Chapter 136: Goddess’ Favorite

[Author’s Note: Here’s a Bonus Chapter as a special thank you to "Jess_094" for her generous gifts. Enjoy!]

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Alaric:

Kairo’s voice filled the room before my mind had even managed to process what Reign had just confessed.

He let out a sharp scoff, staring at Reign as though Valemont had just delivered the most ridiculous joke imaginable, before saying, "Last time I checked, the Princess belongs to no one."

His tone was deliberately provoking, and judging by the way Reign’s jaw tightened, he knew exactly what he was doing. But Kairo had apparently decided that tonight was the perfect night to test the limits of our friend’s patience because he didn’t stop there.

"You should stop getting so lost in your little obsession with breaking the Princess that you have started believing you actually own her," he added, his gray eyes narrowing. "She’s not some possession you can claim simply because you are the Valemont heir."

I could practically feel the tension in the room tightening with every word, but then Kairo made the mistake of continuing. He reminded Reign that as heirs of the four Regent families, all of us had equal standing when it came to getting to know the Princess, and then, with the most infuriating little smirk, he added, "Besides, we all have our own ways of making her bend."

The implication behind those words was so obvious that even I, stunned and still trying to understand how we had gotten here, felt my hands itch to punch Kairo myself.

He hadn’t merely challenged Reign’s claim, instead he had deliberately turned the conversation into something far more personal and suggestive. He knew exactly which buttons to press, and apparently he had decided he wanted to press every single one of them at once.

Reign’s expression changed instantly. There was no warning this time, no growl before the movement, nothing I could intercept even if I’d wanted to. He lunged at Kairo with enough force to make the furniture shake, and honestly, I didn’t even bother stopping him.

Kairo had been practically begging for a broken nose or black eye since the moment he had opened his mouth, and at this point, I wasn’t convinced he didn’t deserve one. What I hadn’t expected was how quickly Reign’s anger would escalate beyond anything remotely resembling a friendly fight.

Reign slammed Kairo against the wall again, but this time his claws had emerged, sharp tips pressing against Kairo’s throat. My stomach dropped. A punch was one thing. A black eye was nothing. Even a broken nose could be healed by morning. A severed neck was an entirely different problem, and suddenly I was moving before my brain could catch up.

I grabbed Reign from behind and pulled with everything I had, trying to drag him away from Kairo.

"Reign!" I shouted, digging my fingers into his shoulders as his body resisted me with frightening strength. He barely moved, but eventually his hand slipped from Kairo’s throat to his collar, giving me enough leverage to pull him several inches backward.

Reign’s eyes remained locked on Kairo, his breathing harsh and his wolf practically radiating from every inch of him. Then he roared, "She can only be mine because she’s my mate!"

The words seemed to shake the entire room.

"She’s the one destined for me and my wolf by the Moon Goddess herself!"

Silence.

It was so complete that for several seconds I genuinely couldn’t hear anything else. My hands slowly fell away from Reign’s body, and I noticed Kairo’s eyes had gone just as wide as mine.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even seem to breathe properly as Reign’s confession repeated itself inside my head.

Mate.

The word was almost foreign to us. Soul mates were legends, stories from an ancient time when our ancestors still had their wolves, and none of us had ever imagined actually encountering something like that in our lifetime.

Wolves themselves had disappeared centuries ago. The idea that the Moon Goddess might still be choosing mates for a species that had supposedly lost its connection to her seemed almost impossible. And yet Reign had just stood there and announced that Elara was his destined mate as though he’d been carrying the secret alone for months.

Then another realization sank in.

Reign must have felt the mate bond from the moment he met Elara. He had been aware of it all this time.

Somehow, something deep inside me clenched painfully. I didn’t have a wolf, so there was no beast inside me reacting to the revelation, but the pain in my chest was real enough.

The woman I had spent far too many days thinking about had somehow become someone else’s. Worse, she had become my best friend’s mate before I had even gotten the chance to find out what I wanted from her.

I had never seriously considered the possibility of a soul mate because, frankly, it had seemed as unrealistic to me as suddenly growing a wolf. Reign, apparently, had been favored by the Moon Goddess in every possible way. He was the only werewolf born in centuries, he possessed a wolf when no one else did, and now he had a mate chosen specifically for him.

Of course it would be Reign. Who else could it possibly be?

I remained frozen, staring at him, but something else caught my attention. Kairo looked exactly the way I felt. His face had gone blank with shock, and for one strange moment I wondered if I’d misread him all this time.

Had he been interested in Elara too? The thought only raised another question that had been bothering me since he walked down those stairs and Reign charged on him. Why did Kairo smell like her?

I still couldn’t smell anything unusual, but Reign clearly could, and Kairo’s reaction suggested that whatever had happened between them was significant.

However, before I could form a single coherent thought, Kairo seemed to recover. It happened so quickly that I almost wondered whether I’d imagined his shock.

He exhaled through his nose, clicked his tongue, and shook his head while Reign finally seemed to calm down enough that his claws began retracting.

"You are an absolute maniac," Kairo said, his voice strangely calm now. He took a step forward as he continued, "You claim someone is your destined mate, someone supposedly chosen for you by the Moon Goddess herself, and then you treat that very person like she’s your enemy." His expression hardened. "You humiliate her. You provoke her. You try to force her to bend to you. And somehow you still think being her mate gives you the right to claim her?"

Reign’s eyes narrowed, and I immediately stepped between them again because there was absolutely no chance I was allowing another attack.

Kairo didn’t stop. He moved forward until he was only a few feet from Reign, and I instinctively spread one arm toward each of them, keeping enough distance between their bodies to prevent another collision.

He tilted his head, studying Reign with an expression that was almost challenging enough to be suicidal, before asking the question that made the entire room tense once again.

"Tell me something, Reign," he said quietly. "Does someone like you even deserve to have a soul mate?"