The Lycan King's Second Chance Mate: Rise of the Traitor's Daughter-Chapter 164: She’s Mine

Griffin~

I didn’t know what I was expecting when I walked into the living room.

But it sure as hell wasn’t this.

There she was — Natalie.

My Natalie.

Wrapped up in another man’s arms like she belonged there. Like he was the only thing holding her world together.

I stopped dead, feet rooted to the floor. My chest locked up so tight it felt like I was breathing through a straw. I opened my mouth, desperate to say something — anything — but the words just crumbled before they even hit my tongue.

And the man holding her?

The second I saw him — felt him — it was like taking a punch straight to the gut. The smell. The way he carried himself. That heavy, suffocating weight of power bleeding off him like a storm just waiting to tear everything apart.

Cole Lucky.

The guy I’d been living under his room for the past few days. The man whose scent was wrapped around Natalie like a brand she didn’t even know she was wearing.

He tilted his head slightly, a humorless, razor-thin smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. His eyes — cold, sharp, merciless — locked onto mine and didn’t let go.

"Explain," he said coldly.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Couldn’t.

"No?" he said, voice curling into something almost gentle — almost mocking. "Nothing to say?"

I tried. God, I tried. But my throat slammed shut like a prison gate, and all I could do was stand there, stupid and silent, drowning in the weight of it.

That’s when Natalie moved.

She grabbed my arm, frantic, pulling me closer, stepping between us like she could shield me from a hurricane with just her body.

"Zane, wait," she begged, voice trembling like a string pulled too tight. "Please... I was going to tell you. I swear. It’s not what you think."

Her hands fluttered uselessly, like she was trying to catch the right words out of thin air. But Cole — no, not Cole, not anymore — he wasn’t looking at her.

He was looking at me.

Sizing me up like a butcher picking his next cut.

He inhaled slow and deep, like he was counting to keep from breaking me in half right then and there.

One. Two.

The fury rolling off him was almost physical — like standing too close to a wildfire you couldn’t outrun.

"I suggest," he said, his voice dropping so low it made the ground feel like it might split open beneath us, "you start explaining... before I decide Griffin’s head would look better hanging on my wall."

I flinched. Couldn’t help it.

And then, somewhere deep inside, something inside me snapped.

When I had first woken up in that damn glass coffin... when I had first seen Natalie again after everything...

I had known something was different.

She didn’t have my uncle Darius’s mark anymore. The sick, disgusting claim he had burned into her against her will — it was gone.

And her scent...

It wasn’t just hers anymore. It was mixed. Bound. Tangled with a scent far more powerful than any I had ever known.

I knew it then.

Deep down, in that place you bury things you can’t bear to face, I knew.

Natalie had been claimed by another man.

And I told myself — lied to myself — that it wasn’t what it seemed.

Maybe it was her Celestial Princess blood awakening, I thought. Maybe that’s why she smelled different.

Anything. Anything but the truth.

Because if it was true...

If it was Cole Lucky...

If she belonged to someone else...

The realization slammed into me now with the force of a thousand blows.

As they stood there in front of me, I could smell it—his scent. It was all over her.

Cole Lucky’s scent was tangled into Natalie like it was stitched into her very bones. And worse — hers was all over him too. It was a bond so deep, so raw, so final, it felt like it was strangling the very air out of my lungs.

I staggered back a step, the room tilting violently around me. My vision blurred. My chest squeezed tight, each breath a losing battle, like I was drowning in air too thick to breathe.

"No," I rasped, the word falling from my lips like a broken prayer.

"No, no, no, no—she’s mine—mine—MINE!"

Tears blurred my vision, hot and bitter, burning a trail down my face before I even realized they were there. Unstoppable. Merciless.

Natalie’s face crumpled in horror, like my pain was carving straight into her too.

"Griffin..." she whispered, her voice trembling as she reached out toward me.

I backed away from her like she was a loaded gun aimed straight at my heart.

"You’re mine," I choked out, the words breaking apart as they left me. "We’re fated! The Goddess herself chose us! You were always supposed to be mine!"

Inside me, my wolf thrashed — clawing, howling, a beast consumed by grief and rage so raw it shredded whatever was left of my sanity.

I couldn’t stop it.

With a scream that shook the walls, my body convulsed, bones snapping, skin tearing as my wolf ripped its way out of me in a frenzy of muscle and fur and blinding agony.

In a heartbeat, I was no longer a man.

I was a creature of grief.

A massive, wild, brown-furred wolf, foam at my mouth, eyes wide and unhinged with heartbreak and fury.

And there was only one thing left to do.

Challenge him. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

I lowered my head, baring my teeth in a savage snarl, ears pinned back. The sound I ripped from my throat was deep, primal — loud enough to make the windows tremble in their frames.

And Cole...

Cole didn’t even blink.

He stood there, calm as a goddamn executioner. Cold. Silent. His icy blue eyes locked onto mine, unreadable and merciless.

For a heartbeat, everything froze.

Then the air changed.

It wasn’t just dominance that rolled off him — it was something bigger, something unnatural. A power that weighed down the world itself.

I flinched back, instincts screaming at me to run.

Because in that terrible moment, I realized the truth. Cole wasn’t just any Alpha. He carried the blood of royalty — not just any royalty, but the Lycan Alpha King himself.

He was born deadly.

Ancient power flared behind his eyes — something monstrous, something vast, something that should never walk among men.

And with nothing but a breath... a tilt of his head...

He unleashed it.

The fierceness of it smashed into me like a mountain collapsing.

I whimpered — a broken, pitiful sound — as my legs buckled beneath me. I tried to hold on to some shred of pride, but my body betrayed me.

Humiliation burned through me as I lost control and pissed myself right there on the expensive hardwood floor.

Natalie gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.

Cole didn’t move.

He just stared at me with those frozen, ancient eyes — not human, not wolf — something else entirely.

"Pathetic," he said, voice colder than the grave.

And as darkness swallowed me whole, the last thing I saw was him standing over me —

an executioner in the skin of a man, a monster dressed in human bones.

I collapsed onto the floor in a twitching heap and knew nothing more.