CURSED AS ASWANG, SAVED BY HIS LOVE

Chapter 9: HOW A QUEEN FIGHTS FOR HER KING

*Chapter 9: How A Queen Fights For Her King*

The King moved faster than any human eye could see.

One second he was three meters away, the next his shadow-hand was around Elias's throat, lifting the billionaire heir off the ground.

"Elias!" Isabella screamed, her new wings flaring wide.

Elias clawed at the King's bark-like arm, his feet kicking. The black veins on his arm were now racing up his neck, his eyes flashing gold — the King's curse trying to take him over to make him a servant.

"Let him go!" Isabella roared.

The King laughed, holding Elias up like a doll. "He offered his blood to you, little Queen. That makes him mine by ancient law. Any man who offers willing blood to a Reyes woman belongs to the King. Unless..."

He looked at Isabella, his golden eyes hungry, dragging over her white sundress, over her glowing, sexy, terrifying Queen form, over her perfect lips stained with Elias's blood from last night.

"Unless you come with me willingly. Be my Queen. Sit on my throne under the balete tree. Let me worship your beauty that no one can resist — forever. And I'll let your little human pet live as my servant."

The whole plaza was frozen. Mothers covering their children's eyes. The priest holding a cross that was shaking in his hands. Lola Pina screaming from the flower stall.

Isabella looked at Elias — her Elias, who had seen her at her worst and called her beautiful, who had bled for her, who had punched a god for her.

His eyes were turning black, but they were still looking at her, still full of love. He mouthed one word: _No._

If she said yes to the King, Elias would live, but as a slave. If she said no, the King would snap his neck right now.

The curse inside her had always been about hunger. About taking.

But last night, Elias taught it something else: about giving.

Isabella did something no Aswang Queen had ever done in 300 years.

She knelt.

Not to the King.

She knelt in front of Elias, even while the King held him in the air, and she took Elias's black-veined hand and pressed it to her heart, right above her sexy, heaving chest, right where her monster heart was beating like a drum.

"I offer you my heart," she whispered to Elias, loud enough for the ancient King and the whole town to hear. "Not my blood. My heart. My soul. Everything I am — the sexy, the beautiful, the cursed, the Queen. All of it. Yours. Willingly. Forever. If you will have me."

It was a marriage vow. A blood vow. An old magic even older than the King.

Elias, choking, his eyes half-black, managed to smile, blood trickling from his lips.

"I... have you... since the... flower shop..."

He squeezed her hand back.

And the moment he did, a light — not black, not red, but pure, blinding white — exploded from where their hands touched over her heart.

The King screamed.

The light burned his shadow-skin. The black veins on Elias's body didn't just retreat — they burned away, turning into golden marks, like tribal tattoos of light.

The ancient law the King quoted was true: any man who offers willing blood to a Reyes woman belongs to the King.

But there was an older law, one even the mangkukulam had forgotten.

_If a Reyes woman offers her heart willingly back, and the man accepts, they belong to each other, and no King can claim them._

The King's hand around Elias's throat crumbled into bark and ash.

Elias fell, and Isabella caught him — her monstrous, beautiful, Queen strength catching him bridal style, wings wrapping around him protectively, her red eyes blazing at the King who was now burning.

"You wanted a Queen no one can resist?" Isabella said, her voice now pure power, sexy and divine and terrifying all at once, standing in her torn white sundress, holding her man, glowing like a dark goddess. "Then learn this, ancient one. I am no one's to claim. I am not your Queen. I am HIS Queen. And he..."

She looked down at Elias, who was staring up at her, not afraid, not disgusted, but completely, utterly in love, even though she was fangs and claws and wings.

"...he is my King."

She leaned down and kissed Elias in front of the burning King, in front of the whole town, in front of God and monsters — a deep, bloody, sexy, true love kiss that tasted like roses and ash.

The white light from their kiss hit the King full force.

He didn't burn. He dissolved. Into roots, into smoke, into nothing, screaming a name he hadn't been called in centuries — not King, but _Alone_.

Because that was his real curse. To be beautiful and powerful and desired by all, but never truly loved by one.

When the smoke cleared, the plaza was silent.

Isabella was still in her Queen form, still breathtakingly beautiful and deadly, still holding Elias.

Everyone stared.

Then, slowly, Lola Pina started to clap.

Then the little girl from the taho stand. Then the fishermen. Then the whole town.

Not because they weren't afraid.

But because for the first time, they weren't just seeing the sexy, beautiful girl no one could resist.

They were seeing their Queen who had fought for love.

Elias, still in her arms, his neck bruised, his arm now marked with golden light, touched her glowing red cheek.

"You can put me down now, my Queen," he whispered, smiling, his handsome face dirty and perfect. "Unless you plan to carry me to the altar like this?"

Isabella laughed — her two voices now one, sweet and sexy and powerful — and her wings slowly folded, her eyes fading back to brown, her fangs retracting, but her beauty, that irresistible, stunning, sexy beauty, remaining, stronger than ever.

Because now it wasn't a curse.

It was hers.

"I might," she whispered back, leaning close so only he could hear, her lips brushing his ear. "I do love a man I can carry."

And in the middle of the plaza, with the balete tree finally dead behind the resort and the ancient King gone, the cursed aswang who was saved by his love finally kissed her savior the way she had always wanted to — not like a monster, not like a victim.

But like a beautiful, sexy, powerful woman who knew exactly who she was, and exactly who she belonged to.