Nicholas’s POV

I couldn’t get her words out of my head.

*You are destined to die alone. And you completely deserve it.*

I stood in the center of my dark bedroom, the silence pressing in on me from every side. The air was thick. Stagnant. Sofia’s blood wasn’t on my hands—she had bitten down on that poison capsule before I could even process what she was doing—but the metallic stench of it clung to the inside of my nose.

I paced. Five heavy steps to the massive window overlooking the city. Five steps back to the empty, cold bed.

My wolf was a caged, rabid beast. He snarled and tore at my ribs from the inside. He wanted blood. He wanted to hunt. He wanted to rip the entire world apart until we found our mate. But there was nothing to hunt. Only ghosts and dead ends.

*You destroy everything you touch.*

I grabbed a heavy crystal glass from the side table and hurled it at the stone fireplace. It shattered into a thousand pieces, the sharp crash echoing violently in the cavernous room. It didn’t help. The destructive release did absolutely nothing to quiet the screaming in my skull.

Before Irina, I had heard the whispers. You couldn’t sit on a throne built of corpses and not hear the whispers in the dark.

They called me the Mad King. They said I was a monster. They said I was cursed.

*He killed his own parents,* the elders would murmur when they thought I was out of earshot. *He slaughtered his own blood for the crown.*

That was the rumor that fueled the terror that kept my empire in line. The truth of what my father was didn’t matter. In the underground world, fear was the only currency that counted, and my ledger was full.

But the other rumor... the one the omegas and the lower-ranking wolves whispered? That one had always cut deeper, finding the cracks in my armor.

*The Moon Goddess will never grant him a mate. A monster like that is meant to walk the earth alone. He will die alone.*

For years, I had believed them. Why wouldn’t I? I was violence incarnate. I was war and death and ash. What kind of benevolent deity would tie an innocent soul to mine? I had accepted my fate. I would rule in blood, I would conquer my enemies, and I would die in silence. Utterly alone.

Then, Irina happened.

The moment I pulled her from that auditorium, the moment her delicate scent hit my lungs, the entire universe had shifted. The Goddess hadn’t cursed me. She had given me a miracle. A second-chance mate. A fragile, broken girl who somehow held the power to calm the raging inferno inside me.

And I had ruined it. I had terrified her. I had driven her away.

*Even your own mate abandoned you.*

I gritted my teeth. The pressure in my jaw was enough to crack bone. I squeezed my eyes shut, a deep, guttural growl ripping from my throat. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

And then, the realization hit me. A slow, freezing bucket of ice water poured directly over my racing heart, extinguishing the fiery rage and leaving nothing but cold dread.

Sofia was dead.

She died in my dungeon. In my interrogation chair. While my hand was around her throat.

Sofia was the only person in this massive, suffocating palace who had shown Irina an ounce of genuine kindness. She had brought Irina normal clothes. She had smiled at her. She had treated my broken mate like a human being instead of a slave.

If I ever found Irina... *when* I found Irina... how the hell was I going to explain this?

She wouldn’t believe the truth. Why would she? She already saw me as a monster. She already thought I was a ruthless, cold-blooded killer. If she found out her only friend in this palace died a horrific, bloody death in the depths of my prison, she would immediately assume the worst.

She will think I murdered her.

She will think I slaughtered the only person who was kind to her just to prove a point.

The thought was paralyzing. It was another brick. Another massive, impenetrable wall slamming down between us. I had spent four days in that medical wing letting her heal me, letting her sit by my bed, praying she would eventually see the man underneath the monster. And now, I had just handed her another reason to be terrified of me forever.

I couldn’t breathe. The panic was thick and heavy, wrapping around my throat like a vice.

I stumbled backward and dropped heavily onto the leather couch near the window. My head was pounding with a vicious, relentless rhythm. My vision swam.

The exhaustion finally caught up with me. It wasn’t a slow, peaceful drift into sleep. It was a violent crash. My body had been running on pure adrenaline, violence, and sheer willpower for three agonizing months. I hadn’t slept more than two hours a night since I woke up and found her gone.

The room spun slowly in the dark.

My eyelids grew incredibly heavy. I felt like I was sinking into a deep, muddy river. The grogginess pulled me down, suffocating the panic, dragging me into a restless, heavy unconsciousness.

The dream started in silence.

There was no screaming. No blood. No cold dungeon walls. No mocking laughter.

It was a soft, glowing space. Hazy and bright. Like the sun filtering through a thick canopy of trees in the middle of summer.

I was standing in the center of a room I didn’t recognize. The air smelled like rain. Her scent. Pure, clean, and impossibly close. It wrapped around me, soothing the frantic pacing of my wolf.

My wolf whined softly in my chest. He wasn’t aggressive anymore. He was sitting at attention, his ears perked, staring straight ahead.

I followed his gaze.

There, standing a few feet away in the soft light, was a child.

A little boy.

He was small, maybe just a toddler, dressed in soft, comfortable clothes. He had a mop of dark, unruly hair. He was standing on slightly unsteady legs, looking directly at me.

My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t move. I was completely paralyzed by a sudden, overwhelming wave of emotion. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t fear. It was a profound, aching love that I didn’t even know I was capable of feeling.

The boy didn’t look scared. He didn’t shrink away from my massive frame. He didn’t sense the blood on my hands or the violence in my past. He didn’t see the Mad King.

He took a wobbly step forward.

Then another.

He reached out a tiny, chubby hand toward me.

I slowly, carefully, dropped to one knee. I was terrified of scaring him. I was terrified of moving too fast and breaking the beautiful illusion. I reached my own hand out. My large, scarred fingers were trembling violently as they moved toward his small ones.

The boy tilted his head.

He looked up at me.

The golden light caught his face perfectly.

My heart stopped beating entirely.

His eyes.

They were a deep, mesmerizing forest green.

My eyes.

He had my eyes.

A massive jolt of electricity shot up my arm, tearing through the dream and shattering the light.

I woke up with a start.