Chapter 25 The King Protects
Leonidas Volkov stood in the tactical control room, not his office. Rage ran cold and heavy through his veins.
The fight had ended hours ago, but that word still echoed in the soundproof room: Coward.
She had called him a coward. She—the intruder, the spy, the civilian anomaly he’d spared on a whim—dared to judge him.
The trust he’d felt growing—the strange truce forged through touch and care—had been incinerated.
She had used him just as much as she accused him of using her.
She had exploited her closeness to him to violate his most intimate sanctuary.
His fury at this betrayal was so deep, so absolute, it nearly suffocated him.
He was reviewing reports on the retaliation against the Reapers, trying to channel that fury into the war outside, when Marius entered.
The consigliere didn’t need to say anything. The rigidity in his posture was a report in itself.
“They know,” Leonidas said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, sir,” Marius confirmed, his voice low. “Our counterintelligence team intercepted communications. The Reapers don’t know who she is. They don’t know her name. But they know you have a ‘guest.’ A civilian woman, kept in your private quarters.”
Marius’s prediction had become reality.
Leonidas’s fury, until then focused on Amara, shifted targets instantly. His hatred over her betrayal was eclipsed by a wave of pure territorial possessiveness.
The Reapers. Those butchers. They were talking about her. They were looking at his tower. They were targeting what was his.
“They see her,” Marius continued, “exactly as we predicted. Your only weakness.”
“She’s not a weakness,” Leonidas growled, his voice a low hiss. “She’s a distraction being handled.”
“To them,” Marius countered calmly, “it’s the same thing.”
Just as Marius’s words hung in the air, a silent alarm flashed on Leonidas’s personal monitor. A red icon pulsed: PENTHOUSE PERIMETER ALERT.
Both men froze.
“The Praetorians?” Leonidas asked, already pulling up the penthouse camera feeds.
“No communication. The alert isn’t from the main elevator. It’s from the service stairwell.”
Leonidas cycled through the cameras. The main hall. Empty. The library. Empty. Her guest room.
Empty.
The bed was unmade. She wasn’t there.
“Shit,” Leonidas hissed.
He switched to the corridor cameras, one floor down. “Marius, track her.”
“Already on it, sir. She’s... she’s in the residential levels. Access to the Inner Garden.”
“How?” Leonidas demanded, his voice dropping to a level of controlled fury that made men tremble. “How did she get past the Praetorians?”
“Shift change,” Marius said, his own voice tight with anger at the failure. He pulled up the elevator corridor footage from five minutes ago.
It showed the two Praetorian guards running their routine check-in with the new team. For exactly three seconds, both had their backs to the service stairwell door. The door—which Leonidas knew to be fireproof and reinforced—opened a crack.
Amara slipped out.
She wasn’t in her civilian pajamas. She was wearing a gray cleaning uniform, which she must have stolen from a service cart left in the corridor by a careless employee.
She was a shadow. Desperate. And now, loose.
“Idiot,” Leonidas growled. His fury at her betrayal transformed into icy panic. She was an “innocent” loose in a war zone. “She’s not trying to escape the Bastion,” he realized aloud. “She’s just trying to escape me.”
Her desperation had made her reckless.
“She doesn’t know what’s out there,” Marius said.
“Seal the Garden,” Leonidas ordered, already moving toward his office door.
“Sir,” Marius’s voice was stone. “Too late.”
Marius switched the main feed to the Inner Garden camera. The Garden was an oasis of glass and greenery in the heart of the residential fortress, a semi-public area for his highest-level lieutenants.
Amara was there, running between the exotic trees, her gray cleaning uniform making her stand out against the green. She looked lost, hunted.
And then, two men entered the frame.
They wore the green coveralls of the Bastion’s gardeners. But they didn’t move like gardeners. They dropped their pruning tools and moved toward her. A containment circle.
Infiltrators. Reapers.
“It was a trap,” Leonidas realized. The rage was so intense it left him completely calm. “They knew she was restless. They waited for her to run.”
They weren't targeting him. They were targeting her.
Leonidas didn't wait for the elevator. He slammed his palm against the wall beside his desk, revealing a private tactical staircase that descended directly to his lower-level command center.
He didn't grab his weapon. He was beyond that.
“Marius, response team, now!”
Leonidas descended the stairs two at a time. His mind was clear. The rage was a laser. They had put their hands on what was his. They had confirmed his vulnerability. And now, he would teach them what happened to men who touched the King's treasure.
He burst from the staircase into the residential corridor, Marius and four armed Praetorians right behind him.
The Inner Garden was thirty meters away.
He heard her scream.
It was a short, muffled sound.
Leonidas moved. There was no warning. Only violence.
He burst through the glass doors of the Garden.
The scene: Amara was fighting fiercely. She had sunk her teeth into the arm of one of the infiltrators, who snarled in pain. The second man was behind her, a cloth—probably soaked in chloroform—in his hand, trying to pin her arms.
They didn't hear him coming.
The man holding the cloth went first. Leonidas struck him from behind, his fist—the same knuckles she had cleaned—connecting with the base of the man's skull. The sound was a dull, wet crack. The man dropped like a sack of stones.
The second Reaper released Amara, his face a mask of shock, trying to draw a knife from his boot.
He wasn't fast enough. Leonidas's Praetorians were on him, weapons aimed, but Leonidas was faster.
He grabbed the man's arm—the arm Amara had bitten—and twisted. The sound of bone snapping was obscenely loud in the silent garden. The man screamed.
The Praetorians subdued him, dragging him away, unconscious or dying. It didn't matter.
It was all over in four seconds.
Silence.
Amara was on the stone floor, leaning against a fountain, gasping. Her chest heaved. Her cleaning uniform was torn. There was a bite mark on her arm—her own, from how fiercely she had fought.
She looked at him. The terror in her eyes was absolute. The terror of the attempted kidnapping mixed with the terror of him being there.
Leonidas stood still for a moment, his own chest heaving with adrenaline. The fury he felt was so overwhelming he could barely form words.
She had been right. Marius had been right. She was his weakness. And she had just proven it, walking blithely into the trap like a lamb to the slaughter.
He took a step toward her. She flinched.
“Get up,” he ordered. His voice was a low growl, almost inaudible.
She struggled to stand, her legs shaking so badly they barely held her.
He didn't wait. He grabbed her.
He didn't hold her gently. He didn't comfort her. He grabbed her upper arm, his fingers digging in like steel claws, and pulled her to him.
“You,” he hissed, his face inches from hers.
She could smell his rage, the metallic scent of the fight.
He was furious. But beneath the fury, she could see something else in his dark eyes. Panic. A cold, possessive panic that mirrored her own.
He wasn't angry that she had disobeyed.
He was terrified and furious that she had almost been caught. That she had almost been taken from him.
Without another word, he began walking, dragging her behind him. He wasn't escorting her. He was dragging her. Back to the main elevator, away from the garden, away from her pathetic escape attempt.
He shoved her into the elevator, his Praetorian guards entering behind them. He didn't release her. His hand remained on her arm like a steel cuff during the entire silent ascent.
When the doors opened at the penthouse, he didn't let her go. He dragged her across the marble hall and only released her when they were in the middle of the room.
“Stay here,” he ordered.
He turned to the Praetorians. “No one,” he said to them, his voice now pure ice, “enters or leaves this room. If she tries to get past you… shoot her in the knees.”
The guards nodded, their faces impassive.
Leonidas turned to Amara. She was trembling, holding the arm where he had grabbed her.
He took a step toward her. “You are a reckless fool,” he said, his voice low and filled with controlled venom. “You had no idea what was out there. You had no idea.”
He turned his back, too angry to even look at her. He walked to the bar, his hands trembling with residual adrenaline.
He wasn't just protecting her. He was caging her. Because the outside world had just proven that she was the only thing he couldn't risk losing.