Chapter 167: The Unfolding Truth XLVII

Third Person POV

The Alpha King let out a short chuckle, the dry sound grating against the heavy silence of the grand hall.

It wasn’t a booming, theatrical laugh meant to fill the entire stone chamber with dread, nor was it full of genuine amusement.

It was a much smaller, uglier sound, a dry, rattling wheeze coming from the deep recesses of his chest.

It was the exact kind of chuckle a man might make when he was told a completely ridiculous joke, not finding the humor in the words themselves, but genuinely amused by the sheer audacity of the person standing across from him.

"Do you seriously think I came all this way just to play a stupid game with you?" Lysander asked, still chuckling softly under his breath as his eyes bored into her.

Helen didn’t give him an answer.

She remained completely motionless, her large grey eyes flat, dull, and cold as ice.

The massive iron chains wrapped around her torso hadn’t shifted an inch, and the heavy padlocks pinning her to the floorboards hadn’t been touched.

Yet, somewhere deep behind her pupils, something massive was slowly beginning to stir.

An ancient power that had been completely asleep for centuries was finally waking up.

Lysander took another step forward, his heavy leather boots clicking sharply against the rock.

"Let’s stop wasting time. Where exactly is your child?"

"We don’t have a child," Helen replied, her voice remarkably steady and calm.

The Alpha King stopped his stride immediately, his brow furrowing as he slightly tilted his head to the side.

The flickering torchlight caught his straight, gray hair, showing the signs of aging and cruel wrinkles cutting across his face.

"So, you really want to keep playing this game with me, huh?" Lysander said, his voice dropping into a soft, menacing register.

Helen kept her facial features perfectly still, keeping her expression flat.

Over her long life, she had learned exactly how to lie to protect herself.

She had learned how to hide her true nature away from the world.

She had spent consecutive years pretending to be absolutely nothing more than an ordinary person, a regular woman without a single secret to her name.

She could do this now. She could look this man straight in the eye and give him nothing.

Lysander’s lips slowly pulled back into a wide, mocking smile.

"Do you honestly think I didn’t see her? Do you think I’m completely blind to where you hid her away?"

The smile widened further, turning into a hideous grin.

"My soldiers are already out there scouring the grounds, tracking her down to bring her back to me," Lysander whispered, his breath cold in the drafty room.

"And the very second they catch her... I am going to personally hand her back to you in pieces."

Suddenly, Kai moved.

The thick hemp ropes holding his large wrists behind his back tore apart instantly, snapping like flimsy pieces of wet paper.

For one single second, he was down on his knees, his head bowed toward the dirt, and his entire body looking completely broken.

The very next second, he was flying through the empty air.

His large frame twisted violently, his bones cracking and shifting rapidly beneath his skin as the transformation took over.

Thick, pure white fur exploded outwards across his chest and limbs.

The massive wolf launched his entire weight straight at the Alpha King before Lysander could even think about lifting a finger to stop him.

Kai’s massive jaws clamped down hard around Lysander’s left shoulder.

The Alpha King didn’t scream out in agony.

He didn’t let out a loud cry.

He simply made a sudden, surprised grunt, sounding almost deeply offended that anyone would dare touch him, and then Kai’s wolf began to shake his head violently from side to side.

Once. Twice. Three times.

The sharp canine teeth dug deeper and deeper into the meat of the king’s shoulder, and bright red blood instantly sprayed across the dusty stone floorboards like spilled wine.

The white wolf’s growl was low, vibrating, and completely constant, it was the terrifying sound of a creature that had entirely stopped thinking and had simply started killing.

He bit down even harder, pulling his weight backward as he tried to tear the Alpha King’s arm clean out of its socket.

Lysander slowly raised his free right hand through the air.

He formed a tight fist and punched the massive wolf directly in the eye.

The heavy blow was definitely not normal.

It carried an immense, invisible weight, a crushing wave of raw magic and centuries of compressed physical power packed into a single fist.

The impact sent Kai’s wolf flying backwards completely across the wide room.

His heavy body slammed hard against the stone wall, causing the solid rock to crack open.

Thick grey dust cascaded down from the ceiling rafters, but the wolf landed firmly on all four feet.

He didn’t hesitate for even a fraction of a second.

He launched his body straight forward again, his claws digging into the floorboards.

In that exact moment, Helen moved with incredible speed.

With a sudden burst of her own internal energy, she freed herself completely, and the massive iron chains fell away, clattering loudly against the stone.

One moment the dark metal bands were locked tight around her chest, feeling completely heavy and impossible to break.

The very next, they were entirely gone, scattering across the floor as she stood up on her feet.

The raw magic she had been quietly building behind her eyes, in the center of her chest, and through the blood that had been waiting for this exact moment, it had finally answered her call.

She started rushing forward to help Kai fight the Alpha King.

But she froze completely dead in her tracks.

Lysander already had Kai pinned flat against the stone floor.

He wasn’t using any magic spells, and he wasn’t holding any iron weapons.

He was just using his bare hands, old, wrinkled hands that were somehow vastly stronger than they had any right to be, gripping the white wolf tightly by the throat, cutting off his air.

Kai’s wolf thrashed its legs wildly, snapping its jaws at the air, but he could not break free from the crushing hold.

Lysander slowly turned his face up to look at her.

"Make one single move," Lysander said, his voice completely calm as he held the wolf down.

"And I will tear your beloved husband apart right in front of your face. Not just him, either. I will track down and slaughter every single person you have ever cared about in this world."

Helen stopped moving instantly.

Her feet refused to take another step forward.

Her hands wouldn’t rise through the air.

She just stood there, completely frozen right in the middle of the grand hall, the discarded chains pooled around her ankles, her long white hair hanging loose around her shoulders, her grey eyes locked onto the monster holding her husband by the neck.

"Okay," Helen said, her voice breaking completely as tears welled up.

"Just... Please let him go. You can have me instead. I’ll go with you. Just let him go, please."

Lysander laughed out loud again, that same dry, rattling sound echoing off the walls.

"I am definitely not letting him go until I get exactly what I came here for," Lysander said, shaking his head slowly.

"And you already know what I want."

Helen clenched her fists tightly at her sides, her whole body trembling.

"Please. We really don’t have a child. There is no baby hidden here. It’s just the two of us. There’s nothing else."

The Alpha King looked down at the white wolf trapped beneath his palms.

He looked at the pure white fur, now heavily matted and soaked through with dark red blood.

He looked straight into the green eyes that were still burning with an unbroken rage.

"Shift," Lysander commanded flatly.

Kai didn’t change his form.

"I said shift back!" Lysander shouted, his voice booming.

The invisible magic slammed into the wolf without a single second of warning.

Kai’s entire body convulsed violently on the floor.

His limbs jerked, his back legs spasmed out, and he let out a loud, agonizing howl, a sound of pure physical pain, not defiance.

A moment later, his body began to shift back into a human form.

Bones cracked loudly as they reformed, and the white fur receded back into his skin.

The man lying on the stone floor was bleeding heavily from his forehead, his mouth, and his chest.

But his green eyes were still glaring upward, burning with life.

Lysander reached down, grabbed a handful of Kai’s dark hair, and dragged him roughly up onto his knees.

"One final chance," Lysander said, turning his cold gaze back to Helen.

"Where exactly is the child? Where is the little one?"

Kai coughed hard, a spray of dark blood splattering across the gray stones in front of him.

"Don’t tell him a single thing, Helen," Kai whispered, his voice incredibly weak and strained.

Lysander’s grip on his hair tightened immediately, pulling his head back further.

"I’m completely fine," Kai continued, coughing again as he fought through the pain.

"I am okay. Do not... do not tell this disgusting monster anything at all."

Lysander looked down at the young Alpha, his expression turning entirely vacant.

"That was a really terrible decision for you to make," Lysander said quietly.