Chapter 18 18

Chapter 18 18

Oberon

After Esmeralda left, the door slamming shut behind her so hard the frame shook, I felt Eudora trembling beside me. Not from fear this time. From shock. From disbelief that I had just dismissed someone I had known for years in her defense. I was acting on instinct. Pure, unthinking instinct. The moment Esmeralda had spoken to Eudora with such contempt, such cruelty, something inside me had broken. My wolf had surged up, demanding I protect our mate from any threat, even threats that wore familiar faces. The look on Esmeralda’s face had been devastating. Hurt and betrayal and anger all mixed together. But I did not regret my choice, could not regret it. For the first time in years, my path felt clear. Uncomplicated. Eudora needed me. And I was done pretending I did not care. Done hiding behind old pain and older hatred.

Eudora’s voice was barely audible but somehow seemed to fill the room. “You did not have to do that. She was your friend, your student. Someone important to you.”

I turned to face her properly, releasing her hand so I could cup her cheek. Her skin was soft, warm. Those purple eyes watched me with wonder and confusion.

“She disrespected you. My mate. My wife. My queen. I will not tolerate that from any person you defended her to the end from a broken heart. Not from former lovers. Not from pack members. Not from visiting Alphas. You are mine to protect, and I will not fail.” I let go of Eudora’s cheek. Saw hope bloom in her eyes. So fragile and tentative, so real.

“Even though we have not…” she trailed off, blushing. It was adorable.

My thumb traced her lower lip. It was a gesture that had become so familiar between us. “That is not your failing,” I confessed. “That is mine. I have been a coward… hiding so long behind my pain. Instead of claiming what is mine… what the bond gave me…”

The mate bond hummed and thrummed, and for once – it was pleases. It was satisfied, accepting.

Marjah cleared her throat loudly from across the room. “Just so you know, I am still here. She announced, embarrass, then at me.This is getting a little uncomfortably intimate, and I do not need to watch my cousin being romanced.”

In truth, I had forgotten about her entirely. The rest of the world had faded away when I was focusing on Eudora. Even now – I hated having to step back. I already missed the contact.

“You two should probably retire,” Marjah said, stretching. She winced when the motion pulled at the injuries she had sustained. “I need to get cleaned up and rest… That escapade took more out of me than I want to admit.”

Eudora was immediately at her side, ever caring. “Let me help you to your chambers, then.”
Marjah protested. “ I can manage…”

She could not, though. Eudora guided her to the door with gentle insistence. “I will come find you later, dearest,” she called back to me over her shoulder. “We still have much to discuss. About the documents. About what happens next.”

“The riders are on their way to the witch realm,” he reported. “Our eight fastest riders. They should reach Seraphina by tomorrow night at the latest.”

I nodded, and rose to pour us both a drink from the decanter on the writing desk. We both needed it. “How are the rescued prisoners?” I called out over my shoulder. Yamal accepted the glass with a grateful tip of his head, and drained half of it in one swallow.

“Traumatized but alive. Healers are currently seeing to their physical needs. They’ll live, I’m confident. But some injuries are not physical. What the Ruminants did to them. Experimented on them. Tortured them. Some wounds will never heal.” I nodded grimly, and took my own drink. The whiskey stung going down, but the warmth settled in a comforting torrent. We stood in silence for a beat, both of us processing the horrors of the night.

“I apologize about my sister tonight,” Yamal said finally. His tone was tight. I flapped a hand to wave it away.

“She’s your sister. You can’t control her, and you’re not responsible for her. She’s a grown woman.”

“She had no right to speak to you that way. Or to the Queen.”

“She said nothing to me,” I corrected gently.

“And technically, she’s the Queen.” Yamal let out a soft, strained smile, and the tension left his shoulders.

“To the Queen,” he said.

“And, if I may, she seems good for you. I haven’t seen you this settled in years.”

“The mate bond is strong.”

“It’s more than that. You care about her. You’re lucid in this arrangement. For once in decades, you’re Bern.”

“You needn’t deny it. Every day it grows stronger. The need to be near her. To protect her. To make her smile.” I put the glass down. “But also the… guilt. The feeling that caring about her, means I betray my family’s memory”.

“My family would want you to be happy, Oberon. They would not want you to suffer forever in their memory. Your mother…I feel like she would especially. She was all about love and forgiveness,” Yamal said, his voice gentle but firm.

The words struck deeper than I expected. I had been so focused on honoring their deaths that I had forgotten to honor how they lived. All Mother had been was love. All compassion. She would have hated to see me devoured by hatred. Tactical matters soon took over the conversation. We discussed increasing security around the palace. Preparing for potential Ruminant attacks. Coordinating with the other packs for a united defense. But my mind kept coming back to Eudora. To the woman who fit against me like puzzle pieces fitting into place.

“You’re distracted,” Yamal noted, giving me a knowing smile. “The mate bond is getting stronger, is it not?” I didn’t bother denying it; it was pointless. “Every day it pulls at me harder. Every moment we aren’t together feels like stepping out of fresh air. But being with her…being away from her is as unbearable as seeing her.”

“Because of her father?” Yamal asked quietly.

“Because I don’t know to let her be sweet and artificially harsh,” I admitted harshly, heavy with realization. “How to love someone who embodies the very thing that concluded the lives of your family.”

Yamal regarded me for a moment. “She wouldn’t want that for you, Oberon. She wouldn’t want your pain making you a bad ruler.”

“I do know that. Here.” I tapped my head. “But making my heart understand is harder.”

Yamal advised, “Then give it time. The bond will help. And from what I have seen, Eudora is patient. She will wait for you to work through this.”

I hoped he was right. “Speaking of letting yourself feel,” I said, deliberately changing the subject. “What is going on between you and Marjah?”

Yamal’s expression immediately shuttered, walls slamming into place. “Nothing. She is insufferable.”

I laughed, the first genuine laugh I had had in days. The absurdity of it all, the denial. “She said the exact same thing about you. Almost word for word.”

“Because it is true. She questions every order. Challenges every decision. Acts like she knows better than everyone.”

And yet Yamal was about to respond when a guard rushed into the library. The man was pale, his eyes wide with fear. “Your Grace, there is a situation in the dungeons. One of the rescued prisoners. He is not healing properly. The healers say there is something wrong with his blood, like it is fighting the healing magic.”

My stomach dropped. I exchanged a look with Yamal, both of us understanding immediately what this might mean. “Show me,” I commanded. We hurried through the palace corridors to the dungeons where the wounded were being kept. The smell hit me first. Rot and decay, despite the healing herbs burning in braziers along the walls. The stench of death creeping in where it should not be.

The prisoner was a young warrior, barely twenty winters. I remembered him from a smaller pack that had sworn to me just last year. His skin was pallid, a sickly, mottled gray that looked unnatural. Black veins crept out from his wounds, spreading like poisoned roots beneath his flesh. The head healer glanced up as we came in, her expression grim. She was an older woman, and in my rule with all the violence brought upon my territory, she treated even the most fatal of wounds. So when her look twisted with anxiety, I felt fear sitting heavily in my chest.

“Your Grace,” she said, bowing her head slightly, “this is no ordinary infection. Whatever the Ruminants did to him in their vile experiments… it changes him at an elemental level. His blood rejects our magic. Rejects it, and something else grows in its absence.”

As if to prove the woman’s words, the young Wolf’s eyes shot open abruptly. But they were not his color anymore. They were pitch black– a completely unnatural color, eyes of a Ruminant.

He lunged at the nearest person with inhuman speed and strength. His movements were wrong, fundamentally wrong, jerky and unnatural like a puppet on broken strings. Guards grabbed him, forcing him down onto the cot. And he was screaming, a word repeated over and over in a voice that didn’t sound human.

Didn’t sound possible. “Vessel. Vessel. Bring me the vessel.”