Moonbound To Hell: The Cursed Lycan's Mate

Chapter 18

Dining Hall - 9pm

The dining hall was quiet at this hour. Only a few servants moved silently along the walls, refilling my wine glass whenever it dipped below half. I sat at the head of the long table, cutting into a rare steak with precise movements. The meat was perfect — bloody, tender, exactly how I liked it after a long day of dealing with weak nobles and border reports.

The doors opened. I looked up.

Evie walked in wearing silk milky-colored pyjamas that clung to her body like a second skin. The fabric was thin, almost translucent under the warm lights, outlining the curve of her breasts and the sway of her hips with every step. Her hair was loose, still slightly damp from a shower, and those crimson streaks caught the light like fresh blood. She looked sinful and comfortable like she belonged in my bed and nowhere else.

She crossed the room without hesitation and slid into the seat to my right, reaching for a plate as if she belonged there—which she did, as my queen. A servant hurried forward to pour her wine, but she waved them off, helping herself instead.

“You’re awake,” I said in a low voice. I set my knife down, studying her.“You survived what most women don't in four days. Most women would be hiding in their rooms after what happened at the event.”

Evie shrugged, chewing slowly. “I’ve survived worse in Thornwall. A few arrows aren’t going to kill me.”

I took a sip of wine, studying her. I wanted to know more about the woman the Moon Goddess had thrown into my cursed life. "Tell me about Thornwall, then. What shaped you there?"

She speared a piece of meat with her fork, chewing thoughtfully before answering. "Shaped me? Survival, mostly. Moved around a lot in the outer territories. Thornwall Pack lands were rough back then, even now it hasn't changed. Learned to handle myself with whoever crossed my path. Men, wolves, doesn't matter — if they had information or resources, I got what I needed. You earn your place or you die. I earned mine."

The way she said it - casual, almost bored — sent a dark twist through my gut. Earned her place!! With warriors...Men. I pictured her in that brutal pack, surrounded by males who saw a beautiful hybrid woman and took what they wanted. My hand tightened around the wine glass.

“So you… earned your place by pleasing them?” I asked, keeping my voice level even as jealousy and disgust rose. “Sucking up to the strong ones to stay alive?”

Evie paused, fork halfway to her mouth. She looked at me for a long second, then shrugged again. “I did what I had to. Survival isn’t pretty, you do what you have to when no one's protecting you. I wasn't exactly welcome in any pack because of my father. Hybrid blood, remember? So yeah, I learned to adapt. Charm when needed. Fight when charming failed. Thornwall taught me a lot about reading people. Men especially — they're predictable when you know what they want”

That was all she said. No denial. No explanation. She went back to eating like my words meant nothing. The image burned into my mind — Evie on her knees for those filthy warriors, using her body to stay alive. My mate. My queen. The woman whose p***y I had claimed for three straight days.

I felt sick.

"You let them use you," I said, voice dropping lower. "Like a common w***e trading favors for safety."

"If that's how you see it." She didn't even look up.

"Ghosts don't concern me," I said coldly, even though my aura flared, "But my queen should understand her place. The past is dead. Loyalty isn't."

Evie raised an eyebrow, unbothered, and drank. "Loyalty? I signed the contract. I survived your rut. What more do you want — my entire history rewritten? I'm not some purebred virgin from the inner courts, Nyx. I lived. That's all."

Lived.The word sat in my chest like a blade. No reassurance. No proof those men had been nothing more than marks to her. Just defiance and a half-smile that made the rage boil hotter.

I slammed my glass down. Wine spilled dark across the white cloth. Servants flinched but didn't dare move.

"Enough," I growled, standing so fast the chair scraped back and toppled. "Enjoy your meal, Queen.I need air.”

I left the dining hall without another word, my aura flaring so violently the chandeliers flickered and guttered. Servants scattered out of my way. Darius, waiting near the entrance, opened his mouth and then thought better of it at whatever he saw on my face. My blood was pounding. My wolf was snarling. Vesper wanted blood. He wanted to tear apart every man who had ever touched what was ours.

I headed straight for the dungeons.

The guards at the entrance bowed and opened the heavy iron doors without a word, then took one look at my face and fled the moment I passed. Smart. The air down here was cold and damp, thick with the scent of fear and old blood. Torches flickered in their sconces, throwing hellish light across the wet stone. I walked past the regular cells until I reached the lowest level — the one reserved for the worst offenders.

Three of them were down here. The assassin who had survived Evie's wrath at the event,were chained and half-conscious, their faces already a ruin of burns. The two who had come at her in the stairwell, hanging in silver chains, battered but breathing. All three looked up as I entered, and I watched the terror bloom in their eyes in real time.

Good. Let them be afraid. Someone should be.

I stopped in front of the first, the one from the event. My aura exploded outward, crushing the air in the cell until the torches bent sideways in it. "You thought you could kill my queen," I said, my voice deceptively calm. "You thought you could take her from me."

I didn't wait for an answer. I let Vesper rise fully. My claws extended, my eyes burned crimson at the edges. I grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground with one hand. He's bones cracked under my grip. He made a wet, gurgling sound that might have been a scream if his throat had allowed it.

I tore into him. Not quickly but slowly and methodically. I peeled skin from muscle, muscle from bone, and made sure he felt every second of it, because Evie had felt every second of being hunted and I intended for this debt to be paid in full. Blood sprayed the walls in dark arcs. When his screaming finally broke into wet, broken whimpers, I let him drop, and I moved on. He wasn't worth finishing yet. Let him lie there and bleed and understand what he'd started.

The second assassin tried to beg before I even reached him. "Mercy, my King —"

"Mercy." I said the word like it tasted foreign in my mouth, and backhanded him hard enough to shatter his jaw sideways. The dungeon shook with it. "Someone sent you and you had the guts to accept, now you beg me for mercy? What if she had died? " I said, smiling slightly.

“ I'm sorry.... So sorry my King” I didn't stop when he talked. I kept breaking him anyway, finger by finger, because the truth wasn't what I'd come down here for. I'd come down here to not go to her door and do something I couldn't take back.

The third, the last one, the weakest of them, I killed outright. No ceremony in it. I drove my claws through his chest, felt his heart stop under my hand, and let the body drop against the wall like it was nothing — because to me, in that moment, it was nothing. That is the truth about me that Evie hasn't learned yet: I don't have principles that hold me back from this. I have a crown, and a curse, and a mate the goddess bound to me, and everything else is negotiable. Mercy is a policy I extend when it's useful. It had stopped being useful the second she'd walked into that dining hall and told me, without flinching, that men had always been predictable to her.

By the end, the cell floor was painted red, and my chest was heaving, and my hands were dripping. Two of them were still barely breathing , kept alive only because I might find them useful later, but one wasn't. I didn't feel the weight of that the way a better man would have. I felt lighter and emptier. For the first time since she'd walked into that dining hall, the roaring in my skull had gone quiet.

I washed the blood off in the trough by the door, the water turning crimson, and watched it swirl down without much feeling at all.

Darius was waiting at the top of the stairs when I climbed back up. "My King. The prisoners —"

"Bury the one that is dead," I said, my voice still rough with the shift. "Keep the rest alive, and make sure Lord Varen knows."