CHAPTER 29: QUEEN PROCLAIMED

CHAPTER 29: QUEEN PROCLAIMED
Maya’s POV

His stare – nay – glare was intense.

His eyes spoke volumes that his lips didn’t. They burned with fury, conflicted between punishing me right now or waiting for everyone to disperse after I tended to the bleeding patients in the royal hall.

Bandage? I mouthed and Zane, who was my standby nurse quickly handed it over to me.

“I command you to stop,” Sebastian barked out the command but no one paid heed as Carl and Valerie quickly stabilized the bleeding offender’s arm. Rose hissed while I stitched her up and then quickly bandaged her arm.

“Zane, I order you to STOP!” Sebastian tried to intervene but one look from me and Zane visibly gulped, shaking his head as if tuning out his King’s orders.

“Our Queen is so kind. She is a true healer,” one of the courtiers said, sighing, as if agreeing with his King.

“Yes. She restored Princess Hannah’s appearance and gave the three perpetrators whatever extra powers she had. She should have kept them. They don’t have wolves in any case!”

“The Goddess knows what goes on in that pure heart and brilliant mind. I want my daughter to grow up like her. She is an omega too.”

“I would say everyone’s daughters should aspire to be like her.”

“You talk about daughters but she fights better than most men. I want my son to be like her.”

“True, true.”

“Hail, hail. Well said!”

“Did you look at her diamond ring? It grew in size. She is such a kind-hearted doctor. The size grew as her goodness grew.”

“Yes, she quickly tended to Rose’s arm even though Rose tried to stab her from behind.”

“But she was the one who tore out her arm so…” One of Princess Athena’s cult members said with a shrug.

“Yes, it was such a cool move! She ducked just in time and twisted out Rose’s arm without even looking at her! I almost imagined that she saw everything happening behind her in the King’s eyes.

“I admire her strength and kindness. She reminds me of the King’s mother so much. What a pity she died in the civil war just because she was an omega,” an elder shook his head.

“Some say there was a traitor in their ranks but we will never know what truly happened…”

“GUARDS! I COMMAND YOU TO STOP,” Sebastian tried one last time but the royal guards stood their ground and helped me in disposing off the blood-soaked bandages.

Sebastian rubbed his forehead. “They are criminals. Stop helping them,” he murmured with a sigh.

The moment Rose’s arm was stabilized and the nasty shoulder fracture taken care of, Sebastian gestured the guards to remove the… and I quote him, “ …thorn by his side.”

The royal guards looked at Rose with a hardened gaze before removing her from the King’s presence. He seemed ready to tear apart the arm I had painstakingly persevered to fix.

Sebastian’s gaze shifted to me.

I gulped. Transfixed under the hot glare.

“Dismissed.” With the flick of his hand, the rest of the court members dispersed as well and now I was the only sheep left in the Lycan’s den.

He descended towards me. Slowly. Predator-slow. My heart caught in my mouth. I stepped back with every step he took forward. Suddenly, my heel hit the base of a sturdy pillar. My back slammed against it. I was trapped.

“I should punish you… my Queen,” he breathed against my ear, his voice dark and heavy like a thunderstorm on the verge of breaking. His fingers tangled into my hair—tugging—not gently, not cruelly either, but with a rough reverence that made my scalp tingle in the most delicious way. I nearly moaned.

"You risked… everything. Everything.”

His words seared through me. His breath was hot against my skin, and even though his chest was barely touching mine, I could feel the tremor in his body—the storm he was holding back under the leash of a king.

His fury wasn’t loud, but it was consuming. And it wasn’t just anger—it was something deeper. Something raw. Something devastatingly intimate.

My lips parted, my breath catching. I didn’t dare look away from his eyes—stormy and tormented, glinting gold like sunlight reflecting off steel. They were narrowed, burning, and I swore they could read every thought I wasn’t saying aloud.

My heart thundered in my chest, in my ears, against the delicate hollow of my throat. I knew he could hear it. I felt it when his gaze flicked there—his restraint cracked, just a little.

My lips tingled. Just from the heat of his heavy gaze on them.

“You gave up your powers… to them,” he rasped, his hands sliding around my waist, tightening—just enough to press me into the pillar behind me. “You healed the very hand that tried to pierce your heart. You… played blindfolded chess with two lethal wolves who would rather see you burn than rise.”

His voice cracked—just faintly—on the word burn. My throat tightened. That break in his tone undid me.

His pain was like gravity. And I was free-falling into it.

“Do you hate yourself that much?” he growled. One hand found my jaw, thumb brushing my bottom lip, slow and bruising in its tenderness. “Do you think I want a Queen who throws herself to the wolves just to prove her worth?”

I couldn’t answer. I shook my head—softly, once. No.

That wasn’t it.

But how could I explain?

He leaned in until his nose brushed the shell of my ear, and my skin shivered at the contact. My entire body trembled with the effort it took to stand still.

“You think your silence keeps you safe,” he murmured, “but your actions scream. They scream louder than I ever could.”

His teeth grazed my earlobe, and I felt my legs weaken. My pulse pounded. Every part of me was on fire, but not from fear.

From recognition.

From being seen.

His grip at my hip tightened as he continued, his voice dropping into a gravelled whisper, “You stunned every courtier in that hall. Even the ones who thought kindness was weakness. You proved them wrong with one act of mercy and the most ruthless precision I’ve ever witnessed.”

Then… softer, almost broken—

“Do you even know what that does to me, my Belle?”

My knees nearly gave out at the name.

His Belle.

A flutter began low in my stomach and rose, coiling like a ribbon through my ribs, my throat, my lips.

His hand splayed over my stomach—steadying, claiming, grounding.

“You tore Rose’s shoulder apart without looking,” he whispered. “And then you stitched it back without flinching.”

A soundless gasp escaped me. My head tilted instinctively, offering my neck to his mouth when his lips found the slope there.

He kissed that spot. Reverent. Worshipful.

Then—he bit.

Hard and deep enough to send a violent shiver through me. My back arched slightly off the pillar, my fingers gripped his tunic. I was either going to hold on to him or fall apart entirely.

“You haunt me,” he groaned, resting his forehead against mine. His voice wasn’t just rough—it was unraveling. “Do you understand? From that waterfall… to this moment. You haunt me.”

I raised a trembling hand and cupped his cheek. His eyes closed. My own blurred. I wasn’t asking for forgiveness. I only wanted him to understand.

He did.

“When you disappeared that day,” he went on, voice thick and hoarse, “after saving my life… I spent every day asking the Moon Goddess why I didn’t know your name. Why I didn’t bleed more trying to follow you. I prayed, Maya. Every night. That she’d return the girl who saved my life and vanished into the trees like a ghost.”

My breath hitched. A tear slid down my cheek.

He kissed it away.

“You were never just a healer,” he said, brushing his lips to my temple. “You were the flame in the dark. You made me believe in fate. But watching Alpha Leo try to mark you—watching you freeze under him—do you know what it did to me?”

His voice broke, this time fully. A rasped edge of pain cut through the sentence.

“Do you know how hard it was not to tear him apart in front of the entire court?”

I shook my head. My palm moved to his chest, right over his heart—pounding, wild, raw.

He leaned in again, this time with fire licking behind his eyes.

“You’re MINE,” was the only warning he gave before I became… Queen. His Queen. For real.

His lips crashed into mine.

It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claim.

Heat rushed through my entire body. My fingers tangled into his hair. My body molded to his, helpless against the pull. My back pressed harder against the pillar, my stomach clenched and fluttered all at once. I could feel the rush of my blood, the shaking of my breath, the dizzying sensation of being both worshipped and devoured.

He kissed me like he was both losing control and finding it. One hand cradled the back of my neck. The other stayed at my waist, anchoring me to him like he feared I’d disappear again.

“You don’t get to vanish again,” he murmured against my lips, voice rough velvet and steady thunder. “You’re not a ghost. You’re my Queen. My healer. My Belle. And I will never let you go.”

I gazed up at him—breathless, lips swollen, vision hazy. My chest pressed to his, our heartbeats tangled. I couldn’t speak.

But my silence screamed yes. A tear dropped down my eyes.

He kissed it away before sliding his lips along my jaw, my cheek, the hollow beneath it, the sensitive spot where neck met collarbone—and then his mark. Ah! That spot was still sparking and sensitive.

Trills of pleasure coursed from the spot and into my body. I felt his love deep in my bones. My head tilted back instinctively, and I felt my body flush with heat.

He exhaled slowly, like something heavy had finally lifted off his chest.

“Now…” he said, voice darker, quieter, more dangerous, “…I’m going to remind you that you are not allowed to give yourself away. Not to enemies. Not to war. And never again… to ghosts from your past.”

And just like that, he swept me up into his arms.

I let out a startled breath, but didn’t resist. Instead, I curled into him—hands fisting his collar, cheek against the steady, thunderous rhythm of his heart.

“You’ll sleep in my arms tonight,” he said, his voice like a promise forged in iron. “And every night after.”

As he carried me through the hushed corridors, something inside me stilled. Not from fear or shock.

But from certainty.

When a King claims his Queen not for lineage or legacy, but for the fire in her mercy and the steel in her silence—when he stands behind her, even as the world stands beneath him—there’s nothing left to prove.

The world doesn’t ask why.

It follows.

And now it followed the Queen. A thoroughly marked and proclaimed Queen.