The Lycan King’s Silent Queen

Chapter 4

The world was ringing. The subsonic blast from Elara’s throat had turned the mountain pass into a graveyard of shattered glass and groaning men. Silas stood frozen, his massive chest heaving, his eyes locked on Elara with a terrifying blend of awe and agony. The silver light from her "gasp" was still dancing in his veins, warring with the black smoke of his curse.

"Jax," Silas rumbled, his voice thick with the effort to remain standing. "You dare point a weapon at your King?"

"You aren't my King yet, Vane," Jax sneered, the crossbow steady in his hands. He looked at Elara with a hunger that made her skin crawl—not the hunger of a man, but the greed of a scavenger who had found a diamond in the muck. "The Council pays double for a Siren’s heart. And quadruple if she’s already killed her mate. Look at you—you’re already dying from the sound of her."

Elara’s breath hitched. She looked at Silas. The blue veins in his neck were no longer pulsing; they were glowing a violent, angry violet. Jax was right. Her voice, intended to save him, was acting like a catalyst for his curse. Every second she spent near him; her proximity was poisoning his blood.

Go, her mind screamed at him. Leave me.

But Silas didn't move away. Instead, he took a heavy, staggering step toward the crossbow. "She is my property. My mate. My Queen."

"She’s a corpse!" Elder Thorne shrieked, recovering from the blast. He scrambled to his feet, clutching a jagged ritual blade. "Guards! Seize the girl! If the King interferes, he is a traitor to the Lycan bloodline!"

The air became a chaotic blur of silver and shadow. The guards, recovered from the initial shock, lunged forward. Elara scrambled back, her heels catching on the hem of her silk gown, her hands searching for a weapon in the dirt. Her fingers closed around a shard of her shattered silver collar. It was sharp, cold, and hummed with the residue of her own power.

"Don't touch her!" Silas roared. He shifted—not into a man, but into something halfway between. His claws elongated, his jaw jutted into a lethal muzzle, and he tore through the first line of guards like they were made of parchment.

But he was slow. The violet poison in his veins was dragging at his heart.

Jax saw his opening. "Goodbye, Your Majesty."

The black bolt hissed through the air.

It wasn't aimed at Silas. It was aimed at Elara.

Elara watched the bolt grow larger in her vision, time slowing to a crawl. She could feel the dark magic dripping off the tip—Wolfsbane’s Widow, a poison designed to freeze the heart of a Siren instantly.

A shadow eclipsed her.

Silas didn't use a shield. He used his own body.

The sound of the bolt hitting his shoulder was a wet, sickening thud. He didn't scream; he let out a low, guttural huff of air as he collapsed to one knee, shielding Elara with his massive frame.

"Silas!" Elara’s soul screamed the name, though her throat only produced a raw, dry rasp.

"Run," Silas choked out, blood—dark and smelling of ozone—spilling from his lips. He gripped her hand, his claws leaving shallow marks on her skin. "Elara... run into the mists. Don't let them... take the song."

Jax laughed, a jagged, hideous sound. He began to reload the crossbow. "The King is down! Grab the girl! She’s worth more than the whole Shadow-Crest territory!"

Elara looked at Silas’s grey eyes, now clouded with pain, and then at Jax’s smug, murderous face. Something inside her snapped. The "Weak" girl who had taken Jax’s boots for seven years died in that frost-covered mud.

She stood up.

She didn't run. She walked toward Jax, her silver hair whipping in the wind, the shard of the collar clutched in her hand. Her eyes weren't mist-grey anymore; they were the color of a supernova.

She opened her mouth, but this time, she didn't just let out a sound. She reached deep into the core of the betrayal her mother had left her. She found the pain of the cellar, the sting of the lash, and the sight of Silas’s blood on the snow.

She began to hum.

It was a low, vibrating melody that felt like a tectonic plate shifting. Jax’s smirk vanished. He pulled the trigger, but the bolt simply disintegrated in mid-air, turned to ash by the sheer pressure of the frequency.

"What are you doing?" Jax backed away, his hands trembling. "Stop that! Shut up!"

The ground beneath Jax’s feet began to liquify, the stones turning to dust. The Lycan guards fell to their knees, vomiting blood as the song vibrated their internal organs.

Elara stopped inches from Jax. She leaned in, her voice now a terrifying, melodic whisper that echoed from the trees themselves.

"I am the debt," she sang, the words a lethal chime. "And I am here to collect."

Just as she raised the silver shard to Jax’s throat, a massive, black-furred hand caught her wrist.

She turned, thinking it was Silas.

But it wasn't Silas. Silas lay unconscious in the snow. Standing behind her was a man she had only seen in her mother’s hidden sketches—a man with gills at his neck and eyes that looked like the deep ocean.

"Enough, Princess," the stranger said, his voice a calm that cut through her storm. "The King is dead. It's time to go home."

Elara looked down at Silas. His heart had stopped beating.