Chapter 36 The Poison We Choose
36\. The Poison We Choose
Dravenmoor was burning with noise. Not fire yet but the kind of noise that made your pulse forget what peace sounded like. The clang of armor, the howl of orders, the tension thick enough to carve with a cursed dagger.
I’d spent the last two hours doing my best imitation of a sane person while every wolf within a ten-mile radius prepared for the apocalypse.
Lucian hadn’t left the war floor since dawn. He was a blur of command every word he said carried through the halls like a promise or a threat. Sometimes both.
But something was wrong.
And I didn’t mean the usual Lucian’s cursed and emotionally unavailable wrong. No, this was deeper. His curse wasn’t just pulsing under his skin anymore. It was bleeding through him. The silver glow in his veins had turned into cracks of light, crawling up his throat, licking behind his eyes.
Elijah had seen it too. He caught my gaze from across the strategy table earlier, shaking his head slightly in warning.
Now, as dusk poured its crimson shadow through the windows, that warning arrived a few seconds too late.
Because the curse snapped.
One second Lucian was shouting orders at his generals, voice sharp and steady. The next his hand shot out, claws bursting through his skin like liquid moonlight, slamming Elijah against the map table so hard the wood splintered.
“Lucian!” I shouted, but the sound barely reached him.
His face was half-human, half-wolf jaw sharp with fangs, eyes molten silver, veins like lightning. The glow beneath his skin throbbed in rhythm with his ragged breathing.
Elijah struggled, gasping, his throat caught in Lucian’s clawed hand.
“Alpha—please—”
Lucian’s growl wasn’t a sound. It was a rupture in the air.
Everyone froze. No one dared to move.
I did.
Because apparently, my instinct in life-threatening moments is to do something incredibly stupid.
“Lucian!” I yelled again, running toward them. “Let him go!”
He didn’t hear me. His pupils were blown wide, body trembling with the effort of not losing himself completely.
The curse was feeding off the chaos, the anger, the anticipation of war.
So I did what any rational woman trapped in a cursed werewolf novel would do.
I threw a cup at his head.
It hit him squarely on the shoulder. Not my best aim. But enough to make him flinch.
His head snapped toward me, eyes blazing like a living eclipse.
“Lucian,” I said softly now, stepping closer. “It’s me. Keira. You don’t want to hurt him.”
The silver veins pulsed brighter.
“I said—” I took another step. “Let. Him. Go.”
For one terrifying heartbeat, the glow in his eyes flickered. Then, with a snarl, he shoved Elijah back, claws retracting as if ripped out of his own flesh.
Elijah collapsed to the floor, gasping.
The generals moved instantly some dragging Elijah away, others backing toward the door.
Lucian staggered, clutching his head, the curse writhing under his skin like something alive and furious.
“Out!” he barked. The word tore from him like a whip.
The room emptied in seconds.
Except me.
Because apparently, I’ve never heard of personal safety.
His breathing came in shudders. His hands were shaking no, trembling. His claws half-formed again, then vanished. His eyes gods, his eyes weren’t Lucian’s anymore.
And for the first time since I met him, the Tyrant Alpha looked afraid.
He turned away, shoulders heaving. “Go.”
“No.”
“Keira.” His voice was a rasp. “I almost killed him.”
“But you didn’t.”
He laughed bitterly, the sound dry and broken. “You think that matters? I could’ve torn his throat out. He was loyal. He served me for years.”
“You were cursed!”
“And what happens when I lose control next time? When it’s not him—” he turned sharply, eyes gleaming, “—but you?”
The words hit harder than claws.
He took a step back, as if distance could save me from him. “Leave me.”
But I didn’t move.
Because under all that fury and fear, I saw something I hadn’t before. Not just the curse. Not just the monster.
The man.
And he was breaking.
Right then and there I chose to obey his command for the first time. I gave the space he needed but then when it was time to eat already he never came to take a bite at least so instead eating all by myself I looked for him with the food I wanted us to share.
I found him later in the throne room. The place where he’d once ruled with arrogance, now stripped of its glory just shadows, echoes, and a single figure slumped at the base of the throne.
Lucian sat there, head in his hands, blood smeared down his jaw like a confession he couldn’t wash away. His shirt was torn, the glow beneath his skin dimmer now fading like dying embers.
He didn’t hear me at first. Or maybe he did, and just didn’t care.
I crossed the marble floor, quiet but steady.
“Lucian.”
He didn’t look up. “I told you to stay away.”
“Yeah, and I told you I don’t listen.”
I knelt in front of him. My chemisette scattered on the floor. It was cold. He was colder. There was blood on his claws, dried and dark.
Where did that come from?
I reached for his hands. He tried to pull away. “Don’t.”
“Too late.” I held them anyway, ignoring how his claws grazed my skin. “You think I’m scared of you?”
“You should be.”
I shook my head. “You think I don’t know monsters? I read about you before and I already fall, what more now?”
That made him flinch like I’d struck him harder than the curse ever could.
His voice broke. “You shouldn’t have.”
“I know.” I swallowed. “You were supposed to be the villain. You were supposed to die. But I didn’t fall in love with the story’s ending, Lucian. I fell for the parts that weren’t written yet.”
Silence.
Then his hands trembled in mine. His forehead touched my shoulder, tentative at first, then desperate, like he’d finally let the walls collapse.
“I can’t control it,” he whispered. “Every time I feel anything it fights back. It wants to destroy. And the only thing it wants more than power—” His breath hitched. “—is you.”
“Then maybe,” I said softly, brushing his hair back, “we stop pretending it’s something separate. The curse isn’t some stranger inside you. It’s the same thing that makes you care too much. Fight too much. Bleed too much. It’s not evil, Lucian it’s just… you, turned up too loud.”
He let out a shaky laugh, muffled against my skin. “You always have an answer.”
“It’s part of my charm.”
He lifted his head then, eyes rimmed with red, silver veins faintly flickering again but softer now, pulsing in rhythm with his breath.
“I’m wondering, why would someone like you stay?” he asked quietly. Because the truth was simple and stupid and devastating all at once.
“Because I simply love you and loving you,” I said, “was never the curse. It was the choice.”
He stared at me, and for a heartbeat, the curse stilled like it was even listening.
Lucian’s hand came up, trembling, his thumb brushing my cheek. “You’re bleeding.”
I glanced down. Right. There was a thin line where his claws had nicked my arm earlier. I hadn’t noticed.
“Occupational hazard,” I joked weakly.
He didn’t smile. “I don’t deserve this,” he murmured.
“No,” I said. “You don’t. But that’s what makes it real.”
For a long moment, we just sat there. No thrones, no crowns, no armies. Just the two of us, surrounded by the ghosts of his kingdom and the scent of war outside the walls.
He finally spoke again, voice barely above a whisper. “The Blood Moon will rises sooner.”
“I know.”
“If I lose control again—”
“That’s what I am telling you, yet you are still fighting for a losing war.”
“You don’t believe we will win?”
Instead of answering I gave him a question. “Do you know what kind of enemies are hard to fight?”
“What?”
“Those who have plot armoured,” He went silent when I told him that so I continued, “it’s not that I don’t believe you it’s just that the author of this book, moon goddess had already settled the plan to kill you once the blood moon appeared-”
“I won’t,” he interrupted. I gave him a look that said he’s impossible.
“Lucian,” I said, leaning closer. “We both know I’m not here to watch you die. I’m here to make sure you don’t.”
But then in a spur of a moment he kissed me, it wasn’t hunger or dominance. It was a relief. It was surrender. The kind of kiss that didn’t ask for forgiveness but gave it anyway.
For a second, the world stopped. The curse, the prophecy, the fear all of it drowned under the pulse of two people who shouldn’t have met, but did.
Then I pulled back, breathless. “You’re still bleeding, by the way.”
He huffed a weak laugh. “So are you.”
“Perfect match.”
He smiled faintly, forehead resting against mine. “You really are going to ruin me, Keira Steele.”
He remembered my name.
I smiled through the ache in my chest. “That’s the plan, Alpha.”
Outside, the Blood Moon climbed higher, spilling its light through the shattered windows. And for the first time since I came to this world, Lucian didn’t look like the Tyrant Alpha. He looked like a man trying
to fight fate with love, with rage, with everything left in him.
Maybe that’s the poison we choose the one that kills us and saves us at the same time. And gods help me, I’d already drunk too deep.