Cursed crown

Chapter Four

Lucien's Pov

She was lying.

I didn't need the bond to tell me that, though it hummed with her anxiety like a plucked string. Mara stood in the garden looking at me like I was a stranger she'd just met, not the man she'd bound herself to an hour ago.

"What happened?" I asked, keeping my distance. She looked ready to bolt.

"Nothing. I just needed air." She wrapped her arms around herself. "The ceremony was overwhelming."

"Mara…."

"I'm fine, Lucien. Really." But her voice shook, and her eyes kept darting to the shadows where the roses grew thick. "Can we go inside? It's cold out here."

It wasn't cold. The night was mild, almost warm. But I didn't argue. I offered my arm, and after a long pause, she took it.

The walk back to the compound was silent. Her hand on my arm felt wrong, too stiff, like she was touching something that might burn her. The bond ached with her distress, but every time I tried to push through it, to understand what had frightened her, she slammed her walls up harder.

"You'll stay in Luna's chambers," I said when we reached the main building. "They're connected to mine, but there's a door you can lock. You don't have to, we don't have to….."

"Good." She pulled away from me. "Where are they?"

I led her through the corridors, aware of pack members stopping to stare. News of the binding had already spread. By morning, everyone would know their Alpha King had married a stranger accused of murder.

The Luna's chambers hadn't been used since my mother stepped down after my father died. I'd had them cleaned and prepared, but they still felt empty. Lifeless.

Mara walked inside and immediately went to the window, putting as much distance between us as possible.

"There's food in the sitting room if you're hungry," I said. "And clothes in the wardrobe. If you need anything…."

"I won't." She didn't turn around. "I just want to sleep."

"Alright." I hesitated at the door. "Mara, if something happened in the garden….."

"Nothing happened. Goodnight, Lucien."

It was a dismissal. A clear one. I left, closing the door behind me and leaning against it for a moment, feeling the bond stretch thin between us.

Something had happened. Someone had spoken to her. Frightened her.

I found Marcus in the war room, studying border maps with two of our best trackers.

"The gardens," I said without preamble. "I need them searched. Now. Someone was out there tonight who shouldn't have been."

Marcus looked up sharply. "Your new wife?"

"Someone spoke to her. Scared her badly enough that she's lying about it." I moved to the maps. "I want every inch of the grounds checked. Look for scents that don't belong. Signs of intrusion."

"Lucien, the wards are solid. No one can get through without….."

"Then someone got through." I slammed my hand on the table. "Find them."

The trackers left immediately. Marcus stayed, his expression careful.

"What did she tell you?" he asked.

"Nothing. That's the problem." I rubbed my face, exhaustion pulling at me. The ceremony had taken more energy than I'd expected. "The bond is there, Marcus. It's real. But she's terrified, and now she's hiding something."

"Maybe she's just overwhelmed. You threatened to execute her before proposing marriage."

"This is different. Something changed between the ceremony and the garden." I looked at him. "I need you to pull every record we have on curses. Specifically ones involving reincarnation or past lives."

Marcus went still. "Why?"

"Just a feeling." A bad one. The way Mara had looked at me before we came inside, like she was seeing someone else. Someone she hated. "And Marcus? Keep this quiet. I don't want anyone knowing what we're looking for."

"You think she's connected to the curse somehow."

"I think I don't know enough about my own family's curse to make assumptions." I headed for the door. "I'll be in the archives if you need me."

"You should rest. The bone pain will be worse tomorrow if you don't."

"I can't rest. Not until I understand what's happening."

****************

The archives were in the oldest part of the compound, built into the mountain itself. I'd spent countless nights here after my father died, searching for answers that never came.

I pulled every text on the Nightborne curse, spreading them across the main table. Most of it I'd read before. The curse was cast by Seraphine Nightborne three hundred years ago after my ancestor, Alpha King Aldric, betrayed and murdered her. She'd bound her dying magic into a curse that would kill every firstborn Alpha male in the bloodline through slow decay. The only cure was true love, freely given, before the Blood Moon.

Simple. Except it had never worked.

My father loved my mother. I'd witnessed it every day of my childhood. But the curse killed him anyway, and my mother's journals said the same thing happened to every generation before. They married for love, and they died screaming.

So what made it "true" love? What was the missing piece?

I flipped through my mother's journals, looking for the entry that had haunted me for months.

“The cure requires choice, not obligation. But how can there be choice when we're fated? How can there be freedom in a bond that demands submission?”

My father had written a response in the margins, his handwriting shaky from the curse's progression.

“Maybe that's the point. Maybe the curse can only be broken by someone who chooses us despite the bond, not because of it.”

I sat back, the words blurring. Mara hadn't chosen me. She'd chosen survival. And if the curse required genuine choice, genuine love, then I'd already failed.

"You look like you're planning someone's funeral."

I looked up. Elena stood in the doorway, a thick book in her hands.

"Maybe my own," I said.

"Don't be dramatic. You're too young to die." She set the book on the table. "I found something. In the restricted section."

"What is it?"

"A journal. Written by Seraphine Nightborne's handmaiden." Elena opened it to a marked page. "She describes the curse in detail. But there's something else. Something about Seraphine's final words."

I leaned forward, reading the faded script.

“My lady died speaking words I did not understand. She said, 'I will return. I will come back and finish what he started. He will know my face, but he will not know my heart until it is too late.'”

My blood went cold.

"It's a legend," Elena said quietly. "Most scholars dismiss it as grief-induced rambling. But what if it wasn't? What if Seraphine found a way to reincarnate? To return and ensure the curse was never broken?"

"You think Mara is Seraphine." It wasn't a question.

"I think it's possible. The timing fits. The way the bond snapped into place so violently. And there's this." She flipped to another page. "Seraphine was described as having dark hair, pale skin, and eyes that seemed too old for her face. Sound familiar?"

It did. Too familiar.

"But if Mara is Seraphine's reincarnation, then the curse can't be broken. She's the one who cast it. Why would she undo her own revenge?"

"Maybe she wouldn't." Elena's voice was gentle but firm. "Maybe whoever spoke to her tonight told her the truth. And now she has to choose between destroying you or betraying everything she died for."

I stood, pacing between the shelves. The bond pulled at me, urging me to go to Mara, to comfort her, to claim her properly and make this marriage real in all the ways it wasn't yet.

But if she was Seraphine, if she'd cursed my family and sworn to return, then everything I'd done was exactly what she wanted. I'd married my enemy and given her access to everything she needed to finish the job.

"What do I do?" I asked.

"You could confront her. Ask her directly."

"And if she is Seraphine? If she's here to kill me?"

Elena touched my shoulder. "Then you have a choice too. Trust the mate bond, believe she can choose differently than she did three hundred years ago. Or end this now before the curse takes you both."

"End it how?"

She didn't answer. She didn't need to. We both knew what ending it meant.

I looked down at the journal, at Seraphine's final words. *He will know my face, but he will not know my heart until it is too late.*

"I need to talk to her," I said. "Now. Before this goes any further."

"Lucien, it's the middle of the night…."

"I don't care." I headed for the door. "If my wife is planning to kill me, I'd rather know sooner than later."

I took the stairs two at a time, the bond growing stronger as I approached her chambers. I could feel her through it now, awake and restless, pacing like a caged animal.

I knocked once. "Mara. Open the door."

Silence.

"I know you're awake. We need to talk."

More silence. Then, finally, the lock clicked.

She opened the door wearing one of the silk nightgowns someone had left for her, her hair loose around her shoulders. She looked younger like this. Vulnerable.

She also looked absolutely terrified.

"Who told you?" I asked quietly. "In the garden. Who told you about Seraphine?"

Her face went white. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't lie to me. Not now." I stepped closer. "Someone told you you're her reincarnation. That you're here to finish the curse. And now you're trying to figure out if it's true."

"Get out." Her voice shook.

"Is it true, Mara? Are you Seraphine?"

She stared at me, and for a moment, I saw it. That ancient re

cognition in her eyes. That rage that didn't belong to a twenty-one-year-old girl who'd spent six years running.

"I don't know," she whispered. "I don't know who I am anymore.”