Chapter 3: The King's Burden
The weight in my arms was almost nothing. It was the weightlessness of a child, not a nineteen-year-old woman. Yet, the burden that settled in my soul the moment Kaira Blackthorn's small, broken body went limp was the heaviest I had ever carried.
I caught her mid-fall, her sudden unconsciousness a relief mixed with a terrifying, primal alarm. Her sharp, hateful shriek—the one that had clawed its way out of her throat and commanded silence—was still ringing in my ears. It hadn't been her voice. It was too deep, too layered, tainted with an ancient, cold malice that made my own powerful wolf, Fenrir, snarl deep in my chest.
"Mate," Fenrir growled, the word laced with equal parts desperate recognition and utter confusion. "She is ours, yet she hates us."
I adjusted my grip, cradling her head against the heavy wool of my tunic. Her hair was matted with dust and filth, and her skin was pale, almost translucent beneath the dirt. The scars I'd glimpsed on her arms—old, thin white lines—were impossible to ignore. They weren't battle scars; they looked like the signature of a slow, continuous torment.
I had spent five years tracking her, using ancient lore and faded records from my parents' assassination investigation. I had pictured the Moon's Mate as fierce, regal, perhaps guarded—a partner worthy of the Lunar Crown. Instead, I found a creature terrified of the sun, half-feral, and haunted by something monstrous.
I looked down at her. Her face, even slack in unconsciousness, was beautiful in a fragile, tragic way. But what terrified me was the sudden, overwhelming pull.
The mate-bond, which had been dormant, a cold, empty ache in my chest for years, had ignited like a supernova the moment she was free. It wasn't the gentle, soul-deep connection described in the sagas. It was a vicious, demanding tether, pulling my heart out of my body and demanding that I destroy anyone, anything, that had ever dared to hurt her.
I felt, for the first time in years, completely and utterly out of control.
"Fenrir, calm," I ordered internally.
The king in me, Aric, maintained a strategic mask. But the male beneath was pure, frantic wolf.
A familiar scent cut through the terror and the musk of the earth—clove and mountain herbs. My Beta, Draven, emerged from the surrounding forest, followed by two armed guards. Draven had the solid build of a fortress and eyes that missed nothing.
He stopped dead when he saw me, the feared, cold King of Silvercrest, kneeling in the dirt, holding a starving, unconscious girl.
"Your Majesty," Draven said, his voice flat, immediately assessing the situation. "Is this… is this the one?"
I stood, careful not to jostle Kaira, and held her tightly against my armor. The sheer contrast—my immense strength supporting her fragility—was almost unbearable.
"Yes. This is Kaira Blackthorn," I confirmed, my voice a low, gravelly command. "She is the Moon's Mate."
Draven's normally impassive face showed a flicker of skepticism. He was fiercely loyal, but deeply pragmatic. He had spent years helping me search for a regal, powerful Luna, and this broken thing in my arms was certainly not what he'd expected.
"The prophecy claimed a woman of lunar strength, Your Majesty. This woman is malnourished and terrified," Draven observed, his gaze traveling from her dirty hair to her bare feet. "And when we arrived, we heard a shriek that sounded… inhuman."
The honesty was welcome, but it grated on my raw nerves. I felt the powerful, irrational urge to silence my Beta, to challenge his judgment simply for speaking the truth. Protection. The instinct was so strong it tasted like blood.
"She has been held underground for over a decade, Draven," I snapped, my tone cold enough to freeze the air. "She is in shock. Arrange transport immediately. She goes straight to the Royal Quarters. No one touches her but the physician. And I mean no one."
"Understood," Draven replied, but he didn't move yet. His eyes were fixed on the scars just visible below the edge of her tattered tunic. "The Moon Priestess is waiting at the castle. Solene insisted she be informed the instant we had success."
I knew what that meant. Solene, with her endless prophecy archives, would not see a traumatized girl; she would see a walking catastrophe.
"The physician first. The priestess second," I decreed. "I need to know what they did to her. And I need to know why her wolf is silent."
Draven nodded, finally moving to organize the silent extraction.
As the guards prepared the covered carriage, I walked a short distance away, carrying Kaira until I found a sturdy, moss-covered log to sit on. I kept her nestled securely in my lap, shielded from the sunlight and the wind.
It was in this moment of quiet isolation that Fenrir truly surged forward.
Mate. Home. Safe now. The wolf was a whirlwind of possessive relief, completely overriding the strategic mind of the King. Scent her, Alpha. Claim her!
I fought the urge. I knew, instinctively, that the physical claiming—the bond bite—would be catastrophic. The moment she woke, she'd tried to kill me. She feared me. Claiming her now would be an act of subjugation, not love, and it might just break her entirely.
Yet, the agonizing realization struck me: she was mine, and I loved her. Not with the calculated affection I'd prepared to offer my Luna, but with a sudden, devastating force that tore through the walls I'd built around my heart since my parents' murder.
I, Aric Varyn, the King who felt nothing, now felt everything. And what I felt was pure devotion for a scared, broken girl who despised the very sight of me.
I gently pushed a strand of matted hair from her forehead. That was when I noticed the darkness.
It wasn't a shadow. It was a subtle, ephemeral distortion in the air around her, like heat rising from asphalt, only this was cold. It pulsed faintly, almost invisibly, whenever my protective scent or touch grew too strong.
This wasn't just shock. This was the Echo.
I suddenly recalled the chilling contempt in that layered voice, the words not her own: "Y-you… are… not… my… King."
My ancestors' archives held whispers of the Monstrosity, the creature sealed within a bloodline. They called it The Echo because it grew stronger by reflecting the host's pain, feeding on their trauma until it was the only voice left.
Kaira Blackthorn was not just my mate; she was a vessel. And the creature sealed inside her was reacting to me, the Moon's Mate, as the catalyst for its freedom.
If she was truly the weapon destined to end my kingdom, as the oldest scrolls suggested, my finding her had just pulled the trigger.
I glanced up as the covered carriage pulled silently through the trees. Draven gave me a meaningful look—a look that said, We are exposed. We are vulnerable. Be the King.
I rose, Kaira still held carefully against my body.
I will not lose her again, I vowed to Fenrir. But I must decide if I can love someone who might destroy me, before she destroys herself.
I stepped into the carriage, the door closing out the brutal sun. I sat down, settling Kaira onto the velvet seat next to me, her head pillowed on my lap. The carriage began to move, carrying us toward Silvercrest—toward the court, the prophecy, and the inevitable confrontation with the ancient fear I had just unleashed.