Chapter 46: The Rise of Nara 1

Selene’s POV

I looked him dead in the eyes and let it come out of my mouth.

"I love you too, Lucian."

I always had. I just hadn’t known who he was at certain points along the way. But I did love him. That part was never a lie.

We held each other for a long time.

"You are trying to deceive yourself," Nara said inside my head, and the shock of it made me flinch.

Lucian noticed. He pulled back slightly and looked at me. "What was that, Selene?"

"Nothing," I said.

We kissed in my room. A kiss of reckoning ... lips locking to mean something, to signify acceptance. He’d finally said it and meant it, and I’d confirmed that I felt the same.

He left to attend to political matters, and I wished he hadn’t gone. I wanted to stay in his arms forever if it were possible.

"It’s time to deal with Tessa," Nara said the moment the door closed behind him.

"What do you mean, Nara? Please ... I want to be left in peace. Don’t talk to me right now."

Then I felt it. A push from inside my body ... something propelling me, compelling me forward. It was nothing I had ever experienced before.

My hands reached for the door on their own.

I stepped out, but I didn’t want to. Every step I took, I hadn’t chosen to take it.

Something else was working inside me.

Nara. That fucking bitch.

"You better leave me alone," I cried out to her in my mind as she moved my body and refused to stop.

She took me straight to Tessa’s room. When I reached the door, I opened it by smashing it clean off its frame with a strength that had no business being inside my body. I didn’t have that kind of power. That kind of energy didn’t belong to me.

Tessa was sitting on her bed scrolling through her phone. The moment I saw her doing that ... just sitting there so unbothered ... every one of her sins came flooding back to me.

She looked up, and her face went white when she saw what I’d done to her door.

"How did you do that, Selene? What the fuck!"

I didn’t speak. I only felt the need for action. It was like heat scorching through my chest, but it didn’t belong to me.

It was Nara’s rage ... and I was the body it was burning through.

I rushed her and threw a punch that sent her flying backwards. She crashed into her belongings and scattered everything across the floor.

That wasn’t all.

I went after her and kept punching her ... over and over, like she was a punching bag mounted on the wall. The wolf inside me was getting satisfaction from every hit. I wasn’t.

I was aware of everything happening. I just couldn’t stop Nara from inside me.

"Selene, stop!" Tessa started screaming at the top of her voice as I slammed her head into the floor, once and then again.

"You think you can have your way all the time, huh?" The voice came out of my mouth and it wasn’t mine. It was Nara’s. And from the way Tessa’s eyes went wide, she knew it too. She stared up at me like she was looking at a stranger wearing my face.

The guards must have heard Tessa screaming, because they rushed into the room to find me pounding her into the ground.

They tried to pull me off. They got beaten for it.

I flung them like they were strips of cloth tossed from my body. They kept coming in waves, and I put them down as fast as they arrived.

Inside my mind I was begging Nara to stop. She didn’t.

She made no effort to hide what was happening ... that this body was no longer mine to control. More soldiers poured in until someone fired a shocker at me and I went down on my knees. My body destabilised. They clamped braces around my wrists and locked them tight.

They carried me back to my room.

As I was being dragged out, I caught a last look at Tessa. She was battered and shattered. I could take that in clearly because the heat inside me had finally begun to die down.

They put me on my bed and left me there. All I could do was sit with the memory of everything that had been done ... through me.

How was I supposed to explain this?

Lucian walked into my room.

He saw my wrists bound and his expression shifted immediately. "Why are her hands tied? Remove them."

"No, sir." One of the guards stepped forward. "She’s out of control. She nearly killed Tessa Crane. She’s dangerous right now."

Lucian looked at me. "Is that true? How is that even possible? I thought you let the real culprit walk free. Or is this something else?"

I shook my head. I didn’t trust myself to speak, and I didn’t want Lucian near me. Not right now. He shouldn’t come any closer. If Nara surged again, I could hurt him. I didn’t want to injure anyone else.

Nara had proven she was nothing but a liability ... to me and to everything I was trying to build.

And she had chosen to do this the same day the King told me he loved me.

She was jealous. That was what this was. That fucking spirit was jealous.

I started crying in front of him. I couldn’t help it.

"I didn’t mean to do that. I swear. I don’t know what came over me."

"You don’t know what came over you?" His voice was hard. "Tessa has been rushed to the hospital. She’s bleeding. She has several broken bones. They said you almost killed her."

"No ... no, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. Please believe me." The tears wouldn’t stop falling. "Please."

"Who are you?" he said quietly. "Are you still the same Selene I know?"

Those words broke me. Down to my last bone, they broke me.

I stood up from the bed with the braces still on my wrists and moved toward him.

He stepped back. "Please don’t come near me."

I cried even harder.

Nara had turned the exiled wolf ... the one who had clawed her way back from being named a breeder ... into a danger to everyone around her.

"You’ll remain here until we can determine what’s wrong with you," Lucian said. His eyes never left me as he moved toward the door. "For now, pray that Tessa survives."

He walked out backwards, watching me the whole way.

I couldn’t hold myself together after that. It was too much.

I sat in that room and counted the silence.

"I’m doing all of this for your own good," Nara said.

"Shut up!" I screamed. "Shut up! I don’t want to hear anything from you. Your time in this body is coming to an end. I promise you that."

"You can’t remove me," she replied, unbothered. "You’re still alive because of my agenda. I told you ... I own you."

The fury that rose inside me after that was enormous. It kept growing, like fire stacking on fire, and none of it was mine.

I still didn’t understand how she could reach inside me like that.

After the heat of that rage finally peaked, I dropped to the floor of my room.

And I screamed.

I screamed like someone being dragged to a sacrifice. My voice cracked and shifted ... no longer a scream, but something lower. A growl that didn’t belong to a human. I felt my teeth lengthen and sharpen. My fingers curved into claws.

I snapped the braces off my wrists like they were made of paper.

I walked straight for the door and brought it down.

It was like I had finally stopped fighting and become one with her.

"Now we finish the job," Nara said inside me.

And I walked ... growling, roaring ... straight toward the hospital where Tessa lay.