Chapter 22: _ What a Weird Villain!

Ivar Wulfram [Second Son of the Wolf King]

I fucking hated Remus Dravaryn.

I hated his perfectly braided silver hair, I hated his graceful royal posture, and most of all, I hated the fact that the arrogant dragon bastard had just used me as his personal errand boy.

My knuckles throbbed where I clenched my fists, testing the fresh, seamless bone beneath my skin. The core accelerator serum was still humming through my veins like liquid fire, forcing my wolf to howl in over-stimulated energy.

A drug addict.

A vicious, dark smirk tugged at the corner of my lips as I stalked down the stone stairs of the Sunken Arch. The golden heir to the Dragon Throne—the moral compass of Last Bastion—was secretly chugging military-grade alchemical stimulants just to keep his precious crown polished.

After today, Zev and I were going to have a very interesting conversation about the golden prince’s little secret.

But first, I had to go deal with a dragonless trench rat.

My stomach twisted into a bitter knot as I reached the bottom of the spiral stairwell, stepping into the decaying stone corridors of the lower drainage sector.

My mate.

The mere thought made my blood run cold. I didn’t want a mate. I didn’t want the weak, suffocating bond pulling at my chest, and I certainly didn’t want my wolf waking up from its dormant state to start demanding I claim some low-born initiate.

I had spent my entire life taking what I wanted, stealing power from gullible females who practically threw themselves into my bed. I didn’t need a permanent bond.

Which made Remus’s sudden obsession with her all the more infuriating.

Why her? First Raice Ignis-Dominus stops to speak to a dragonless commoner in the middle of the Concourse, and now Remus was breaking every royal rule in the book—revealing his most dangerous secret and forcing a blood oath—just to keep her breathing?

"Fucking pricks," I spat under my breath. "Both of them."

An irrational spike of envy burned through my chest. It took every ounce of my willpower to shove it back down. I wasn’t keeping her. NO ONE could ever find out she was my mate, least of all Zev or my clan back home.

So why the hell did the thought of Raice or Remus putting their hands on her make me want to tear their throats out?

I forced my mind to go quiet, activating my enhanced wolf hearing as I crept through the pitch-black tunnel.

And then, through the silence, a voice drifted down the hall.

"...if it comforts you, you aren’t the first. And you won’t be the last."

I stopped dead in my tracks.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I didn’t recognize the male’s voice, but I hated the tone instantly. It was the tone of a predator who thought he was entirely alone in the dark.

I slipped silently around the corner, blending into the shadows cast by the broken archway.

The room ahead was a forgotten drainage chamber, dimly lit by a faint blue luminescent moss clinging to the ceiling.

Two female initiates lay sprawled out cold on the muddy stone floor... Elira’s roommates.

In the center of the chamber, bound tightly against a rusted iron drainage grate, was Elira. Thick, thorned vines were wrapped tightly around her wrists and ankles? pinning her limbs flat against the metal.

And standing directly between her parted knees was a male student—a Sylven, judging by the dark green foliage creeping up his neck. He was leaning down, his face inches from her throat.

An explosion of heat erupted behind my ribs.

My wolf woke from slumber and roared. The mate bond flooded my system with a rage so absolute, it made my vision blur with red.

It wasn’t just the bond. It was the sickening, repulsive sight of it.

I stole from women. Manipulated them. Lied to them. Took their powers when they were foolish enough to trust me.

But they had chosen my bed. Begged for it.

This was different.

There was a line between seduction and assault, and that bastard had crossed it.

The Sylven suddenly stiffened, his ears twitching as if he felt the sudden shift in the air pressure behind him. He paused, his lips inches from her skin.

"I’m notorious for stealing from girls," I drawled, stepping out from the shadow of the archway. "But even those girls beg to get into my bed."

The Sylven snapped his head toward me, his eyes widening in complete shock.

Beside him, Elira’s head jerked up.

My eyes flicked to her first. Her face was pale, streaked with dirt and tears, her chest heaving.

Something inside my chest violently cracked. It was a scary sensation... a sickening ache that made me want to rip the room apart just to make her stop looking like that.

I resented the feeling instantly. I hated that a dragonless nobody had the power to make my pulse spike like a panicked novice.

She stared at me, her tear-stained eyes wide as she recognized my face from my pathetic invisibility failure earlier that afternoon.

I forced my gaze away from her, locking onto the Sylven.

"There’s something about violating consent that sets me off. You’re about to have the absolute worst day of your life, flower boy."

I took a step forward, summoning a surge of frost to freeze the ground beneath his feet.

Before the ice could touch his boots, the Sylven’s eyes flashed with a sudden, blinding yellow glare.

CRACK!

A bolt of pure elemental lightning exploded from his outstretched palm, slamming straight into the stone floor between us. The force of the strike threw a blinding cloud of sparks and pulverized rock into the air.

I brought my arms up to shield my face, cursing as the blinding light burned my eyes.

When the smoke cleared two seconds later, the chamber was dead silent.

The Sylven was gone.

"What the hell?" I muttered, stepping over the scorched crater in the stone.

I scanned the room with my wolf senses, wondering if he had also turned invisible but there was no scent trail and no rustle of fabric.

He had vanished instantly.

A Sylven with Lions’ elemental lightning and spatial teleportation? The teleportation could be his own unique ability but lightning? That elemental power was unique only to the Lions’ faction just as flame was unique to Dragons and wind to us wolves.

So...

What kind of twisted hybrid bastard was he?

"Fucking coward," I cursed, turning on my heel.

And then, I was forced to face Elira.

Oh, no...