Claimed by the Beastly Lycan King

8: The Beast Restrained

KEALIRA

I did not know what he whispered into Tyren's ear.

But whatever it was, Tyren stopped struggling completely, his whole body going limp like the fight had been drained straight out of him, and his eyes, those familiar brown eyes I had once loved, filled with something I had never seen in them before.

Pure terror.

"Ronan!" I grabbed his arm again, harder this time, putting my whole body into it. "Stop, please, let him go, he is not worth this, please!"

Something shifted in Ronan's face. It was small, just a flicker, but I caught it. The moment my voice actually reached whatever part of him was still human underneath all that rage, his grip loosened by a fraction, then another, and then with one sharp exhale, he dropped Tyren to the ground like he was putting down something that had disgusted him.

Tyren hit the floor hard, gasping and clutching his throat, and for one horrible second, nobody in the corridor moved or breathed.

Ronan straightened slowly, adjusting his coat, and looked down at Tyren with an expression colder than anything I had ever seen on a human face. "You have until sunrise to leave these grounds," he said quietly, "if I smell you inside my walls after that, I will not stop myself a second time."

Tyren looked up at him, still gasping, then looked at me.

I immediately looked away.

Two guards appeared from nowhere, lifted Tyren by his arms and walked him out without another word. Just like that, the corridor began breathing again, nobles shuffling away quickly, nobody wanting to be the person caught staring at the King.

Then Ronan turned and walked away without looking at me.

"Ronan," I called out, but he kept walking.

"Ronan, I am talking to you."

He stopped but did not turn around immediately, his shoulders rising and falling once with a slow, deliberate breath before he turned to face me, and what I saw in his face then was not anger anymore, it was something rawer than that.

"Come with me," he said.

We ended up in a small sitting room off the main corridor, just us, without guards inside. The door shut behind us, and suddenly the silence felt enormous.

Ronan stood by the window with his back to me, both hands braced on the ledge, and I stood near the door watching the tension running through every line of his shoulders.

"Say what you want to say," I told him.

"I nearly killed him," he said, still not turning around.

"I know."

"I felt his scent on you, and I stopped thinking completely. There was nothing in my head except getting my hands on him. It happened that fast, I did not even decide to move. I was just already moving."

I stayed quiet, watching his back.

He finally turned around, and the look on his face stopped whatever I had been about to say, because he looked genuinely frightened, not of me, not of Tyren, of himself.

"I have spent my entire life terrified of becoming my father," he said. He was the kind of man who destroyed everything he loved because he could not control what he felt. I watched him do it, I watched what it cost everyone around him, and I swore I would never be that. Then you walked into that ballroom, and within a week, I am lifting men off the ground by their throats in front of my entire court."

The room felt very quiet after that.

I looked at him standing there, this enormous, frightening king who had just admitted out loud that I scared him, not because of anything I had done but because of what he felt, and something in my chest moved in a way I was not ready to examine properly.

"You stopped," I said finally.

Then he looked at me.

"You stopped yourself," I said again, "your father never did, you told me that yourself, he never stopped, but you did. I screamed, and you actually stopped, so whatever you are afraid of becoming, you are not there yet."

He stared at me for a long moment, something working behind his eyes that I could not read.

"You are surprisingly calm about almost watching a man die in front of you," he said.

"I grew up with Marissa." I said flatly, "I have a high threshold for horrifying things."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile but close enough that it surprised me, and I felt my own mouth twitch despite everything.

We stood there in that strange, almost-quiet for another moment, and then I exhaled slowly and sat down on the nearest chair because my legs had been shaking since the corridor, and I was done pretending otherwise.

Ronan sat across from me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, looking at the floor between us, and for the first time since I arrived in this palace, he looked less like a king and more like a person who was simply very tired.

I did not say anything else, and neither did he, but the silence between us felt different from every other silence we had shared, less like a wall and more like something that had just been carefully, cautiously opened.

I was almost asleep in the chair when a soft knock came at the sitting room door later that evening. Ronan had long since left after making sure I was escorted back to my chambers, and Nessa had gone to fetch me water, so I crossed to the door myself and opened it.

Lucien stood there, hands in his pockets, expression pleasant and mild as if he had simply been passing by.

"You look better than I expected after today," he said.

"What do you want, Lucien?

He glanced down the corridor once, then back at me, dropping his voice, "I know who sent the bird."

My hand tightened on the door, "Tell me."

"Not here," he said simply, "not with guards three steps away who report everything to my brother, there is a servant passage behind the third panel on your left wall, it connects to a private reading room on the lower floor where nobody goes at night, meet me there in an hour, and I will tell you everything."

"Why can't you just tell me now?"

"Because what I know is not a quick conversation," he said, "and because if Ronan finds out I told you before I told him, things will get complicated very fast."

I stared at him, every instinct pulling in two different directions at once. I did not trust him; I had never fully trusted him, but I had a dead bird with my ribbon around its neck sitting on my windowsill, and nobody had given me a single real answer about anything since I arrived in this palace.

"One hour," I said.

He smiled and walked away.

Exactly one hour later, I pressed the third panel on my left wall. It swung inward silently, revealing a narrow dark passage. I stepped through, and the panel swung shut behind me with a soft, final click.

I pushed back against it immediately.

It did not move.

I pushed harder, both palms flat against the wood, nothing, it was locked from the other side, and the darkness around me was so complete I could not see my own hands in front of my face.