Chapter 203 WAR

Chapter 203 WAR
Sargis POV
The soft scratch of my pen across the decree I'd been drafting with Lupercus standing at my side was the only sound in the room. The desk lamp glowed dimly over stacks of documents, its sterile light pooling across polished mahogany. My temples pulsed faintly from hours of signatures and revisions.
A scream sharp enough to split the stillness apart carried through the palace walls, reverberating in my chest before my mind could register it. I froze with the pen hovering mid-stroke, ink bleeding into a black blot on the page.
My chair screeched against the marble as I shoved back, muscles snapping taut. My beast surged to the surface, instincts roaring awake, stretching every sense wide. The copper tang of blood laced the air, faint but undeniable.
And then the world dimmed.
The overhead lights flickered before fading low, shadows thickening against the walls. I glanced toward the wide-paneled window just as the sky outside convulsed. The sun was strangled by shadow until only a blood-tinged rim remained.
An eclipse.
My gut clenched hard. This was witchcraft.
"What the hell is going on?" Lupercus mumbled.
"Trouble." A stench slithered through the cracked window on a sudden draft, and with it came the taste of old blood, sour and rancid on my tongue. I curled my lip back over my teeth. "Vampires."
Lupercus's head snapped toward me, disbelief flashing like lightning across his face. "That's not possible. They wouldn't be so brazen!"
As if to mock the argument, the heavy pound of boots thundered down the corridor. A scream tore through the air and ended in a gurgle. The stench of fresh kill rolled in immediately after.
"Tell that to the bodies outside." My voice cut sharper than I intended, but the denial curdled bitter in my mouth. Impossible or not, I knew the truth.
"Then we kill them," Lupercus replied.
I ripped at my shirt until it shredded down the center. My beast lunged, eager, snarling to be free. The air grew heavier, charged, the way it always did when my beast clawed too close to the surface.
"Stay with me," I growled.
Lupercus bared his teeth in something between a grin and a snarl. His claws slid free like knives unsheathed. "I was born for this, Sargis. Don't insult me with orders you don't need to give."
Our eyes locked, and in that heartbeat, we were no longer king and enforcer. We were predators on the same edge, standing shoulder to shoulder as the palace shuddered with chaos.
The door to my office exploded. The hinges screamed as the wood splintered inward, the impact shuddering the floor beneath my boots.
A guard staggered through, his uniform was torn crimson, and his throat was ripped so wide his last breath wheezed out in a gory spray. His eyes locked on mine for a fleeting second, and then he crumpled at my feet with a wet thud that rattled the marrow in my bones.
Behind him came the first wave. Three vampires.
Their eyes glowed like banked coals in the half-light of the eclipsed moon filtering through the high windows.
They shouldn't have made it this far.
My stomach turned cold.
"They know," I snarled. One leapt, fast as a whip, and I caught him mid-flight. My claws ripped through flesh and bone with a crack that sang in my blood, and before the vampire even touched the ground, I tore his head clean from his shoulders. Blood fountained across my chest, feeding the fire already devouring me from within.
The second lunged low, the third from my flank. Lupercus was already there, intercepting with a snarl that split the silence like thunder. His claws flashed, rending one across the gut, spilling entrails that steamed on the marble floor.
I pivoted on instinct, catching the last by the throat. His hiss seared my ear as his nails raked down my arm, but my grip only tightened. Bone cracked beneath my fingers. He writhed, choking, his heels beating against the floor until I slammed him back into the wall so hard the plaster cratered. His skull caved in with a sound that silenced his screams.
But I barely registered the kill. Because the truth struck deeper than any claw.
They knew every entrance, blind corner, and hidden passage I'd had sealed in confidence. They'd navigated the palace not as intruders, but as predators on their own ground.
Betrayal.
It was the only explanation. Someone in my court had sold them out, mapped the palace inch by inch, and led these vermin into the heart of my kingdom like a viper carried into my bed.
Rage flared.
I could almost see the traitor's face in my mind, faceless but already condemned. Whoever it was, I swore I would drag them into the light before the gods themselves. I would rip the treachery from their bones and make them choke on it before they begged for death.
But not now.
Not while my walls screamed with the sound of slaughter, and my people bled.
"Clear a path," I barked to Lupercus, slamming my claws through the chest of another vampire, ripping free a heart that turned to ash in my grip.
Lupercus grunted, slicing down two more in brutal arcs. "Where to?"
"The Great Hall," I replied, already forcing my way forward. "If they've breached this far, Narine is in danger."
Even thinking her name in the middle of the bloodbath burned through my chest like a spear. I shoved the thought down, no weakness, not now. B
"Secure the north wing," I ordered, my voice cutting above the chaos, sharp as command steel. "If they breach the throne room, the heart of the palace falls."
And beneath the rage and violence, a darker thought coiled in me. If they knew the in and out of the palace, they also knew where she was.
I didn't dare falter. I drove forward with Lupercus at my side, cutting down anything that moved too fast. The eclipse above smothered all light, leaving the palace bathed in a sickly twilight, and in its choking gloom the vampires thrived.
I ripped through them anyway, fury lending strength to every strike. Yet the unease gnawed at me. This was no random strike. This was war, calculated and merciless, and it had slithered into my very walls undetected.
The clang of steel and the guttural hiss of vampires were everywhere, echoes that clung to the walls like shadows made of sound. My claws were slick, my chest heaving with every strike, and yet no matter how many I cut down, more poured in through the fractures of my home. My palace.
A vampire lunged from the side, its jaws snapping for my throat. I shoved it back with the flat of my palm and drove my claws into its chest, ripping through its blackened heart. It collapsed with a scream that shook the air, spraying darkness across my chest. Another came, then another, faster than thought. My body moved on its own, honed reflex and rage, slashing, tearing, snapping spines and skulls.
"Sargis!" Lupercus barked, his massive frame a shadow beside mine as he swung his claw clean through two necks at once. "Focus!"
"I am," I growled, though my mind betrayed me, spiraling toward Narine again and again. Where was she? Was she hiding? Fighting? Bleeding? My beast writhed, urging me to find her, to claim her scent through the smoke and blood.
I couldn't. Not now.
Between strikes, I pulled my phone from my pocket with bloodied fingers, the screen flickering with cracks from the force of battle. My claws made it clumsy, but I typed fast, raw desperation pushing me through.
Keep Narine safe. Don't let her out of your sight. No matter what happens.
Hasmik. She was the only one I trusted to shield Narine with her life. My hand trembled as I hit send, shoving the phone back before another vampire hurled itself at me. Its claws raked across my arm, shallow but stinging. I snarled and slammed it into the wall so hard the stones cracked, then crushed its skull under my boot.
Fear coiled in my gut like poison, but I shoved it down. Fear would make me reckless, and recklessness would kill us all.
Yet still, I saw her face in every flicker of torchlight, every corner of the hall. Her eyes the first time she'd looked at me without fear. Her mouth trembling when she'd told me she wanted us to work out. The way she smelled when the bond between us sharpened the world into unbearable clarity.
I couldn't lose her. I wouldn't.
But they had come prepared. The vampires weren't the mindless, hungry kind that roamed the outskirts, these were soldiers. Organized, relentless, and too precise to be acting alone.
Lupercus roared beside me. "They've planned this for months. Maybe years," he spat, locking eyes with me between clashes. "This isn't chance."
"No," I replied. I gutted another vampire, ripping the life from it with my claws. "This is betrayal."
And betrayal always had a price.
Still, the bond hummed in the back of my mind. I would know if she fell. I would feel it. Wouldn't I?