Chapter 191

The heavy framed doors to Lucian’s study swung open, the atmosphere shifting instantly from the airy grandness of the halls to something dense, academic, and suffocatingly still.

Isabella stopped just past the threshold, her breath catching as her eyes found the source of her recent frustration.

Stacked in neat, imposing towers across his desk and the adjacent low tables were the missing volumes.

There they were—the dark, leather-bound histories and crumbling scrolls she had nearly broken her neck trying to find on the upper shelves of the library.

She walked toward the desk, her fingers hovered over a particularly thick tome with a tarnished silver-clasp binding as soon as she reached them.

"You’ve been busy," she noted, her voice flat, masking the sudden spike of adrenaline that made her pulse flutter in her throat.

Lucian moved behind her, his presence a cold, steady weight that seemed to pull at the very air around her.

He didn’t try to hide the evidence of his obsession. When he had first realized her blood wasn’t that of an ordinary wolf, he had been struck by a rare sensation: ignorance 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

He was a Sovereign who prided himself on knowing every threat and every power in his domain, yet the word Lycan had been little more than a whisper of a myth to him, one he had set out to dismantle and understand for her sake.

"I had to know," he admitted, "I couldn’t protect a woman I didn’t understand, and I couldn’t explain to you a power I hadn’t yet mapped out myself."

He reached past her, his hand brushing her shoulder as he picked up a scroll covered in archaic script.

The fleeting contact sent a jolt through her, a mixture of the mate bond’s warmth and a sharp, defensive prickle. "I didn’t take them to keep you in the dark, Isabella. I took them because I was in the dark, too."

Isabella looked at the stack of books—weeks of his private research, conducted in the dead of night while she slept.

It was a gesture of protection, yes, but it was also a reminder of the secrets he was capable of keeping when he thought he knew best.

Her mind flashed back to the South, to the way Alaric had "managed" her, and a cold shiver traced her spine.

Was this just another cage, only built with velvet and ancient books instead of silence and traps? "And what did you find, Lucian?" she asked, finally turning to face him, her jaw set.

Lucian didn’t answer her immediately, his gaze lingered on the stacks of books before he moved toward the velvet-draped chairs positioned by the window, where the afternoon sky was beginning to bruise into a the evening.

"Take a seat, Isabella," he gestured toward the plush seat, his eyes never leaving hers. "The history you are looking for isn’t a single story. If we are going to do this, we are going to do it properly. It is going to be a long explanation."

Isabella hesitated, her fingers still tracing the rough edge of a vellum scroll. The air in the study felt pressurized, the sheer weight of hidden knowledge making it hard to draw a full breath.

She looked from the imposing towers of books back to Lucian, then finally sank into the chair.

Lucian took the seat opposite her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped.

"I found that you are not a ’defect’ of a Southern pack," he began, "The histories I recovered speak of a creature that the Goddess herself sculpted before the first common wolf ever took a breath."

He gestured toward an open tome on the small table between them. Isabella’s stomach did a slow, sickening roll as she looked at the charcoal sketch.

It depicted a bipedal, silver-furred silhouette, its posture a terrifying fusion of feminine grace and monstrous strength, with eyes that burned like molten gold.

"They call it a Lycan. Not a shifter, but an ’unleashing’. The common wolves you grew up with are dependent on the pack and the moon, but a Lycan is a creature of raw, celestial heat. You don’t just change your shape, Isabella; you rewrite the laws of nature around you."

He reached out, his cool fingers ghosting over the back of her hand. Isabella stared at her own skin, imagining the sensation of her nails lengthening into ivory curved blades that had shredded heavy furs as if they were silk.

A wave of nausea hit her—a visceral fear of the thing living inside her marrow. "The records say your blood carries a ’localized holy sun’. It’s why the wounds you inflicted didn’t heal like they were supposed to."

At those words, Isabella’s eyes snapped to Lucian’s covered chest. Beneath the fine fabric of his shirt, she knew there were three jagged, permanent scars—the marks he had told her she inflicted during her first, uncontrolled eruption.

Her throat went dry. She still couldn’t remember it, the memory was a black hole in her mind but the guilt was a suffocating heat that rivaled the fire in her chest.

She had clawed the man who had bled for her.

"I... I didn’t mean to," she whispered, her voice cracking as she stared at his torso, her eyes wide with silent apology.

"You aren’t a wolf, Isabella," Lucian continued, his voice relentless, forcing her to listen. "You are a predator designed to erase obstacles without mercy."

The word predator echoed in her head, clashing with the image of the girl who had been bullied and abandoned in the Southern woods.

"The myths say the Lycan was buried by history because the world was too afraid of a power that couldn’t be controlled by Elders, councils, kings or even the goddess herself" Lucian’s voice grew dangerously soft, his eyes locking onto hers with a terrifying intensity.

"She wanted the world to forget their destructive existence. And for many centuries, the world actually did."

He reached out, his hand firm as he tilted her chin up, forcing her to stop staring at his chest and look at him.

His touch was cold, but the heat radiating from Isabella’s own skin was becoming an inferno. She was trembling, her heart hammering against her ribs.

"Until you," he finished.

Isabella looked at him, her eyes wide and wet with a fear she couldn’t name. "But why?"