Chapter 26 26

Chapter 26 26

Oberon's POV

I bore her to my private apartment, suffering no one even to touch her. I'm not gonna let her walk at a time like this, when she was so damn nervous.

I should have been horrified by the reveal of her Ruminant blood. Should have made me want to stay far away from the danger she posed. From the ticking time bomb she became through no fault of her own.

Not for me, it just made me more fierce in my desire to protect her. To find a solution. To battle against whatever destiny her father had consigned her to.

She shook in my embrace, tears flowing silently down her face. Not sobbing. Not making a sound. Nothing but tears, sobbing silently as though her heart were breaking.

I looked at her; she had never seemed so bent. So defeated. The flame that had always blazed in her purple eyes died, extinguished into bleak hopelessness.

It caused something primal and protective to roar inside me. Had me wanting throw my head back and howl the need to hunt down every Ruminant I could find and rip them apart for what they'd done to our mate.

Yamal tagged along behind us, Marjah all but hanging off his arm. My Beta was with her although she obviously hated the idea of needing his assistance. Her pride was wounded as well as her person.

“Get the healers,” I commanded, never breaking step. "For both of them. And have Seraphina informed at once. Tell her it is urgent. Life or death. I need her here at the palace now, not sending messengers back and forward."

Yamal nodded, his expression grave. “Eminence, what the Ruminant told us about the princess. About her being a bridge. Should the council know?"

“No,” I replied, sternly, perhaps too sternly. "That's between me and my mate. No one else should have to know the particulars of it at this point. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Your Grace."

I made it to my chamber and kicked the door in. The room was just as I'd left it earlier today. Clothes scattered. Papers on the desk. The hughe four poster bed yet unmade.

I set Eudora down on the bed like she was made of glass. As soon as she reached the far side of the trunk, she curled herself up into nothing. Trying to disappear.

"I need to go to my chambers," she whispered, her voice empty. "You do not want me here. Not after what you learned."

"You stay put," I commanded, not at all nicely. "Where I can keep you safe. Where I can see you. If I know that you’ll be safe.”

I sat next to her on the bed, stroking her silver hair. It was velvety and silk-smooth under my fingers. "We will figure this out. There must be a way to undo your father's curse. Some counter spell or ritual."

Eudora wiped her streaming eyes and looked up at me. Her face was red and bloated from crying, her lips puffy from biting them. "And if there is not? Suppose I am to be that bridge ? What then?"

“Then we will see to it when the time is upon us,” said I, with more confidence than I felt. “But I won’t abandon you. I won’t let that happen to you. I swear it."

She straightened up a bit, and looked at my face. Searching for something. Truth, maybe. Or lies she could cling to.

"Why?" she asked. "Why do you care so much? It’s not the mate bond alone. We have fought it for weeks. You hated me. You wanted me to suffer."

I was unable to express anything. She was right. This fierce protectiveness was not accounted for by the mate bond alone. This frantic need to save her.

"I have been wondering the same thing. When had I gone from loathing to this? Since when had Eudora been more than her father's little girl? More than a tool for revenge?”

"I have been goin' through your pa's journals," I confessed, the words dragging out. “Not only the part about what he did to my family. But everything. All of it. Trying to understand him. Trying to understand you."

Eudora stiffened, obviously expecting the worst. Expecting more horrors.

“I came across some items about your siblings,” I went on. On how they were complicit in his setups from such a young age. In what way they did so willingly, indeed eager to be involved. How they enjoyed the cruelty."

I watched her embarrassment flush deep into both cheeks and raced down to her neck. "I did not know. I was isolated from them. Isolated. And here I thought it was because I was the youngest. The weakest. The one without a wolf."

I reached up, my hand cupping her face lightly as I brushed away a tear. Eudora, it was because you were not like the others. You were not like them. Your father wrote about it. How you possessed your mother’s wife’s tender heart. How you cried at the sight of wounded animals. How you made friends with the servants when I specifically told you not to.”

Her eyes widened. "He wrote that? About me?"

I nodded, pulling her closer. Your first one is when you were eight. You discovered he was going to order the death of a pack member who stole food. You slipped into his study in the middle of the night and pleaded for mercy. I told him the man was afraid for him to starve with children in need of his care.

To Eudora’s hand, which had gone up to her mouth.A memory surfaced in the back of File:MFloralFrock.jpg her eyes. "I had forgotten that. He was so angry with me. He did that to me in my room for three days.”

“You made him feel guilty, and he was angry,” I said. “Because you showed him that he had, once, been able to feel compassion. Before power corrupted him completely. Before he was the monster we know he was.”

We sat in silence for a minute, the burden of knowledge weighing between us. I could hear her breathing, feel her pulse pumping through the bond.

“Your brothers and sisters weren’t like you,” I went on, needing her to know this. Needed to understand. I have evidence that they were helping your father in his deal with the Ruminants. That they were aware of his plans to wipe out other werewolf bloodlines. To forge a world with your family line as the sole one in it.

Eudora looked sick. The blood drained from her face, and I half-expected her to vomit. "They wanted that? They wanted genocide? The death of thousands?"

"According to the journals, yes. They embraced his vision completely." I paused, unsure whether to tell him the worst of it. But she deserved the truth. All of it. "And they practiced other depravities. Things I will never tell you about, unless you're asking to know.”

"Tell me," she whispered.

I took a breath. "They were interwoven by incest." Your father encouraged it. Want to keep the bloodline pure. “Wanted to focus the witch and wolf DNA.”
Eudora turned and stumbled from me, her hand covering her face as she struggled not to vomit. "No. They were my family. They..."

Yet, even as she said those words, I could see memories snapping into place behind her eyes. Parts of a puzzle she’d never wanted to fit together.

“How they always smelled like they were too close.”

"The strange looks they shared. Why I was barred from family get-togethers. Oh gods."

“I was the spare,” she realized, and her voice turned hollow with recognition. The one they kept pure in case they wanted to marry me off politically. For alliances. I was never supposed to know the truth about any of it. I was their backup plan."

I held her back in my embrace, and this time she didn’t pull away. She held onto me as though I were the only solid thing in her universe. As if I was the only thing holding her above the surface of her own life.

“You’re not like them at all,” I said vehemently, and I did mean it. "Not like your father or your siblings. You are good, Eudora. Pure as they would never understand. That is why I care. And that is why I am going to fight for you.”

She stared up at me, vulnerability and optimism waging war in her new face. "You really believe that? Know even what I contain in me?”

"I know it," I said. And then I was kissing her.

Not with the desperate longing from before, in the tower. This was different. Tender. Gentle. A pleading not an asking.

As we parted she whispered against my lips. "Make love to me, Oberon. Please. I need to feel something solid. Something good. I have to forget that for a short while what I am. What I will become."

My body reacted instantly, desire rushing through me hot and fierce. My entire body screamed yes. Ordered I claim my mate entirely. Finally.

But before I was able to reply, before I even started stripping her off, the door crashed in.

Esmeralda stood, with her dress torn and soiled. Her disheveled hair was scratched by his face. Her eyes were mad with despair and fury.

“She attempted to kill me,” she panted, nodding her shaking hand toward Eudora. “The princess tried to kill me in the battle tower. I have witnesses. Guards who saw everything.”