Chapter 149- Chosen

Lucien:

I stood outside her room, listening helplessly as she cried.

When another sob reached me through the door, my hand moved toward the handle. I wanted to go inside, pull her into my arms and tell her to stop calling for someone who could no longer answer.

But I couldn’t.

I knew Arabella. Right now, she wouldn’t want comfort from me. I was Zorro’s other half. Seeing me without him might only remind her of what she had lost.

So, I dropped my hand and stayed where I was, hating that for once, there was absolutely nothing I could do for her... I chose to stay outside.

I leaned against the door and closed my eyes, feeling completely useless. Three years ago, Arabella had walked into my life and turned everything upside down. Before her, my life had been simple. Predictable.

I was engaged to a woman I had no interest in marrying. I followed the path my mother had chosen for me and rarely questioned where it was taking me.

Then the Moon Goddess decided to play a cruel joke on me. She gave me Arabella Toussaint. A tiny, fragile girl who was brought to my palace as a slave.

I hadn’t known what to do with her from the moment I realized she was mine. Zorro had. He had loved her from the beginning.

Even when I fought the bond, he never did. To Zorro, Arabella could do no wrong. He protected her, worried about her, and practically worshipped the ground she walked on.

And now she was on the other side of this door, crying because she wanted him back. I lowered my head. If Zorro could hear her right now, he would have torn the whole damn world apart trying to get to her.

Three years ago, she had mixed that potion into my food and disappeared without looking back.

I spent the next week unconscious in the hospital, surrounded by machines that were practically keeping me alive. My body refused to heal on its own, and according to Bradley, there were moments when they thought I wouldn’t wake up at all. Lilith stayed by my side, trying every spell she knew to pull me back.

When I finally opened my eyes, I immediately called for Zorro but he didn’t answer.

I could still feel him somewhere inside me, but his voice was gone. His senses were still there, though. I could smell things no human could, hear sounds from a distance, and my body still carried the healing ability of a Lycan.

But over the next three years, I began losing those things too.

My heightened sense of smell went first. Then my healing slowed down. One by one, every physical sign of Zorro disappeared until emotions were the only connection left between us.

Whenever I missed Arabella, I felt his sadness.

Whenever I feared something might happen to her, his fear joined mine.

That was how I knew he was still there. The doctors weren’t sure how long my beast would remain with me. They had already warned me that one day, he might disappear completely.

And then came my engagement to Jasmine. The moment I was about to slip the ring onto her finger, my eyes glowed for the first time in years.

Zorro had sensed Arabella.

Her period had weakened the spell that had been hiding her from us, and somehow, through whatever little connection he still had to the outside world, Zorro had found his mate.

For those few seconds, I had felt more of him than I had in years.

With a heavy heart, I walked back to my chambers. For the first time in my life, I wished I wasn’t a king.

Women had always thrown themselves at me because of the crown on my head. They wanted the King, the palace, the title that came with standing beside me. Jasmine was not an exception.

Arabella Toussaint was the complete opposite. The same crown that attracted everyone else seemed to push her away and I couldn’t even blame her for it.

Deep down, a part of her still saw me as the heartless King she had known three years ago. The man who could give an order and expect everyone around him to obey.

I knew she was attracted to me. I had seen it in her hazel eyes and felt it every time she let me get close. But attraction wasn’t trust.

Sometimes I wondered if things would have been easier if I had met her as an ordinary man. No throne. No crown. No power over her life.

Maybe then, when she looked at me, she would only see Lucien.

When she ran away three years ago, I had been furious. I cursed her for leaving me, for poisoning me, for disappearing without even looking back.

It took me a long time to understand that she hadn’t run away simply to hurt me. She had run toward freedom.

For most of her life, someone else had decided everything for her. Her family, my mother... even me. The moment she finally got away from all of us, she didn’t waste that freedom.

She built a life.

She found a home, made friends, worked for herself and became someone who didn’t need a family name, a mate or a king to survive.

A small smile touched my lips. My little mate had done all of that on her own.

Damn, I was so proud of her... and maybe that was the cruelest joke of all.

Lunaris Kingdom needed a woman like Arabella as its Queen. Someone who knew what it felt like to have no voice would never take someone else’s away. Someone who had fought for every bit of her freedom would understand what that freedom was worth.

She was exactly the kind of Queen my kingdom needed.

The only problem was that becoming my Queen might be the last thing Arabella Toussaint ever wanted.

And for once, being a King couldn’t give me the one thing I wanted most. Perhaps the only woman worthy of my crown was the one who wanted nothing to do with it.

If she ever wore my crown, I wanted it to be because she had chosen the man beneath it.