Chapter 114 114
Amarien's POV
Theron did not give me time to breathe after my gasp. He watched the horror bloom across my face with a calm that felt almost cruel, then he continued.
"And so," he said evenly, "to keep both his throne and his secret, Emperor Darian chose an ancient ritual. One older than most kingdoms. A ritual of exchange."
My voice came out thin. "Exchange…?"
"Yes," he said. "A werewolf who wishes to bury his nature can transfer his wolf to another. But it is not so simple as handing over a cloak. The one who receives it must be human. And more than that, there must be love. Real love. Mutual. Or the magic tears both souls apart."
Love. The word scraped against my heart as I remembered Daevir.
I loved him. Not anymore.
"He needed someone who loved him," Theron went on, "and someone he could convince himself he loved in return. Only then could the ritual bind."
My stomach twisted. I already knew where this was going, yet I dreaded hearing it.
"The ritual," he said quietly, "demands balance. He would give his wolf. He would take their humanity. A perfect exchange. One becomes human. The other becomes a wolf."
A cold understanding crept over me.
"So… someone paid the price for his humanity," I murmured.
Theron's gaze hardened slightly. "Yes. A woman who loved him enough to disappear for him."
My fingers trembled.
"Emperor Darian was the werewolf," he said. "And my mother was the human."
I looked at him sharply.
"She loved him," Theron continued, swallowing slowly. "Loved him enough to believe in his dream of peace. Loved him enough to become the shield for his secret. She agreed to the ritual. She took in his wolf so he could stand before humans as one of them."
A human woman… turned into a wolf for a crown that was not hers.
My chest ached.
"She carried his secret in silence," Theron said. "She lived with the wolf inside her body while he enjoyed worship as a 'human' emperor."
There was no bitterness in his tone, only a tired certainty, as if he had recited this truth many times alone.
"Then she bore him a child," he said.
His eyes flicked to mine.
"Me."
The air felt heavy.
"But the ritual was not flawless," he added. "Magic rarely is. When I was born, I was a pup. A true werewolf child."
My lips parted.
"The human court was shaken," he said. "A 'human' emperor fathering a wolf? Impossible! Terrible! Dangerous!"
I could almost see it, the whispers in golden halls, the fear of the Eunuchs, the councilmen just like the day they were going to execute me.
"So Darian made a choice," Theron said.
My heart pounded. “He… denied you…”
"He condemned us," Theron corrected. "To protect his precious image, he declared my mother a hidden werewolf. A seductress. A spy. He named me her cursed offspring."
My throat burned.
"He painted us as enemies of the human race," Theron said. "Monsters who had deceived the throne. And the people believed him…because they adored him."
Of course they did. Humans loved their illusions.
"So he banished you," I whispered, my gaze dropping.
"Yes," Theron replied. "Mother and child exiled like rot cut from fruit."
A silence stretched.
I thought of a woman loving a man enough to give up her very nature, only to be discarded like a stain.
Just like Daevir did to me. The apple indeed does not fall far from the tree.
"Then Darian secured his legacy," Theron said. "He married another. A proper human bride. A clean story for the court."
My chest tightened.
"But magic remembers blood," he continued. "You cannot dance with the wolf and never hear it howl again."
I already knew the answer, yet I feared it.
"He passed his werewolf bloodline on," Theron said. "Not through my mother anymore, but through himself. Through what remained of his nature."
My pulse thundered in my ears.
"To Prince Daevir."
"Which," Theron finished calmly, "explains why Daevir is a werewolf."
My thoughts scattered like frightened birds. Everything, Daevir's senses, his strength, the pull I had felt around him. It all made sense.
It was an inheritance.
It was blood.
The empire I suffered under… founded on a wolf's deception.
And the man I had loved… born from it.
Daevir is the split image of his evil father.
And then,
It settled over me slowly, like dusk swallowing the last light of day.
An understanding.
I looked at Theron differently now. I couldn't see him as that smirking Alpha on a throne, not the charming devil with dangerous promises, but the boy he must have once been. A boy with no pack was wanted. A child born as proof of a scandal. A living reminder of a king's lie.
No wonder his eyes always held that restless storm.
No wonder he never feared being hated.
He had grown from nothing. From less than nothing. A rogue pup with a hunted mother, moving from forest to forest, territory to territory, unwanted and unwelcome. I could almost picture it—the snarls, the bared teeth, the claws drawn against a child who only wanted a place to belong.
He had not been given a pack.
But he had carved one out of nothing.
"You fought your way up," I murmured, the realization tasting bitter and soft on my tongue.
Theron's jaw shifted slightly, but he didn't deny it.
"No Alpha would claim us," he said. "A disgraced human-turned-wolf and her pup? We were bad luck. An insult. A threat." His voice was steady, but something old and raw lived beneath it. "So I learned early that if no one gives you a place, you take one."
My chest tightened.
"And your mother…?" I asked quietly.
His gaze flickered away for a fraction of a second. That was all the answer I needed.
"She died while I was still fighting for rank," he said. "Rogues don't get gentle deaths, Amarien. They struggle to their death."
A strange ache bloomed in my heart for the woman who loved the wrong king and the child who paid for it.
He wasn't born cruel.
He was forged that way.
It explained the sharpness of him. The hunger for control. The way he clung to power like it could never be allowed to slip from his hands.
And then it struck me, why he looked at me the way he did.
Why his gaze lingered at me
Why his voice softened only to me.
I was familiar with him because I, too, had been discarded by the same empire that used people like stepping stones.
Afterall, I was the cursed concubine. The one who killed her mother at birth. The one her father sold for a piece of dirt because I was not a male child. The one Daevir used and dumped at the nunnery at his convenience.
It was me.
Theron stepped closer, his presence warm and imposing. "I want to claim you," he said. "As my second-chance mate."
I lifted my chin, surprised. "That means your harem goes."
He blinked once.
The words hung between us.
"So you understand what you just said." I looked at him, almost shocked. "All of them," I continued. "No women warming your bed. No favorites. No distractions. If I am claimed, I am the only one." I said, like he had no idea what he just said.
Silence stretched.
Then he nodded. "No matter what it takes," he said simply.
For a moment, I believed him. Theron was many things, but not a man who spoke lightly about possession.
Yet my heart did not leap or soften at his words.
Because understanding someone did not mean loving them.
And I was so, so tired of belonging to men.
To emperors. To princes. To kings.
Did I want to belong to an Alpha next?
I wasn't sure I wanted to be claimed by anyone ever again.
He must have seen it on my face, the hesitation, the wall, the quiet recoil of a wounded heart.
Theron leaned in, perhaps thinking a kiss would seal what words could not. His hand brushed my waist, and when his lips neared mine, I turned away.
The kiss met air.
A flicker of frustration flashed in his icy eyes.
I met his gaze.
My heart was in a graveyard right now. And there was no space in it for love, especially not his.
Despite everything, I could never love him.