The Rebel Prince’s Claimed Mate

chapter 5

Lily’s POV)

I don’t remember how I got out of my room.

One moment the door was slamming behind Callum’s leering grin, the next I was stumbling barefoot down the corridor with my smock half-buttoned and hanging off one shoulder. My mind was a shattered mirror; every shard reflected the same thing: his hands, his breath, his weight pinning me to the mattress. I couldn’t feel my legs properly. I couldn’t feel anything except the sick, crawling violation under my skin.

I crashed into a wall. A porcelain vase toppled and exploded at my feet, water and white lilies soaking the carpet in a dark stain. Somewhere behind me, servants whispered. I didn’t care. I had to move. If I stopped moving he would find me again.

“Lily?”

Amara’s voice soft, worried cut through the fog. I spun around, eyes wild, chest heaving so hard it hurt. When I saw her familiar face my body decided fight-or-flight for me. Flight won. I bolted.

I ran blindly, arms pumping, bare feet slapping cold against stone. Tears blurred everything into streaks of torchlight and shadow. I rounded a corner at full speed and slammed into something solid. A chest. Massive. Unmovable.

I bounced backward, already falling, but two huge hands clamped around my upper arms and yanked me upright. The second those fingers touched me my brain short-circuited. Touch meant pain. Touch meant Callum. I screamed raw, animal and clawed at the hands holding me. Nails raked skin. My knees kicked uselessly.

“Get off me! Don’t touch me!” The words shredded my throat.

The hands released my arms only to seize my wrists and pin them above my head against the wall. My body went perfectly still, every muscle locking the way it had learned to do when struggling only made it worse. A broken whimper slipped out of me.

“Lily! Oh, my Goddess…” Amara sounded miles away.

“Let go of her, you brute!” she shouted.

“I was only keeping her from hurting herself she came at me like a banshee!” a deep, unfamiliar voice protested.

“Of course she did! Look at her! Something happened let go and back away now!”

Slowly, carefully, my wrists were lowered and released. The moment no one was touching me the dam inside my chest burst. Sobs tore out of me so violently I couldn’t draw breath between them. My legs folded. The floor rushed up, but it never arrived. Strong arms scooped me up instead bridal style and then we were running.

I remember the jolt of every footstep, the frantic thud of a heart that wasn’t mine against my ear, a low voice repeating, “Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me…” like a prayer.

Then nothing.

BAM!

I jolted awake with a strangled scream, lungs seizing. My eyes flew open to stark white curtains and the sharp antiseptic smell. A boy no older than fourteen stood frozen halfway across the small infirmary bay, silver tray overturned at his feet, syringes and gauze scattered like fallen stars.

“I-I didn’t mean to drop it,” he stammered, face chalk-white. “I’m so sorry, miss.”

I couldn’t answer. My entire body felt like it had been flayed and dipped in acid. Bruises throbbed everywhere Callum had gripped me. Between my legs burned with a deep, sick ache that made nausea surge.

“Where…?” My voice cracked like dry leaves.

The boy swallowed hard, eyes fixed on the floor. “Royal infirmary, miss. For the royal family and… special cases.” The last two words came out almost apologetic.

Royal infirmary.

Terror punched the air from my lungs. I scrabbled at the oxygen tube looped under my nose, then at the IV in the crook of my elbow.

“No no no no ” I had to get out. They would come for me here. They would finish what Callum started, or worse.

A small hand closed gently but firmly over mine. “Please don’t pull those out. You lost a lot of blood and you’re dehydrated. Doctor’s orders are to keep them in.”

“I have to leave,” I whispered, tears already falling again. “They’ll kill me if I stay.”

The boy shook his head, looking miserable. “You can’t. Word already reached the King. He… he wants to speak with you personally.”

The room tilted. I curled into a ball, knees to chest, rocking, rocking, rocking. The boy backed away, mumbling something about fetching someone, and fled.

Amara burst through the curtain minutes or hours later. The moment I saw her I shattered all over again. She climbed onto the narrow bed without asking and wrapped me up like I was something fragile and precious. I sobbed into her neck until my ribs ached and my throat was raw.

Eventually the storm passed enough for me to breathe. I still couldn’t look at her.

“Lily,” she whispered, stroking my tangled hair. “Sweetheart, what did he do to you?”

I shook my head violently. If I said it out loud it would become real forever.

Footsteps approached. Male. Heavy boots. My body reacted before my mind caught up I scrambled backward so hard I nearly fell off the other side of the bed.

A royal guard stepped into view, tall and broad in the crimson-and-silver uniform. The same one who had carried me, maybe. I didn’t know. All I saw was uniform, size, strength. I screamed again, high and broken, clawing at the sheets to put distance between us. Amara threw herself between me and the guard like a shield.

“Out!” she snarled at him. “Can’t you see she’s terrified?”

He retreated instantly, hands raised, face pale. The curtain fell closed behind him.

Amara turned back, eyes shining with tears of her own. “His name is Shaun. He’s the one you ran into. He brought you here when you collapsed. The doctor took one look at… at the bruising, the blood… and refused to let anyone move you to the servants’ clinic. He actually argued with the King. Queen Isolde backed him up, thank the Goddess. You’re safe here, Lil. For now.”

Safe. The word tasted like ash.

“He’s coming to question me,” I rasped. “The King. When he finds out what happened he’ll he’ll give me back to Callum. Or worse.”

Amara’s jaw tightened. “Shaun swore the King was furious on your behalf. Not at you.”

I laughed, a cracked, hysterical sound. “I’m human. I’m disposable. Callum is one of their elite guards. Nothing will happen to him.”

“Don’t say that.” She cupped my face, forcing me to meet her eyes. “You are not disposable. And the Queen herself ordered you kept here until you’re healed. That has to mean something.”

I wanted to believe her. Goddess, I wanted to. But the memory of Callum’s weight was still on me, in me. I curled tighter, arms wrapped around my middle as if I could hold the pieces of myself together by force.

“I can’t talk about it,” I whispered. “If I say his name they’ll know. He’ll know what I said. He'll finish what he started.”

Amara’s face went very still. “Who, Lily?”

I pressed my lips together until they bled. The curtain rustled again, but this time it was only the doctor an older wolf with kind eyes and gentle hands checking my chart. He spoke softly, asked permission before he touched me, and promised no one would enter without my say-so.

Still, every shadow beyond the curtain looked like Callum. Every footstep sounded like his laugh.

Hours bled together. Nurses came and went like ghosts. Amara never left my side. She held a cup after cup of water to my lips, wiped my tears, hummed the lullaby our mothers used to sing back in the village before the raiders came.

At some point I slept, because I woke to the sound of raised voices beyond the curtain low, furious, unmistakably royal.

“…absolutely not! She is in shock she’s been assaulted! You will wait until she is ready, or so help me I will have you removed from this wing myself!”

Queen Isolde. Even through layers of fabric and fear I recognized the steel beneath her velvet voice.

Another voice deeper, colder, belonging to the King rumbled something I couldn’t catch. Then retreating footsteps.

Amara squeezed my hand. “See? The Queen is fighting for you.”

I didn’t feel fought for. I felt like a lamb staked out for the wolves, waiting to see which one would devour me first.

But for the first time since Callum had slammed my bedroom door, a tiny, treacherous flicker of something that might have been hope flickered in the ruin of my chest.

Maybe just maybe someone in this castle saw me as more than meat.

I clung to Amara’s hand like it was the only solid thing left in the world and prayed the flicker wouldn’t go out before the monsters came back.