The cost of the crown
1037 Words
Noah’s POV
By the time I reached the executive floor, the smell hit me. Not just the scent of gunpowder and ozone, but the metallic tang of blood.
I stopped at the entrance of my office. My desk, a solid slab of hand-carved oak, had been split down the middle. My files, the lifeblood of all the routes, were fluttering in the wind that whistled through the shattered windows. And there, slumped against the mahogany filing cabinet, was Sarah.
My secretary. The woman who had sent flowers to my mother for twenty years, who knew my coffee order before I did, and who had stayed late every night this week to help me navigate the North's legal traps. Her throat had been slit open.
Something in my chest finally snapped.
"Silas!"
The roar tore from my throat, vibrating the very foundations of the building.
From the shadows of the balcony, Silas stepped out. He looked unbothered, adjusting the cuffs of his silk suit as he looked at the c*****e he caused. "You're late, Noah. I was starting to think you didn't care about your staff."
I didn't give him the satisfaction of a reply. I moved faster than the human eye could track. Before Silas could even reach for the sidearm at his belt, I had him. My hand clamped around his throat, the force of my momentum carrying us across the room until his back slammed into the remaining pane of glass sixty stories above the city.
The glass groaned. Silas’s feet dangled over the edge, his face turning a panicked shade of purple as my claws began to prick the skin of his neck.
"Give me one reason," I hissed, my voice a low, gutteral vibration that sounded more like a beast than a man. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't drop you right now and spend the rest of the night hunting your lineage into extinction."
"The... the girl," Silas wheezed, his hands clawing uselessly at my wrist. "Aria... she won't... wake up."
I tightened my grip, my eyes glowing a feral, blinding amber. "If you touched her, I will peel the skin from your bones."
"Not... me," he gasped, his eyes bulging. "The Grand Luna. She used... Julian's gift."
I froze. My heart felt like it had been plunged into ice. "What did she do?"
"Julian left... a drug," Silas managed to choke out. "A sedative. The plan... the plan was for her to be subdued. I was supposed to... to take her tonight. Have my way with her without a fight." He let out a pathetic sound that was meant to be a laugh. "But your mother... She's smarter than both of us, Noah. She didn't want a trade. She wanted a funeral."
My blood ran cold. "Explain."
"She gave Aria... an overdose," Silas whispered, his voice failing. "She didn't want the North to have the Mark. She wanted to kill the girl and blame the Syndicate... start a war that would wipe out the debt and the buyers in one move. Aria…she’ll be dead by dawn."
The fury I felt for Silas was suddenly covered by a paralyzing terror for the woman back at the estate. My mother. She had looked me in the eye while she murdered the only light I had left in this godforsaken world.
"The antidote," I growled, slamming Silas against the glass again. A spiderweb of cracks bloomed behind his head. "Now."
Silas reached into his inner pocket with a trembling hand, pulling out a small, amber vial. He held it over the edge of the sixty-story drop, his eyes wide with a desperate, last-ditch leverage.
"The Northern shipping routes," Silas rasped. "The keys to the ports. The 'Blood Peace' contract, signed in your name. You give me the empire, Noah, and I give you the girl's life. Choose."
I looked at the vial. I looked at the city below, the empire I had sacrificed my youth, my soul, and my morality to build. Everything I was, everything the Vaelor name stood for, was wrapped up in those routes. Without them, we were nothing but a fallen house with a fancy name.
But then, I thought of Aria. I thought of the way she looked in the garden, the way her hand felt in mine, the way she had looked at me during the dinner, hoping, just for a second, that I was the man who could save her.
If she died, the empire would be a tomb. And I didn't want to be a king of a graveyard.
"The contract is in the safe," I said, my voice deathly quiet. I felt the weight of my father’s legacy crumbling as the words left my lips. "I’ll sign it. Give me the vial."
"Sign it first," Silas countered, his voice regaining its oily confidence.
I let go of his throat just enough for him to breathe, but I didn't pull him away from the ledge. I reached into my desk, the broken remains of it and pulled out the master ledger. With a hand that didn't shake, I scrambled my signature across the transfer of power, sealing the ruin of my family's fortune.
I shoved the paper into his chest. "Give. It. To. Me."
Silas snatched the paper, his eyes glinting with a triumph that made me want to tear his tongue out. He handed me the vial.
"A pleasure doing business, Alpha," he sneered, straightening his jacket as I stepped back. "I’d hurry if I were you. She hasn't got much time."
I didn't wait to hear the rest. I turned and ran, leaving the wreckage of my office and the corpse of my secretary behind. I had saved the girl, but I had lost the crown.
And as I sprinted toward my car, the only thought in my head wasn't the billions I had just signed away. It was the heat of Aria’s skin, and the hope that for once, I wasn't too late to be the man she deserved.
- Writer
