Chapter 776: Chapter 777: What the fuck was that?
Another attacker tried to climb onto its back, and the beast shook once, sending him flying across the hall.
The palace shook.
Inside the birth room, Isabella heard it.
The whole room trembled slightly, and dust fell from the upper stone seam.
Isabella’s eyes widened through the pain. "What the fuck was that?"
The younger woman almost dropped the cloth in her hand.
The older woman looked toward the door.
Cyrus tensed at once. His head lifted, eyes narrowing as his senses stretched outward. For one terrifying breath, he thought enemies had reached the room.
Then he felt Zyran’s power.
Dark, quiet, and controlled.
Outside the birth room corridor, Zyran had seen the beast coming.
If it had been any other beast, he would not have hesitated. Anything that large breaking toward Isabella while she was giving birth would have been killed before it got another step.
But this beast was different.
Zyran remembered it. He remembered Isabella saving it. He remembered the way she had scolded grown males for being afraid while the poor creature lay wounded in the the forest that day. He remembered the beast lowering its huge head to her afterward, gentle as a tired old guardian.
So he did not kill it.
He moved forward, shadows sliding around his feet.
The mountain ridge beast lowered its head when it saw him, nostrils flaring, body shaking with stress.
Zyran lifted one hand. His red eyes softened only a little. "Sleep."
Black power spread across the stone floor, climbed up the beast’s legs, and wrapped around its huge body like a thick dark blanket. The beast resisted for one moment, not out of anger, but because fear was still pushing it toward Isabella. Then Zyran added more power and pressed the command deeper.
"Sleep. She is safe."
The beast’s huge eyes blinked slowly.
Its knees bent.
The whole palace seemed to hold its breath as the enormous creature lowered itself down. It fell with a heavy sound that shook the corridor and took up most of the space near the inner hall. Its head landed on the stone floor, and its breath came out in deep slow waves.
Zyran exhaled.
"Good beast," he muttered.
Inside the birth room, Cyrus felt the danger settle. His shoulders loosened slightly, though only slightly.
"It is fine," he told Isabella. "Zyran handled it."
Isabella wanted to ask what Zyran handled, but another pain came and stole every thought from her head.
On the battlefield, Zara finally reached Kian.
He was still near the broken stone corner, breathing heavily while his men fought to give him a few moments to recover. His eyes were unfocused. The poison and the moon goddess’s voice had both sunk deep into his mind, pulling at different parts of him.
Zara saw him and almost stopped breathing.
Even wounded, even covered in blood, even in his huge white lion form, Kian was still the most powerful and beautiful thing she had ever wanted. His white fur was stained red, and his blue eyes were dark with pain, but to Zara, that only made him seem more reachable.
For once, Isabella was not beside him.
For once, no one was looking at Zara.
For once, Kian was weak.
She moved closer, her hand hidden inside her cloak.
She carried something small. A piece of bone soaked in old medicine and her own blood. It was something she had kept for the moment when words would not be enough. It could cloud a beastman’s mind for a short time if he was already wounded and unstable. It would not work on Kian normally. Of course it would not. But now he was poisoned, bleeding, and fighting the moon goddess’s pull inside him.
Now it might work.
She reached him.
"Kian," she whispered.
His lion eyes turned toward her.
For one moment, recognition did not come.
Good.
Zara pressed the blood-soaked bone between her fingers and let its scent rise.
His pupils changed.
Zara’s heart beat fast.
"Kian," she said again, softer. "Look at me."
The moon goddess’s expression twisted in the vision behind his eyes.
Kian tried to growl, but his mind blurred.
Zara stepped closer, her voice sweet and trembling. "It is me. Zara. The one you were always meant to protect. The one who was meant to stand by your side."
The words slid into his clouded mind like poison mixed with honey.
Kian’s breathing became rough.
The moon goddess’s voice cut through the fog. "False."
Zara did not hear it, but she saw his body resist.
So she leaned closer.
"You are tired. You have been fighting so hard. All you have to do is remember. I am the love of your life."
The moment she said that, something inside Kian reacted violently.
Not because it was true.
Because it was false.
Because the power inside him, the power that hated love and softness, recoiled from a fake bond trying to force itself into him. The moon goddess’s chosen vessel was not supposed to love at all, but if love existed in him, it would not be this. It would not be this rotten thing Zara was trying to place inside his blood.
His body shook.
The poison burned.
The moon goddess hissed, "Corruption."
Zara mistook the trembling for weakness.
She smiled through tears that were partly real and partly chosen. "Yes. You remember now. You promised to protect me. You always did. Drink my blood and everything will be sealed. After that, no one can take you from me. No one."
She lifted her hand to his mouth.
A cut already marked her wrist.
If he drank her blood, the false bond would become far harder to break. In the beast world, blood and desire and promise were not small things. A mind clouded at the wrong time could be trapped by them.
Kian’s huge lion head lowered.
For one breath, he was truly about to do it.
Then Osiris saw them.
He had just burned through two attackers and turned toward Kian because Asael shouted his name.
