Chapter 182

Chapter 182: Chapter 182

Lysander’s pov

The door slammed shut, but Julian didn’t leave the threshold of the service corridor. He spun around in the narrow stone hall, his chest heaving under his rumpled jacket, his face twisted in a storm of pure outrage.

"I don’t understand you, Drake!" Julian spat, his voice echoing off the cold granite walls like a whip crack. He gestured wildly toward the closed door of my cell, his silver-tinted eyes flashing with bitter resentment. "Why are you doing this? Why are you shielding a filthy, ungrateful slut who ran into Darius’s arms the second your back was turned?!"

I sat frozen on the hardwood floor inside, my hands pressed tightly over my lower abdomen, holding my breath so hard my lungs burned.

I wondered why Julian was determined to have this conversation with me within earshot, he probably wanted me to hear the cruel things Drake might say.

He wanted me to break, because even though Drake protected me from him, he still hated me for betraying him. I scoffed to myself, this was ridiculous if you think about it.

Drake didn’t turn to face him immediately. He stood towering in the center of the ruined room, his broad shoulders squared, his coat dark around his frame. When he finally turned, his posture was so cold, so terrifyingly detached, it made the blood in my veins run stone-cold.

"You don’t need to understand my decisions, Julian," Drake said softly. His voice didn’t carry heat or passion; it was flat, dense, and completely devoid of warmth. "You only need to obey them."

"He made a fool of you!" Julian yelled, stepping back into the doorway, his eyes wild as he stared at the High Sovereign. "You brought me back into your bed! You held me! You let me believe that we were starting over—that you were finally done with this stray and his lies! And now you treat me like a servant because I tried to teach him his place?!"

A slow, terrible smile curved the corner of Drake’s pale lips, a cold, condescending expression that carried zero affection.

He took two slow strides toward Julian, stopping inches from his face. Drake looked down at him, his eyes narrowing into razor-thin slits, assessing Julian with the quiet, clinical indifference one might give a misplaced piece of furniture.

"You brought yourself into my bed, Julian," Drake purred, his voice dropping into a dark, venomous register that cut straight through the air. "You mistook my boredom and my anger for affection. You thought you were replacing him? You were a convenient distraction. A shadow to fill an empty room for a night."

Julian flinched as if Drake had struck him across the face, his pale skin draining of all color. "Drake..."

"You are not his equal in this house," Drake continued smoothly, his tone chillingly unyielding. "You never were. You were a choice I made when I had no choices left. Do not ever confuse your position in my estate with his."

Julian’s jaw trembled, his fingers digging into his palms until his knuckles turned bloodless. He looked past Drake’s shoulder, locking his eyes onto me where I lay trembling on the floorboards, his gaze burning with an unhinged hatred.

"He betrayed you with Darius!" Julian choked out, his voice cracking violently into a desperate rasp. "He carried another man’s scent into your home! Why are you protecting a traitor?!"

Drake went completely, terrifyingly still.

He didn’t look back at me. He kept his eyes locked onto Julian’s pale, trembling face, the ambient air in the corridor dropping to freezing as his pureblood pressure expanded, crushing the quiet hall under an inescapable weight.

"Because he might be carrying my child," Drake whispered into the dead air.

The words fell between them like a falling blade.

Julian’s breath locked up in his throat, his eyes widening in paralyzed shock. "What...?"

"You heard me, don’t start acting deaf now." Drake murmured, his voice laced with a dark, possessive intensity that made my heart give a violent, frantic thud against my ribs.

"No..." Julian breathed out, stepping back a pace, shaking his head in total denial. "No... that’s impossible! It could be Darius’s bastard!"

"And it might be mine," Drake growled low in his chest, the sound a deep, physical vibration that rattled the iron hinges of the doorframe. "It carries the royal mark of my house until proven otherwise. I will burn this entire territory to ash before I allow you or anyone else, to put a hand on a creature carrying my blood."

Julian stood frozen in the doorway, his face completely drained of color, his chest rising and falling in short, panicked gasps. The realization hit him, no matter how much Drake claimed to hate me, no matter how cold he acted or how many iron doors he locked between us, I was carrying something he would defend with his life.

Julian was nothing. A temporary ghost. A second choice used to pass the time while Drake brooded in the dark.

"Get out of my sight, Julian," Drake commanded coldly, stepping past him into the hallway. "Before I decide your presence in this house is no longer required at all."

Julian didn’t utter another word. He threw one last, horrified, venomous look at my pale, shivering frame on the floor before turning on his heel and fleeing down the stone corridor, his steps echoing into the silence.

The iron door swung slowly back into place, but Drake didn’t lock it from the outside immediately.

"Do not over think this, until that child is born, you will be locked up in here." He said to me, softly and yet I heard every word.

He stood in the threshold, his tall, imposing shadow falling long and dark across the floorboards toward me. He didn’t come back into the room. He didn’t look at my tear-stained face or my hands still clutching my lower abdomen.

He simply pulled the oak panel shut, the digital lock engaging with a sharp beep-click, leaving me alone in the quiet room with the echoes of his confession burning straight through my soul.