Chapter 146 The Runaway
Chapter 146 The Runaway
The stone veranda beneath Pandora’s silk slippers shuddered, a violent, deep-seated spasm that felt like a giant shifting in its sleep. She gripped the cold railing, her knuckles turning pasty white as another low vibration rattled the glass panes of her bedroom doors behind her. A plume of black smoke belched from a ventilation grate in the courtyard below, thick with the stench of sulfur, but Pandora didn't look down. She couldn't afford to care about whatever was rotting in the guts of the estate.
Her world had shrunk to the chaotic patch of grass right in front of her.
Through the bruised, bleeding purple of the twilight sky, the White Wolf Clan was breaching the outer walls. They hit the perimeter like a tidal wave of fur and teeth, colliding instantly with the feral Nosferu guards. The air was a deafening wall of sound—the wet tear of flesh, the heavy thud of bodies hitting the dirt, and guttural roars that made her chest ache.
Pandora slid down against the stone balustrade, her knees hitting the floor as she tried to make herself as small as possible. A stray piece of shrapnel whistled past her ear, chipping the marble above her head. Panic, cold and sharp, crawled up her spine, but right behind it came a wave of bitter, choking anger.
She pressed her palms against her eyes, tasting salt and dust. "Look at you," she thought, a vicious internal snarl directed entirely at herself. "The great princess of the Southern Clan."
She was supposed to be royalty. She was supposed to be untouchable. Instead, she was cowering in silk pajamas while a war she didn't understand tore the lawn apart.
The absolute stupidity of her own jealousy had landed her in this cage. She had wanted power, she had wanted relevance, and now she was just collateral damage waiting to happen.
A heavy, hollow ache settled behind her ribs. If she died tonight, would her father even launch a search party? Or had he already replaced his embarrassing, missing daughter with a cleaner political piece?
The arrogance she once carried like armor had been entirely ground to dust by weeks of isolation. There was no willpower left in her reservoir. No grand plan. No survival instinct. She was just tired.
She pulled her hands away from her face and watched a wolf rip the throat out of a guard below. "Maybe I should just end it," she whispered to the empty air.
Her glazed eyes drifted across the blood-soaked courtyard, searching the fray until they snagged on a familiar movement. Caspian. He moved through the violence like a scalpel—cold, precise, and entirely deadly. He didn't have a scratch on him. He was her mate. The man who had looked her dead in the eye and rejected her the exact second she tried to touch Elara.
A sharp, physical pang of regret pierced through her numbness, so intense it made her gasp. If she hadn't been so blinded by greed, if she hadn't tried to play the mastermind, Caspian wouldn't be down there fighting a nameless war. He would have been up here. He would have been fighting for her.
Exhaling a shaky, ragged breath, Pandora forced her trembling legs to straighten. She climbed onto the stone ledge of the veranda, the wind whipping her hair across her face. The drop below was a jagged drop of sharp rocks and chaos.
"I hope in my next life, I won't be as dumb as this," she muttered to the dark sky.
She closed her eyes, letting her weight tip forward.
Before her toes could leave the stone, two hands clamped onto her waist and yanked her backward with a violent jerk. Pandora hit the hard stone floor of the villa, the impact knocking the air from her lungs in a pathetic wheeze. Her eyes snapped open.
It was Cierce.
Seeing the witch standing inside her room shattered the numbness instantly, replacing it with a white-hot, hysterical rage. Pandora scrambled to her feet, her hands flying out to shove Cierce back with every ounce of strength she had left.
"It's all your fault!" Pandora hissed, her voice cracking into a raw, broken shriek. "It's your fault I'm in this disgusting mess! And now that I finally want to end it, you're still here? You still won't let me die?!"
Cierce didn't even stumble. She stepped right back into Pandora’s space, her hand reaching for the princess's wrist. "Pandora, stop acting like a child. We need to go inside. The perimeter wards are—"
"Let me go!" Pandora screamed, violently snatching her hand back out of the witch's grip. "Don't touch me!"
"But Elara—" Cierce started, her voice tight with urgency.
A loud, sharp slap cut the sentence short. Pandora’s palm stung from the impact, forcing Cierce’s head to the side.
"You still have the guts to mention that name to me?!" Pandora glared at her, her chest heaving as she breathed in the smoke from the courtyard. "Elara is going to kill us the very second she gets her hands on us! She hates us, Cierce! We are dead the moment she finds this room!"
Cierce didn't rub her cheek. She just slowly turned her head back around, her expression deadpan and entirely serious despite the red mark blooming on her skin. "That’s where you’re wrong. Elara won't kill us. She isn't like that."
Pandora let out a harsh, barking laugh, her eyes wide with frantic disbelief. "Yeah, right. Because we were so nice to her? Have you forgotten what we did? What we let Draven do to her? She has every reason to tear our throats out."
Cierce sighed, the sudden weight of the entire night seeming to drop onto her shoulders as she looked at the broken princess. "Because Elara had the perfect opportunity to turn me into ash, Pandora. She didn't. She told me to leave. She had the upper hand, and she let me walk out."
Pandora froze, her mouth slightly open as the anger suddenly hit a wall of pure confusion.
"So rather than dying out here like a coward," Cierce said, her grip this time locking around Pandora’s forearm like iron, "we are going to run. We're going to get past the tree line, leave this territory, and find a way to unite the remaining packs to take down Draven. He's lost his mind, and if we stay in this room, we're just picking our own graveyard."