Chapter 160: She's coming back

Chapter 160: She's coming back
~Third POV~

~ Kingdom Of Salvatore~

Back at the kingdom, the blood moon was at its peak when the attack came.

Lord Vavous had been patrolling the palace walls when the first wave hit flooded them.

Humans and werewolves together, moving like they had planned this for a while.

They poured through the kingdom's outer defenses with weapons drawn and hunger in their eyes for the things they could loot just like they did three years ago.

They thought the Underworldlians would be weak. Everyone knew that during the blood moon, the beasts and their magic became dormant.

They couldn't shift. They couldn't call on their divine power. They were supposed to be defenseless and as weak as humans.

But the Underworldlians had learned their lesson from three years ago when they were attacked and they lost their loved ones.

They had learned not to depend on magic and their beasts to survive.

"Weapons!" Vavous roared across the palace grounds. "Defend the kingdom!"

The guards ran like they had trained for this moment a thousand times. Because they had.

Ever since the last attack, Lord Vavous had insisted on combat training that didn't rely on magic and the king had agreed.

He taught them sword work until he left the kingdom to the borders after he retired as a general.

The soldiers met the werewolves and humans on the grounds with swords instead of magic.

Tivel was in the servant quarters when the fight started. She heard the screaming first and then the sound of fighting.

Metal clashing against metal with roars and shouts mixing together into a war cry.

She tried to stay hidden but the palace was falling into disorder. Soldiers were running past her.

With servants screaming in terror as three years ago replayed in their mind. Servants ran everywhere knocking things over in the process.

The careful structure of the palace fell apart. Just when Tivel was running along and trying to hide, she heard footsteps behind which is weird since she was the only one left behind by the other since she couldn't keep up.

She turned, scared and shaken up, just as she suspected a human soldier behind her.

He grabbed her arm roughly and pulled her towards him. He was massive, brutal looking, with a scar running down his face and eyes that were already calculating what he would do to her.

After all, they had been told they could do anything they wanted to any Underworldlian females they saw since they liked sex.

"Well, well," he whistled. His voice made her skin crawl. " You are a pretty one. The president will want to see you although I am tempted to have a taste first but I will keep it for later when he is done with you."

He started dragging her toward the throne room. It was where the human president had landed with the portal that had been opened for them.

“ No, no, please don't… let me go…” Tivel begged but her pleas only excited him.

Tivel tried to scream but his hand quickly covered her mouth. She tried to fight but he was too strong.

She was just a weak female in that moment without her beast. If her brother was alive, he would never have allowed anything or anyone to come close to her.

But she refused to give up, so she sank her teeth down his hand that he was using to cover her mouth.

His roar filled the night air as well as Tivel cry for help. Out of anger, he struck her across the face, sending her to the floor.

Lord Vavous, who had heard her cry, ran to where they were. He was bleeding from a cut on his arm and his eyes were fully gold with anger.

He lunged with the fury of someone who had finally found something worth fighting for after decades of being alone.

He ripped the human soldier away from Tivel and threw him against the wall hard enough to break bones. The soldier collapsed without another sound, bled out with his eyes open.

"Are you hurt?" Vavous demanded to the female on the floor.

Although his beast was weak and couldn't shift, it snarled and claimed to call her Tivel mine which Vavous didn't understand.

“ Young lady, are you alright?” He asked again, tempted to go closer to her and inhale her scent.

"I..." Tivel started but he was already pulling her behind him when he had another set of footsteps.

When he touched her, that was when Vavous understood what his beast meant by claiming the female.

The mate bond as if waiting for a long time snapped into place. The realization that flooded through him.

After seven hundred years plus of searching, and years of believing he would never find her, he had found his mate.

And she was standing right in front of him.

"Mine," he growled. Unable to help himself. "You are mine, female, stay behind me and I will protect you."

Tivel didn't fully understand what was happening but she nodded. There was something in his voice that made her trust him completely.

Plus, he just saved her life. But the war was still happening around them.

Tivel pulled at Vavous's arm. "There's a boy," she said urgently. "In the courtyard. He's... he's doing something terrible."

It was the main reason why she ran away from that side because she noticed while she ran in that line that anyone who got close to the boy died a miserable death.

Vavous didn't question her, they just ran toward the courtyard and what they saw made them both stop in tracks.

It was even worse than when Tivel had sighted it earlier. The young boy was standing in the center of the fight.

He couldn't have been more than fifty Underworldlian years old, while if he is human, he shouldn't be more than ten or twelve years old.

He had green eyes and red hair and his small face was twisted with distress. Around him, threads of blood floated in the air like they had a life of their own.

Anyone who got close to him exploded into bloody liquid. Underworldlians. Werewolves. Humans.

His blood magic couldn't distinguish them. It killed everything that approached him.

The humans and werewolves had brought him here as a weapon. A secret advantage just in case things didn't turn out as they planned.

But the boy didn't want to be a weapon. He didn't want to hurt anyone, so when the attackers tried to force him to obey, he had turned on them instead, not even knowing when to stop or start.

Now he was killing everything indiscriminately because he was terrified and in so much pain.

I wanted to go back to my master, the boy cried in his mind but the young boy hadn't seen his master in a while.

"Zila!" A werewolf commander screamed his name trying to get his attention. "Kill them! Kill the Underworldlians! That's your only job! And not our people you foolish boy! Now do it!”

"No!" the boy screamed. His voice was breaking with tears. "I won't! I won't hurt anyone else!"

The blood threads intensified the more he got scared and more bodies fell and more blood spilled and splashed on him making him scream in terror.

“ Master, master is coming back, he will save me,” he mumbled under his breath as tears fell down his face.

Tivel started walking toward him, not knowing why but she could see the boy's anguish.

"No," Vavous said. He grabbed her arm. "You'll die. Look at what's happening to anyone who gets close."

"I have to," Tivel said. She was pulling away from him. "My mistress... the queen loved that boy. I owe her. I have to save him. He looks scared.”

Before Vavous could stop her again, she was running toward Zila.

The blood threads came for her. They lunged through the air like snakes. But Vavous was right there, his sword cutting through them, deflecting them, protecting her even as she ran and he got hurt.

"Zila!" Tivel called out. When she got closer to him, she started moving slowly, trying her best not to look like a threat. "Zila, do you remember me? I worked for the queen. Do you remember Queen Lyra?"

The boy looked at her. His green eyes were full of tears and terror.

"She... she was kind to me," he whispered.

"Yes, she was, even to me too," Tivel said. She was close now. The blood threads were still floating but they weren't attacking her anymore. "She is very kind. And I think she would want you to be safe. Do you want to meet her again?"

"She's not here," Zila said. His voice was small and broken. "They told me they her away."

"She's coming back," Tivel promised. "And she would want you to be safe when she does."

She reached out her hand. Zila looked at her hand for a long moment and eventually he took it.

The moment his small fingers wrapped around hers, the blood threads stopped.

They dissipated like they had never existed. The boy sagged against her and she held him, protecting him with her body even though there was nothing left to protect him from.

Vavous was beside them in seconds, his sword ready, his beast fully present as the blood moon began to retreat. He wrapped them both in his protection.

“ Retreat now! The blood moon is ending!” One of the werewolves ordered his people.

“ Do not let any of them escape!” Vavous gave a counter order.

The fighting intensified but the Underworldlians had defeated the human and werewolf forces swiftly when they felt their beasts.

Bodies were scattered across the palace grounds. The attackers started falling back, retreating and using portal magic, when they understood their enemy now had full control of their powers.

But the human president wouldn't listen, he kept fighting, refusing defeat.

He dragged a wounded werewolf, using him as a shield, fighting toward the palace entrance. He was shouting orders that no one was obeying.

"Keep the werewolf king alive," someone said.

Tivel looked up and realized it was her. The command had come from her own mouth.

She was looking at Stephen, who looked exactly like her mistress. She heard the others addressed him as king so she had assumed he was the king.

"Why?" Vavous asked her. His hand was on her shoulder, supporting her.

"Because…” Tivel said softly, "the queen will want to decide his fate herself since they are family."

The fighting ended an hour later and the palace was damaged but standing. The Underworldlians had held.

The attackers had retreated or been captured. The human president was dead, killed by his own people because he was trying to use them as a shield.

One of them had shot him. Stephen was captured and put in chains, alive but defeated.

At that moment, the gates opened.

Ragel came through first, carrying Lyra who was unconscious. Behind him followed Garius supporting Darius. Sarai was there, weak but still standing.

Seraffim was crying over Darius that she could feel his pain and hear thoughts.

Every soldier cheered as they saw them, yes the king had not told them where they had been going but Vavous had read the wanted posters and even seen the search parties to know the king was going in search of his queen.

But he never knew they would come in such a weak state barely alive and even worse off than them that had been fighting hours ago.

"Get the healers," Vavous shouted. "Now!"