Cursed crown

Chapter Five

Mara's Pov

I expected him to leave. To run. To call his guards and have me thrown in a cell or worse.

Instead, Lucien stepped into my room and closed the door behind him.

"Tell me everything," he said.

"Why? So you can decide which way to kill me?" I backed away from him, putting the bed between us. "I'm apparently the reincarnation of the woman who cursed your entire bloodline. I'd say that makes me your enemy."

"Are you?" He didn't move closer. "My enemy?"

"I don't know." The words came out broken. "I don't know what I am. I have memories that aren't mine. Dreams where I'm someone else. And tonight, some man with silver eyes told me I'm her. That I cursed you. That I'm supposed to let you die."

"But you don't want to."

It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "No. I don't want to watch anyone die like that. Not even you."

He sat on the edge of my bed, suddenly looking exhausted. The bond pulsed between us, carrying his pain. The curse was eating at him right now, I could feel it through our connection.

"How bad is it?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"Bad enough." He rolled his shoulders, and I heard something crack. "It's worse at dawn and dusk. The rest of the time it's just a constant ache."

"Can I help?"

"You are helping. The bond eases it somewhat." He looked up at me. "But that's not why I bound myself to you."

"Then why?"

"Because sixteen years ago, I carried a little girl out of a burning house. She'd watched her entire pack slaughtered by hunters. She was in shock, barely breathing. I got her to safety, made sure she was taken to a hospital, and then I had to leave. Pack business. Alpha duties." His voice went rough. "When I came back three days later, she was gone. Disappeared from the hospital. No records, no trail. Like she'd never existed."

I remembered that night in fragments. Fire. Screaming. Strong arms carrying me. A voice saying, "You're safe now. I've got you."

"That was you," I whispered.

"I've been looking for you ever since. Hoping you survived. Hoping you found somewhere safe." He laughed bitterly. "Instead, you spent six years running alone. And I only found you because you killed someone."

"He would have killed me."

"I know. I'm not judging you for it." He stood. "But I need to know, Mara. These memories you're having. What do they show you?"

I didn't want to tell him. I didn't want to give voice to the scenes that played behind my eyes every time I closed them. But he deserved to know what he'd married.

"I see her. Seraphine. She's standing in the chapel, and she's marrying someone named Aldric. Your ancestor, I guess." I wrapped my arms around myself. "She loves him. Completely. She thinks he loves her too."

"But he doesn't."

"No. He's using her. She's powerful, more powerful than any Luna before her. And he wants that power for himself." The memories came faster now, flooding through me. "She finds out he's been planning to kill her. To steal her magic and bind it to the Alpha line. Make his heirs unstoppable."

Lucien's face went hard. "That's not in any of the records."

"Because he wrote the records. He wrote history after he murdered her." I could see it so clearly now. "She confronted him. Begged him to tell her it wasn't true. And he laughed. Said she was always meant to be a sacrifice. That love was just the easiest way to make her trust him."

"So she cursed him."

"She cursed all of you. Every firstborn son. Every Alpha who would inherit his blood." My voice dropped. "And then she died, whispering that she'd return. That she'd make sure the curse was never broken. That his line would end in agony, just like she did."

The silence stretched between us. Through the bond, I felt his fear. His anger. And underneath it, something that felt like grief.

"If you're her," he said finally, "then you're here to finish what she started. To make sure I die. To end the Nightborne line forever."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?" He turned to face me fully. "Mara, I need more than maybe. I need to know if my wife is planning to murder me."

"I don't want to murder you!" The words burst out of me. "But I don't know if that's me talking or if it's her. I don't know where she ends and I begin anymore. And that man in the garden, he said the Blood Moon is in five months. That I'll have to choose. Break the curse or let it kill you."

"What else did he say?"

"That he helped Seraphine cast the curse. That he's not letting three hundred years of work fall apart because I caught feelings for the enemy." I met his eyes. "He'll be back. And next time, he might not just talk."

Lucien processed this, his jaw tight. "Describe him."

"Tall. Thin. Silver hair and eyes that reflected light. He moved wrong, like he wasn't entirely solid."

"Marcus needs to hear this. Now." He headed for the door.

"Wait." I grabbed his arm without thinking. The moment I touched him, the bond flared hot and bright between us. His pain eased. My panic quieted. For just a second, we both breathed easier.

He looked down at my hand on his arm, then back at my face. "You feel it too. The way it helps."

"Yeah." I should have let go. Didn't. "It's annoying."

"Very." But he didn't pull away either. "Mara, I need you to understand something. I don't care if you're Seraphine's reincarnation. I don't care if you came here to destroy me. Right now, at this moment, you're my mate. My wife. And I'm going to protect you from whoever that man is, even if you decide to kill me later."

"That's stupid."

"Probably." He turned his hand over, threading his fingers through mine. "But I didn't survive eight years as Alpha King by being smart. I survived by being stubborn."

"We have that in common, at least."

"Among other things." His thumb brushed across my knuckles. "Will you come with me to talk to Marcus? He needs to know about the threat. And you'll be safer with guards outside your door."

"I don't need guards."

"Humor me. I'd like my wife to survive her first night of marriage."

Wife. The word still felt foreign. Wrong. But also, increasingly, like something I could get used to if I wasn't careful.

"Fine. But I'm changing first. I'm not having a war council in a nightgown."

He glanced down at what I was wearing, and for the first time since I'd met him, something that looked like a smile crossed his face. "Pity. You'd definitely win any arguments."

"Out." I shoved him toward the door, fighting my own smile. "Give me five minutes."

He left, and I leaned against the closed door, feeling the bond stretch between us. He was just on the other side, waiting. Protecting me already, even though he had every reason to fear me.

I changed quickly into pants and a shirt, pulling my hair back. When I opened the door, he was exactly where I'd left him, leaning against the wall.

"Ready?" he asked.

"No. But let's go anyway."

We walked through the corridors side by side. Pack members we passed looked shocked to see us together, their Alpha King and his brand-new wife in the middle of the night.

"They're all staring," I muttered.

"Let them stare. By morning they'll have bigger things to worry about."

"Like what?"

"Like the fact that someone breached our wards and threatened the Luna." His voice went cold. "Someone's going to answer for that."

Marcus was still in the war room when we arrived, now surrounded by three trackers and what looked like half the pack's security force.

He looked up when we entered, his expression carefully neutral. "Alpha. Luna."

Luna. I definitely didn't feel like a Luna.

"Tell me you found something," Lucien said.

"We found evidence of magic. Old magic. Someone opened a temporary hole in the wards." Marcus gestured to one of the trackers. "Show them."

The tracker spread a map across the table. "Here. In the rose garden. There's residual energy, but no scent trail. Whoever it was knew how to cover their tracks."

"Can you track the magic?" I asked.

Everyone looked at me. Right. New Luna. Supposed to be seen, not heard.

But Marcus nodded slowly. "Possibly. If we had something of theirs to use as an anchor. A personal item, blood, hair….."

"I have this." I pulled out the white ribbon that had been tied around the roses where the man had stood. I'd grabbed it on the way inside without really knowing why. "He was touching it when he spoke to me."

Lucien took the ribbon, studied it, then handed it to Marcus. "Can you work with this?"

"I can try." Marcus glanced between us. "But if this is who I think it is, tracking him won't be easy. There's only one magic user powerful enough to help cast the original curse and still be alive three hundred years later."

"Who?" I asked.

Marcus's expression was grim. "Theron. Seraphine's brother."

The name hit me like a physical blow. More memories flooded in. A young man with silver eyes teaching me, no, teaching Seraphine, how to control her magic. Laughing with her. Swearing he'd always protect her.

And then, after Aldric's betrayal, helped her cast the curse that would destroy the bloodline. Not because he believed in revenge, but because she was all he had left and he couldn't deny her dying wish.

"He's my brother," I whispered. "Was. Seraphine's brother."

Lucien's hand found mine, squeezed once. "Then we have a serious problem."

"Why?" I looked at him.

"Because if Theron is here, if he's watching you, then he's not going to let you break the c

urse without a fight." Lucien's voice was steady, but I felt his fear through the bond. "And if he's anything like the legends say, fighting him might kill us all.”