Chapter 66 Lucian
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Lucian
The ache registered before the pain did.
I paused mid-sentence with Voss, my hand stalling over the perimeter map.
Then every channel in my body ignited at once.
Percy’s frequency spiked red. Solomon’s shattered its controlled silence. And Mira’s, the channel that had been blazing whole for less than ten minutes, flooded with an agony so precise my composure evaporated.
Her scream reached me a second later. Tearing across the camp from the command tent, cutting through every conversation and every soldier and hitting my chest with a force that buckled the centuries of control I’d built my reign on.
“Mira!”
The word ripped out of me before my legs caught up. Voss called my name but I was already gone, sprinting across the clearing with every instinct in my body howling a single note.
Fuck. It was wrong. It felt fucking wrong.
I tore through the tent flap and the world reduced to the image on the ground.
Mira.
Curled on her side. Arms wrapped around her stomach.
The herbal tea spilled beside her, pooling into the dirt. Her face was ashen, drained of the glow that had been building since the first bond channel restored. The mismatched eyes were closed and the heartbeats beneath her folded arms were faint, erratic, struggling.
My knees hit the ground beside her.
“Mira. Open your eyes.”
Nothing.
Her breathing was shallow, rapid, the pattern of a body fighting an invasion it didn’t understand. Through the bond I could feel the babies’ distress, guttering where minutes ago they’d been strong, fed by a complete network that was now channeling poison instead of warmth.
Percival crashed through the tree line. I heard the branches snap before I saw him, his wolf barely contained beneath his skin, eyes wild. He dropped beside her on the opposite side and his hands found her face, her neck, checking her pulse with fingers that trembled.
“What happened? What the fuck happened?!”
“The tea.” My voice came out barely controlled. “The tea was tampered with.”
I didn’t move from her side. Not because I was calm. But because the rage building in my chest had reached the threshold where movement meant destruction.
If I stood up, if I walked into that clearing, I would seize the first body within reach and separate its head from its shoulders before my brain identified whether it belonged to friend or enemy.
So I stayed. Hands on her stomach. Feeling my children fade.
Solomon materialized from the eastern perimeter. No sound or warning. One moment the tent held two alphas and an unconscious woman. The next, he stood at the entrance with a look in his face that preceded violence the way silence preceded thunder.
His silver eyes moved from Mira to the spilled tea to the cup on its side. The analysis took two seconds. The conclusion locked into place behind an expression that made Percy, mid-panic, go quiet.
Solomon turned and walked out of the tent.
His voice carried across the clearing with a volume I had never heard from him. Not in four centuries of service. Not in battle, not in crisis, not in the worst moments of our shared history.
“WHO DID THIS TO HER?”
The camp froze.
Every soldier, every hunter, every council representative stopped moving.
Solomon stood at the center of the clearing half-shifted, his claws fully extended, his canines dropped, the bones in his jaw distorted by a transformation he hadn’t chosen.
The composure that defined him burned away by a rage his body couldn’t contain in human form.
“Someone in this camp poisoned my mate.” Each word came out warped by the shifted jaw, guttural and barely intelligible. His gaze swept every face, silver eyes gone wolf-bright. “I am going to find out who. And what happens next will depend entirely on how quickly they step forward.”
No one moved.
“Now.”
Soldiers looked at each other. Council representatives retreated. Converted hunters clustered together, Kaia’s hand dropping to her blade out of habit.
Voss stepped forward.
“Your hunters.” He pointed at the group. “They have access to the supply station. They’ve been moving freely through this camp since your king decided to play diplomat.”
Reese flinched. Damon straightened with fury already building behind his jaw.
“Why would we poison her?” Kaia’s voice cut through. “She’s the reason we’re alive. She’s the reason any of us are standing here instead of following Thiago’s orders.”
“Because you’re hunters.” Voss didn’t back down. “Your species has tortured ours for centuries. Trust isn’t erased by a week of training drills.”
“Our species?” Damon stepped forward. “We left everything to be here. Families, homes, our entire lives. And you’re accusing us because of what, blood?”
“I’m accusing you because someone poisoned the future queen and your people had an opportunity.”
The clearing tipped toward violence. Voss’s soldiers shifted formation. Converted hunters tightened ranks. The alliance that had been built through weeks of tension and incremental trust cracked along the exact fault line everyone had been pretending didn’t exist.
“Enough.”
Farmon’s voice. Quiet. Carrying an authority without needing volume, just raising the ruined hands where everyone could see them.
“I prepared that tea myself.” He stepped between the two groups. “My herbs. My blend. My hands, broken by the Order you claim to despise, Voss.”
His gaze found him. “The hunters didn’t do this. I know the scent of every compound in my supplies, and what’s in that cup contains an agent that doesn’t exist in the human world.”
The clearing went still.
“The poison is lycan,” Farmon said. “Botanical. Sourced from Veyndral.”
Voss’s jaw clenched. Behind him, his soldiers exchanged glances that carried a different weight now.
“This was done by one of our own,” Farmon continued. “And I suggest we focus on finding them before my grandchildren pay the price for your pride.”
The word grandchildren did what authority couldn’t. After all, Farmon was the former Beta and was supposedly Voss’s higher-up back when they were both under my father. Voss stepped back.
The hunters relaxed their stance. Farmon returned to the tent where Percy was holding Mira’s hand and speaking to her in a voice I couldn’t hear, cracked and repeating her name.
Inside, Farmon knelt beside her. His damaged fingers found her wrist, her forehead, her belly. The examination was thorough, clinical despite the tremor in his hands.
“The compound is designed to terminate a lycan pregnancy,” he said. Flat. Professional. Separating himself from the grandfather. “It targets the bond-dependent connection between mother and children. Without intervention, the heartbeats will fail within the hour.”
“What intervention?” Percy’s voice was barely holding.
“Counteragent. I have the base components in my supplies but the preparation takes time. Thirty minutes. Maybe forty.”
“Then start.”
Farmon stood and moved to his station with a speed that contradicted his age.
Percival hadn’t released Mira’s hand. Solomon stood at the tent entrance, vibrating with a barely controlled fury. My hand rested on Mira’s stomach, feeling the heartbeats flutter beneath my palm, weaker with every passing minute.
Our children. Fading because someone in this camp wanted them dead.
Percival’s head lifted. His eyes moved to the spilled tea. Then to the tent entrance. His gaze tracked to outside.
“Where are Annora and Giselle?”
The tent went silent.
Fucking hell.
I looked at Solomon. Solomon looked at me. The same conclusion arriving simultaneously through our centuries of shared calculation.
“Find them,” I said.
Solomon moved and two soldiers followed. The search took six minutes and produced the answer I already knew.
“Gone,” Solomon reported from the perimeter. “Trails of rushed leaving.”
And then it hit me.
The portal.
They were running for the portal.
I stood. The movement cost me everything because it meant releasing Mira’s stomach, and the absence of her heartbeats beneath my palms left my hands feeling severed.
Percival took my place, both of his hands covering where mine had been, and I walked out of the tent with a stride that made every person in my path step aside.
The rage had nowhere to go. No target, no throat, no body to destroy. Just a clearing full of people who weren’t the ones responsible and a trail leading north that was getting colder by the second.
I grabbed the supply crate where the tea had sat and hurled it across the clearing. It splintered against a tree trunk and the sound wasn’t enough. Nothing would be enough until I had my hands on whoever did this.
A raven landed on the shattered crate. Tilted its head. Studied me with the blank, knowing stare.
My hand closed around its throat.
The bird shrieked. Wings beating against my wrist, claws raking my forearm, and the council representative nearby choked out a protest about kingdom treasure.
I didn’t hear him.
The raven was the closest living thing to my rage and my fingers were already tightening when its eyes pulsed and a crystal projection flashed to life from its pupils.
I froze.
Annora and Giselle at the eastern perimeter. Heads close.
“The children are the only protection she has.” Annora’s voice. “Without the heirs, the council’s authority supersedes the bond. Lucian can declare her mate until his tongue rots, but Veyndral law is clear. Remove the heirs and she becomes disposable.”
“And if Farmon’s medicine saves them?” Giselle’s voice.
“It won’t.” Annora produced a vial from inside her coat. Small, dark glass, sealed with wax. “Nighthollow extract. From the capital. Two drops in any liquid. The compound mimics natural miscarriage. By the time anyone identifies the agent, the damage is permanent.”
Giselle took the vial.
The image shifted. Giselle at the supply station, the cup of tea sitting unattended on the crate. Her back blocked the view for three seconds. When she stepped away, the vial was gone and the tea sat undisturbed.
The projection died. The raven blinked.
My vision went red.
“The northern ridge,” I said and threw the bird. “Now.”
Percival was already running, leaving Mira to Farmon. He was our fastest. Solomon flanked him, both moving through the forest at a speed that shredded the brush in their path. I followed, and behind me the sound of soldiers mobilizing confirmed that the camp understood what was happening.
The portal site sat in a clearing half a mile north.
The unstable crossing that had brought us to the human world, stuttering and unreliable, its energy signature visible through the trees as a faint pulse against the night.
Annora and Giselle stood at the threshold.
Annora’s composure was intact. Even fleeing, even caught. Giselle stood at her shoulder, claws half-extended, the soldier’s instinct to protect activated even now.
I shifted mid-stride. The wolf took me before I made the decision, bones cracking and reforming, my black fur absorbing the moonlight as I closed the distance.
Annora saw me coming.
Her mask failed completely. The aristocratic composure shattered into raw, animal terror as a king’s wolf bore down on her with killing intent pouring through.
I pinned her to the ground. My jaws closed around her throat, applying pressure without breaking skin.
Giselle bolted. Percival was faster. He materialized in front of her, blocking the path, and the snarl that rolled out of his chest pinned her mid-step.
Solomon came from behind. His hand closed around her throat and lifted her off the ground before she could turn. Giselle’s claws raked his forearm, drawing blood he didn’t register. Her feet kicked six inches above the forest floor.
My teeth pressed into Annora’s throat. The pulse beneath her skin was rapid, fragile, and the wolf wanted it to stop.
The portal crackled behind us. A familiar energy pattern, building toward activation.
My jaws opened wider around Annora’s throat. The woman who’d tried to murder Mira and my children would stop breathing and the world would be better for it.
“Lucian.”
The voice cut through the red. Through the rage, a register I hadn’t heard in a while.
The one that had shaped me before the crown did.
My teeth froze against Annora’s pulse.
I turned.
Two figures stood in the portal’s light.
The former King Altun and Queen Rheda.
My parents.
Father’s gaze moved from my wolf to the woman bleeding beneath my jaws, to Solomon’s hand around Giselle’s throat, to Percival’s snarl vibrating through the clearing.
I shifted back. Stood bloodied and bare with my fists clenched and my mate unconscious half a mile south because the woman at my feet had tried to kill our children.
My mother surveyed the scene. All of it. Her expression missed nothing and revealed less.
“Well,” Queen Rheda said. “It seems we’ve arrived at an interesting moment.”