Chapter 348

Chapter 348
Zayn

If I accepted, there would be no going back.

The realization hit me with such force that, for several seconds, everything else in the room seemed to fade into the background, leaving only the priest standing in front of me, the silver vessel held between his hands, and the question that had somehow become the most important thing I would ever answer.

If I said yes, the bond would become permanent.

There would be no rejecting it again, no breaking it when I finally found a way out of this kingdom, no discovering some forgotten loophole years later that would allow me to pretend I had never known exactly what I was agreeing to when I stood here in front of everyone.

Once those words left my mouth, Charlotte would be bound to me for the rest of our lives.

And Aurora…

I couldn’t do that to her.

I couldn’t do that to myself.

My eyes remained fixed on the priest, but my mind had already left the ceremony entirely, pulled somewhere far beyond the walls of this hall and back toward the only person I had been thinking about every single day since she disappeared.

Aurora.

Her face.

Her voice.

The way she looked at me when she was angry, the way she smiled when she was trying not to, the way she could turn the most ordinary conversation into an argument simply because she refused to let me have the last word.

I remembered the last time I had seen her, remembered everything I had wanted to say and everything I hadn’t, and the thought of willingly allowing myself to become permanently bound to someone else made something inside my chest twist so painfully that I could barely breathe.

Six months.

I had spent six months being forced into a life without her, six months waking up every morning knowing I was trapped in this kingdom while she was somewhere out there, six months refusing to believe that I had lost her because I couldn’t allow myself to accept a world in which I never saw her again.

I wasn’t going to destroy the last possibility of ever returning to her with one fucking word.

The priest waited.

The entire hall waited.

My father waited.

I could feel his eyes fixed on me from across the ceremonial platform, demanding an answer without ever having to speak, and for one brief moment I wondered whether he actually believed I would obey him simply because hundreds of people were watching.

My throat tightened.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

Then something inside me snapped.

It wasn’t a thought, and it wasn’t a decision I consciously made. One second I was standing there trying to force myself to find a way out of the situation and the next something ancient and furious erupted from somewhere deep inside me, rising so violently that it felt as though a roar had torn through my entire body before I had even realized what was happening.

My breathing changed.

My vision blurred around the edges.

The sound of my own heartbeat became impossibly loud, pounding against my ribs as the beast inside me surged forward with a force I hadn’t felt in years.

No.

Not here.

Not now.

I had spent years learning how to control it, learning how to keep that part of myself beneath the surface even when anger, fear, or instinct threatened to overwhelm me, and I had always believed that no matter how strong the beast became, I would still be the one deciding when it was allowed to come out.

But this wasn’t like before.

This didn’t feel like losing control.

It felt like something inside me had made the decision for me.

My fingers curled against my palms until my nails dug painfully into my skin, and somewhere nearby I heard someone gasp as my body suddenly lurched forward.

I didn’t have time to stop it.

I didn’t even have time to understand what I was doing.

I lunged.

Charlotte barely had enough time to turn toward me before I slammed into her, the force of the impact sending both of us crashing onto the ceremonial platform as the crowd erupted around us in a wave of screams and frantic movement.

Someone shouted my name.

Someone else yelled for the guards.

Chairs scraped violently across the floor as people stumbled backward, trying to put as much distance between themselves and me as possible.

None of it mattered.

The beast was already taking over.

I felt the first violent shift move through my body as bones twisted beneath my skin, muscles stretching and reforming with brutal speed while my hands struck the polished stone beneath me and claws pushed through my fingertips.

The pain should have brought me back.

It didn’t.

Instead, I felt myself being pushed farther away, as though I had been shoved into some distant corner of my own mind and locked behind my own eyes, forced to watch while something else took control of the body that had once belonged entirely to me.

Charlotte tried to scramble backward.

The beast didn’t let her.

It moved before I could even process what I was seeing, and a scream tore through the hall as claws raked across her face before the beast lunged again, its teeth sinking into her throat with a violence that made the entire room descend into chaos.

Blood spread across the ceremonial platform.

The crowd scattered.

People screamed as they pushed past one another toward the exits, while guards shouted orders and weapons were drawn throughout the hall, although none of them seemed willing to approach closely enough to stop me.

I could hear everything.

The screaming.

The pounding footsteps.

The frantic orders.

The sound of people trying to escape.

And beneath all of it, I heard my brothers.

Their voices cut through the chaos, and for one horrible second I tried to reach them, tried to force my body to turn away from Charlotte, tried to make the beast understand that they were not enemies.

It didn’t listen.

Charlotte lay motionless beneath me.

I stared down at her, but there was nothing inside me capable of feeling horror or guilt or even hesitation, because whatever part of me should have reacted had been buried beneath the beast’s rage.

Then I heard another voice.

My father’s.

Calm.

Cold.

Completely untouched by the chaos unfolding in front of him.

My head snapped toward him.

He stood at the front of the hall, surrounded by guards who had drawn their weapons but remained several feet away, none of them willing to make the first move.

Our eyes met.

Something inside the beast changed.

My lips pulled back, exposing my teeth as a low growl rolled through my chest, and suddenly every other sound in the room seemed to disappear beneath one overwhelming instinct.

Him.

I wanted him.

I wanted to tear through every person standing between us and make him pay for everything he had done, for every threat, every order, every day he had kept me trapped here, every moment he had taken from me.

My body lowered instinctively.

Every muscle tightened.

Then I launched forward.

For one brief second, I thought I was going to reach him.

I was almost there when agony exploded through my entire body.

The pain was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It didn’t feel as though one part of me was hurting; it felt as though every muscle, every bone, every nerve, and every fucking cell in my body had been seized at the exact same moment and crushed beneath an invisible force.

A scream tore out of me.

My body convulsed in midair before I crashed violently onto the stone floor, claws scraping desperately against the surface as I tried to push myself back up.

Another wave hit.

I screamed again.

Magic.

I knew it immediately.

Someone was using magic against me, forcing its way through my body with enough power to overwhelm even the beast. Then I felt something stronger than rage.

Fear.

My body began changing again, but this time it wasn’t happening because I wanted it to.

The beast was being forced back beneath my skin.

My claws disappeared.

My bones shifted.

My muscles contracted violently as my body was dragged back into its human form, and by the time the transformation finished I was lying naked and shaking against the cold stone, barely able to move.

My entire body trembled uncontrollably while the aftermath of the magic continued burning through me, and the noise of the hall sounded distant and distorted, as though I were hearing everything from underwater.

Then my father’s voice cut through the chaos.

Cold.

Calm.

Completely unaffected.

“Take him to the dungeon. Now.”

Footsteps rushed toward me.

Hands grabbed my arms.

I reacted instinctively, trying to pull away even though my muscles barely seemed capable of supporting my weight.

“Get the fuck off me!”

The guards ignored me.

One seized my arm while another grabbed the other, dragging me upright and forcing me forward as my legs nearly collapsed beneath me.

I stumbled, barely managing to keep myself standing.

“Zayn!”

Zion.

His voice came from somewhere behind me, filled with shock and anger.

“Let him go!”

“Zayn!”

Zakai’s voice followed, louder this time, and I heard him trying to push through the crowd.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

I tried to turn around.

I couldn’t.

The guards tightened their grip and dragged me toward the doors while the hall remained in complete chaos behind us, and although every part of me wanted to fight them, my body felt too weak to do anything more than stumble along with them.

“LET HIM GO!”

One of my brothers shouted again.

I wanted to answer.

I wanted to tell them that I was sorry, that I hadn’t chosen any of this, that they needed to stay away from me before my father decided they had become a problem too.

But my throat wouldn’t cooperate.

Nothing came out.

The doors opened ahead of me, and the guards dragged me through them, leaving the screams and chaos of the ceremonial hall gradually fading behind us.

Everything felt distant now.

Muted.

Disconnected.

As though I were watching someone else’s life unfold from somewhere far away rather than actually living through it myself.

But the beast was still there.

I could feel it beneath my skin, pacing inside me, furious at being forced back into the darkness.

It wasn’t gone.

It was waiting.

I could hear its rage in the back of my mind, could feel it fighting against the magic, fighting against the restraints, fighting against the part of me that was desperately trying to keep it contained.

It wanted out.

It wanted to return.