Chapter 2 #2
Eris hesitated. Pride warred with exhaustion, but Kareon’s presence pressed against her like chains. Finally, she nodded. She threw Kareon one last glare, then stepped closer to Stephan.
"Fine," she breathed.
Stephan’s hand brushed her back protectively. Then, without a word, he lifted her into his arms as gasps rippled through the courtyard. Eris stiffened. The warmth of him, the sheer strength in his hold, sent a shiver down her spine.
"Put me down," she muttered. But she didn’t fight. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Stephan didn’t answer. Didn’t even acknowledge the words. His grip was unyielding, as if letting go meant losing more than her weight.
Kareon watched them go, his smirk faltering. For all his bravado, Eris Dragov unsettled him, and he hated it.
Stephan did not look back, his rage burning, silent and deadly. Waiting. Kareon had touched what was his, and soon, he would understand how grave that mistake had been.
The infirmary door clicked shut behind them. Silence followed, sharp and breathless.
Stephan moved like a man walking a blade’s edge, each step measured, Eris still in his arms. Her breath warmed his collarbone. Rage still pulsed beneath his skin, electric, at the thought of tearing Kareon apart.
At the nearest cot, he set her down with care. She pulled away instantly. A small, deliberate retreat, like a flinch disguised as dignity, and it cut deeper than anything she could’ve said.
Stephan straightened, jaw tight. “You’re hurt,” he said quietly. “Sit.”
“I am sitting,” she murmured, though she barely touched the edge of the cot—half-poised to rise again, like surrender might cost too much.
He reached for her wrist to check the bruising. She yanked it back, hard. Their eyes locked. Hers were wide. Bright. Brighter than they should’ve been.
“You didn’t have to carry me like some broken thing,” she said, her voice unsteady. “You made me look weak.”
The words landed like a slap.
Stephan stepped back instinctively, as if giving her space would ease the sting.
“You were shaking.”
“I was startled.”
“He shoved you.”
“Exactly. Because he thinks I’m fragile, and you proved him right. In front of half the Summit.”
His temper flared. “So I should’ve just let him—” He stopped himself, jaw clenched. “I can’t believe we’re fighting about this.”
“I didn’t need saving.”
His voice sharpened. “I wasn’t going to stand there and watch him put his hands on you, Eris. I carried you because the alternative was dragging Kareon off the floor.”
She stiffened. “So this was about him.”
“No,” Stephan said, voice strained. “This was about you. You were hurt.”
She took a step back, arms folding like armor.
“You never listen. I keep saying I can handle myself. But of course you had to swoop in. Make it a spectacle. A rescue.”
“I don’t think you’re fragile,” he said, quiet but firm. “But I can’t pretend I don’t care when someone lays a hand on you.”
“Then stop proving to everyone else that you think I’m not enough,” she said. “I don’t need you, Stephan.”
The words came too fast—too sharp—before she could stop them. She hadn’t meant them like that. Not really. But it was too late. She saw it in the flicker of hurt in his eyes, in the way his breath hitched.
“Fine,” he murmured. “Then I’ll do us both a favor and get out of your way.”
His voice wasn’t cold, just broken. She opened her mouth.
She wanted to say something, to take it back.
But the words tangled. Too many emotions, not enough space.
She’d never been good at letting them out when it mattered most. So she said nothing.
Just curled her fists, furious with him, with herself.
She wasn’t even sure who she was angry at anymore.
Stephan gave a short nod. The mask slipped back into place. Prince. Soldier. Stranger.
“Get some rest,” he said.
He turned toward the door. Eris didn’t stop him. She watched his back, watched hope flicker when he paused, his hand hovering on the frame, but he didn’t look back. The door closed. And the silence he left behind felt heavier than anything Kareon could’ve thrown at her.
This wasn’t how it was meant to go, not after a year of skirting around truth. Not after everything. But the shame—the fear that she still looked small, fragile, that he might see her that way too—stung too much.
She gathered her things and stormed out, limping, but furious. Let them think what they want. Let them doubt me. She would not let this place shrink her into nothing. I am Eris Dragov. And Dragovs don’t cower.
But the image of him—his silence, his retreat—trailed behind her like a ghost she couldn’t shake. And it ached, deeper than she dared admit.
The Astareth Assembly – A Fractured Court
The grand hall of Astareth Summit rose like a cathedral of dark marble and flickering firelight, its chandeliers burning with eternal flames. Tonight, however, it resembled a battlefield.
A mandatory assembly had convened to reinforce unity and order, gathering the Summit’s factions under one roof. Unity was a facade; division ran deep, drawn in bloodlines and hierarchy.
Eris Dragov sat elevated on the dais where the Firstblood nobility reigned, adorned in gold-trimmed attire and sharp gazes: power wrapped in silk and tradition.
A few seats away, Stephan Dragov remained unmoving.
They did not exchange glances, but between them stretched the weight of everything unsaid.
Crimson Vitae shimmered in her goblet, a synthetic sacrament of so-called progress. Eris sipped, tasting nothing but scrutiny: They were watching her. They always had.
Her hands were steady, but the weight in her chest told another story.
To the Obsidian Order, she and her kind were relics.
They reclined at the fringes, draped in modern wealth: gold rings, tailored silks, effortless arrogance.
Their eyes flicked to sleek tech at their wrists, tracking data she couldn’t see.
They drank the same synthetic blood, but to them, it was an insult.
They still hunted, still fed in the dark, still defied the crown, and no one stopped them.
At the bottom of the hall, humans and Lycans sat in forced silence, not together, never together.
Humans were tolerated; Lycans were controlled.
They sat at separate tables, their blood rationed and restricted.
They did not drink for pleasure; they fed to survive.
And unlike everyone else, they were watched.
Obsidian soldiers lined the exits, weapons ready—enforcers of order within the Summit halls and, increasingly, throughout Goznoth. If a Lycan fought, they simply disappeared.
The air crackled with unspoken violence. This was a powder keg awaiting a spark.
A noble speaker took the podium, his embroidered robes shimmering under the firelight, his voice deep and commanding.
"Look how far we have come," he proclaimed. "Under the Dragov kings, we have carved civilization from chaos."
He spoke of regulation, of honor, of the end of the old ways. No more feeding in the streets. No more unwilling turnings. A ripple of nods passed through the Firstblood Monarchists. But at the edges of the room, mocking smirks appeared. The Obsidian Order lounged, detached and amused.
A boy in sleek black fabric, silver rings flashing, whispered just loud enough: “And yet, they still light their homes with candles, as if wax can hold back time. Still dress like ghosts of a world already dead. Pathetic.”
Soft laughter followed. A deliberate insult.
The speaker pressed on, ignoring them. "The Lycans and humans live among us as equals. They have been given a place, a voice. Their place in Goznoth is secure—"
"If that’s true," a voice cut in from the lowest tier, "then why do the Dragovs let the Obsidian Order steal our land, forcing us to live in cages?"
Silence struck like a blade. Every head turned. Firstbloods froze. The air sharpened, waiting to snap. At the Lycans’ table, a student had risen, his voice too calm, too even, as if he already knew the consequences and had accepted them.
Then, all at once, every gaze flickered to Kareon. He did not speak. He only watched. A flicker of command sharpened in his gaze.
The boy who had dared speak when no one else would sat back down, not out of fear, but out of obedience. Kareon Duskbane did not take control: He was control. His name was a curse against the crown. A reckoning promised.
The Lycans could not yet afford an open war, but under Kareon, the rebellion had become a phantom, silent and deadly.
There was no evidence, no survivors, only strikes where it hurt most. Even the Obsidian Order had learned to be careful.
And yet, here he sat, still a threat, still the reason the Lycans had teeth in this fight.
Tonight, for the first time, his gaze settled on her: Eris Dragov.
She was a Firstblood princess, delicate in form yet burdened by the weight of an empire.
A mystery to him, born of reformists, raised among relics of the old order.
The whispers had always called her odd, too quiet, too wild, too attuned to things no one else could feel.
She sat among the Firstbloods, yet did not belong. The air bent around her, stitched with silent defiance. When she looked at Stephan, Kareon saw it—a fracture, a bond once unbreakable, now trembling.
She did not notice his gaze. But Stephan did, and he did not like it.
Kareon caught the tension in Stephan’s shoulders, the slow curl of his fingers around the goblet. Small shifts, but to Kareon, they roared.
Stephan Dragov was many things: a warrior, a prince, a ruler before his time. But above all, he was a man who did not take kindly to threats.
Eris had always been his: by blood, by story, by something older than either. And no one would take her from him.
Kareon smiled. Nothing thrilled him more than a challenge.
And then came laughter, slow and oily.