32. Nikolai
I did something incredibly stupid.
The realization claws at my throat, a suffocating weight that makes it hard to breathe. If her phone hadn’t blasted through the room, I would have done it. I would have sunk my fangs deep into the sweet, unblemished skin of her neck. I would have marked her.
I let my wolf take the wheel. Yet again, I allowed Fenris’ possessive, unchecked instincts to override my intellect, my duty, and my sanity. It was an act of pure desire. I am the future Alpha King, and I was seconds away from binding my soul to a vampire.
“She is our mate!” Fenris howls inside my skull, his voice a deafening roar of betrayal. He slams against the walls of my consciousness, his claws digging in until my vision flickers with a dangerous, molten gold. “We claimed her! You will not undo this!”
“I will,” I snap back, slamming a mental iron wall down on his fury, forcing him back into the dark recesses of my mind. “I am putting an end to this misery. For both of us. The next time I see her, I am rejecting her.”
“If you do, I will break you,” Fenris threatens, his snarl dropping into a low, lethal frequency that vibrates through my bones. “
Before I can answer him, the doors of my apartment swing open.
Magnus strides into the living room, his posture relaxed for the first time in days.
A slow, triumphant grin spreads across his face as his eyes scan my disheveled state, the bare chest, and the lingering scent of starlight and winter air that still clings to my skin.
“So,” Magnus says, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, his voice dripping with smooth satisfaction. “Do we have a future Queen?”
I stop my pacing. I look at Magnus, my expression hardening into a cold, impenetrable mask. “No.”
Magnus’s grin falters, his eyebrows drawing together. “What do you mean, no? Nik, the whole wing can smell what happened here. You—”
“It was a lapse in judgment,” I cut him off, my voice flat, empty of any of the passion that had consumed me hours ago. “My wolf was jealous at the absolute absurdity of her marrying Julian Vane, so he went crazy. He took over. But it changes nothing.”
Magnus steps fully into the room, his eyes narrowing in disbelief. “You can’t just call a fated bond a lapse in judgment. Didn’t you mark her?”
“I didn’t,” I state coldly. I walk over to the sideboard, pouring a glass of whiskey just to give my shaking hands something to do. “And I won’t. The next time I meet her, I am officially rejecting her. It’s the only way to cut the cord cleanly. We need to move on.”
Magnus stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “A formal rejection? You’ll probably never get a second-chance mate, Nik.”
“Then I will take a chosen mate,” I reply, tossing the whiskey back, enjoying the burn as it sears my throat. “When the time comes to secure the throne, I’ll choose a noble she-wolf from a strong pack.”
Magnus opens his mouth to argue, but the words never leave his throat.
Suddenly, his posture locks. His pupils instantly dilate, swallowing the blue of his eyes until they are nothing but vast, black wells. His head tilts slightly, his gaze turning completely vacant as he stares into the empty space of the room.
He’s mind-linking.
I watch him, the sudden shift in the air making the hairs on my arms stand up. The silence stretches for five agonizing seconds, and then, Magnus’s eyes widen in shock. The breath is sucked out of his lungs in a sharp gasp.
He snaps out of the trance, his focus locking back onto me. But he doesn’t look angry, and he doesn’t look shocked anymore. He looks at me with... pity. A profound, devastating wave of sympathy that makes my stomach instantly drop.
“What?” I snap, slamming the glass down on the tray. “What is it?”
Magnus swallows hard, his jaw working as if the words are physically painful to form. He looks reluctant, stepping closer but keeping his hands raised in a placating gesture. “Ilinca just mind-linked me,” he says, his voice strained. “She’s at the medical center on campus.”
A cold spike of adrenaline shoots through my veins, but I force my voice to remain steady. “Why?”
“There was an attack,” Magnus whispers, his eyes searching mine for a reaction. “During the survival challenge. Someone made an attempt on Casandra’s life. Ilinca is with her now... and I’m going.”
The world stops.
For a fraction of a second, the iron wall in my mind fractures, and Fenris unleashes a roar so loud it threatens to burst my eardrums. A wave of pure rage crashes through my chest, a feral instinct screaming at me to find whoever did this and tear their limbs from their torso one by one.
I grip the edge of the sideboard, my knuckles turning white, forcing the anger back down. It’s Fenris, I tell myself savagely, my chest heaving as I fight for control. It’s just his rage. Not mine.
“Fine,” I spit out, my voice tight and jagged. “Go. Someone probably tried to murder her because of me. It just proves my point. It’s even better that I cut off the bond now.”
“Nikolai,” Magnus says softly, that infuriating pity burning in his eyes.
“I’m coming with you,” I growl, pushing past him into the corridor, not even bothering to grab a shirt. “If someone was attacked on academy grounds, it’s a security failure. I need to know what happened.”
We sprint down the stairs of the West Wing and burst out into the damp afternoon air.
We cover the distance to the medical center in a matter of minutes, our boots tearing up the manicured lawns.
My heart is a frantic hammer in my chest, and no matter how many times I tell myself that I am only running because of duty, the copper taste of fear in my mouth tells a different story.
We slide through the double doors of the medical center, the sterile, chemical smell of antiseptic immediately hitting my nose. We follow the corridor toward the private recovery rooms.
Outside the designated room, a small crowd has already gathered.
Ilinca is pacing the hallway, her face ghostly pale, tears streaming down her cheeks.
The moment she sees us, she lets out a broken sob.
Magnus doesn’t hesitate; he closes the distance between them in a single stride, throwing his strong arms around her waist and pulling her tight against his chest.
She buries her face in his neck, trembling violently.
But my eyes don’t stay on them. They track further down the hall.
Lukas is standing against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his glacial eyes dark and intense.
Seeing him here, outside her door, makes the blood in my veins instantly turn to liquid fire.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I spit out, my voice a low, venomous snarl that echoes off the clean tile walls. I step into his personal space, my chest heaving, my canines ready to drop.
Lukas doesn’t flinch. He slowly lowers his arms, his eyes narrowing as he meets my glare with an icy defiance of his own. “She’s my friend, Nikolai,” he says, his voice smooth but dangerous. “And unlike you, I actually care whether she breathes or not.”
My fists clench, the urge to strangle him, to rip his silver throat out right here in front of the medical staff, is so overwhelming I can taste it. I want to kill him. No. Not me. Fenris. Fenris is the one screaming for blood.
Before I can launch myself at the Swedish fucker, I spot the rest of Casandra’s group sitting on the benches further down the hall.
I break away from Lukas, turning my back on him as I stride purposefully toward Elias. He stands up as I approach, his posture straight, his expression grim and quietly lethal.
“What happened out there?” I demand, my voice dropping into an authoritative growl.
Elias takes a slow breath, shaking his head. “We don’t know who it was. The ground began to split all of a sudden. A localized landslide.. It separated us. We all made it out to the cliffs except Casandra.”
He pauses, his jaw tightening. “When she didn’t show, Professor Hawthorne made Pendelton remove the smoke entirely. The warlock used a tracking spell, and we located her immediately near the edge of the birch line.”
“And?” I press, my chest tightening with an agonizing pressure.
“She was shot from behind,” Elias says, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “A silver arrow. Straight through her shoulder blade. The doctors stabilized her, but...”
Before Elias can finish the sentence, the heavy wooden doors of Casandra’s room burst open.
Alistair Hawthorne storms out into the hallway, his usual pristine, academic composure entirely shattered. His face is flushed with a mixture of terror and unbridled fury. Behind him steps Graves, looking as pale as a ghost, his hands shaking.
“Just wait until her parents get here!” Hawthorne screams, turning on his heel to glare down at Graves, entirely ignoring the crowd of royal heirs standing in the corridor.
His voice carries a frantic, desperate edge that echoes off the walls.
“They will burn all of us for what happened to their daughter!”
The words ring through the sudden, deafening silence of the medical center. I stand frozen, the weight of the situation crashing down over me like a tidal wave.
She was shot with silver. She is in there, fighting for her life. And as Fenris begins to howl in absolute, heartbroken agony inside my mind, the lie I’ve been telling myself all day finally begins to crumble.