer. He came back to you and seized control of you because he wanted your power. Being away from you weakens him.”
That was where Sues had it wrong. He might not even know that he was lying since he was nothing but a power-hunter and thought everyone else was doing the same.
Yet I was still profoundly hurt by the confirmation that due to Jason’s betrayal and abandonment, I’d suffered for a century, being cut open and experimented on by my enemies, before he’d finally come for me.
“Ask your ‘hero’ and see if he denies it,” the Alpha King/War offered with a satisfied, sadistic smile, loving to see the hurt and devastation in my eyes. He took such joy in seeing me in pain. “I’m giving you the chance to ask the Vampire King before I slay him, and that’s my favor to you.”
Jason met my gaze, pain, regret, and guilt searing his eyes, and my heart clenched, mirroring his agony.
He didn’t deny it. His eyes said, I’m sorry I failed you.
A riot of grief, hate, and rage vibrated in my every fiber.
“That’s all you have to say, you son of a bitch?” I asked in a choking voice. “I dreamed about crawling out of a coffin. It wasn’t a dream but a memory, was it?” Burning tears flowed down my cheeks. “You put me there, didn’t you, you heartless bastard? Do you even know how much I suffered?”
I also knew that it’d broken him when he thought about what he’d done to me. When I first drank his blood in that cage, I had learned he hadn’t enjoyed any peace, not even for a second, for over a century ever since I’d been taken and he couldn’t find me.
He’d been tormented to the brink of madness by his own grief and guilt. That was how he’d been weakened. That was why Warren could hold him hostage and pin him in the air with that fucking spear forged in Heaven.
“Now you know he isn’t your hero, Phia, not even close,” Jehg/Warren said smugly. “Now you can finally let him go.”
Problem was, I’d never let Jason go. Not even he knew that. He’d mistaken the hatred in my eyes as being for him and him alone, which broke him all over again.
Yet I heard the echo of his telepathy toward his warriors. “Leave me and take my Bride to safety now. Protect her at all costs…”
The vampires surged toward me as one, but I’d acted a second earlier. I threw up my hands with an ear-piercing shriek, not toward the vampires but toward Jehg.
My death flame surged toward the Alpha King, intending to burn him—and War inside him—to ash. I was confident that my flame wouldn’t hurt the Vampire King, for he had my blood in him, for he was my true mate.
The Alpha King stumbled back a few steps, his hand letting go of the handle of the spear as he raised it to fend off my flame. That was the time I bought for Jason. With a roar, the Vampire King pulled the spearhead out of his chest with inhuman strength and flung it at the Alpha King’s face.