Chapter 194: Sweet, personal hell

Magnus thoughtfully pressed the filter of a cigarette to the corner of his lips, stepped toward the desk, and unzipped the duffel in one smooth motion. Then he froze.

The severed head of the Lower City’s High Chief stared back at him. The very man who had ordered his father’s assassination and personally shot his mother right before his eyes when Magnus was just a child. It rested lopsidedly at the bottom of the bag, its dead, glassy eyes fixed on the ceiling.

A cold, dark smirk touched Magnus’s lips. He and his precious true mate’s brother shared an astonishingly similar, radical approach to problem-solving. Well. In Magnus’s humble opinion, this was unequivocally the single best wedding gift of his life. And an even better, intoxicating burst of strength before he went and tore Nyland apart with his bare hands.

"Holy shit... His sense of humor is just as fucked up as yours! This is disastrous! He should’ve just bought you a fucking tea set, you psychopath!" Sayan choked out, covering his mouth as he turned pale and backed away from the desk.

The phone in Magnus’s hand vibrated with a sharp, demanding buzz.

"We’re moving out," Magnus grunted, scanning the incoming text from Jane regarding the yacht, the child, and Nyland’s words. So that piece of trash wanted to play happy families? Fine. He would personally show him what a real family looked like. He’d choke him to death with his strong family ties and crush him beneath their heavy values.

The night air over the open sea was bone-chillingly cold, but Magnus felt the icy wind as if thick steam were pouring off his body, scalding with adrenaline. That, and the fact that a massive, snow-white yacht was currently roaring in flames right in front of him.

He and Dean stood opposite each other on the blood-soaked deck. Looking down at the pathetic, battered coward before him, Magnus felt too much disgust to even grant him the title of an enemy.

Dean was hopelessly weak, beaten, and terrified by the swift execution of his entire armed crew. Magnus’s men and Askold’s divers had executed the operation cleanly, silently, and without mercy.

Out of the corner of his eye, Magnus had already witnessed what mattered most: his woman, the frightened child, and silver-haired Adam were being carefully lowered into motorboats, speeding safely away from this burning hellscape.

That bastard. That scum Nyland had dared to stress his pregnant mate tonight.

When Jane had confessed her love in that dark tunnel, telling him she knew she was carrying his child right before the line went dead to a gunshot, he had nearly lost his mind in that council hall.

He had thought his heart would burst from the surge of adrenaline. His feral beast demanded blood. Black, primal fury drenched everything within his reach in liquid fire.

He regretted so bitterly that he hadn’t put an end to this bastard back then—five years ago, when Nyland first stuck his nosy snout out, trying to uncover where Magnus’s deceased mate was buried.

Upon discovering that sacrilege, Magnus—then shattered by grief and unable to mend his broken soul—lost himself to blind rage and flew straight to him.

There hadn’t even been a conversation. He had nearly beaten Nyland to death on the spot. Dean had lost that fight the moment he laid his dirty hands on what Magnus guarded with his life: the memory of his lost love.

It had taken several men to pull him off him. He sent those who intervened straight to intensive care, but unfortunately, the surgeons managed to revive Nyland. As a result, Magnus was banned at the state level from entering that country. Who could have known the bastard wouldn’t stop there? He had everything required for a lavish life—power, wealth, status. Yet he threw it all away, descending into madness over another man’s true mate.

Magnus felt a desperate, physical ache to hold his precious mate close. Staring down at the pitiful excuse of a creature before him, he stalked forward with slow, deliberate steps, knowing with absolute clarity that the bastard would not survive the night.

Getting too close was a risk—Dean’s arms had been artificially enhanced. As Sayan’s analysts had discovered, Dean had undergone experimental surgery following their previous brawl, fusing heavy, high-density metal rods directly into his bones. A single blow from those fists could shatter a skull.

Magnus adjusted his trajectory, stepping fluidly around the pooling blood. Nyland never took his hunted, frantic eyes off him.

"Give her back! She’s mine! I stole her from you, which makes her mine!" the unhinged Alpha roared in desperation, his metallic knuckles cracking as he clenched his fists.

"My mate belongs to me alone. The mark on her skin is absolute proof," Magnus cut him off coldly, watching with disgust as the bastard twisted in agony. He couldn’t even bring himself to call him a man. He was a pathetic, wretched imitation.

"She’s an Alpha Breeder! That makes her communal! Property of everyone!" Nyland snarled back, trying to land a strike where it hurt.

"Your sister is the communal one now. In a bargain-bin brothel, as you well know, women are shared by all," Magnus purred, his voice smooth and lethal. "My mate belongs solely to me and always will. Dominant or not, I couldn’t care less. She bears my mark on her wrist, just as she carries it on her neck. And you want to know what else? Right now, in her womb, she carries MY child."

Magnus bared his teeth in a predatory smirk, savoring the pure, unadulterated rage and shock that washed over Dean’s disfigured face as the realization of his complete ruin sank in.

"She’s... she’s pregnant?" Nyland whispered, entirely shattered.

Losing whatever frayed threads of sanity he had left, the broken Alpha lunged forward with a howl of helpless fury. But Magnus had anticipated the desperate charge. Wrecking forward with his full body weight, he threw a devastating, feral strike straight into the bridge of Dean’s nose.

Blood sprayed in a crimson arc. Stunned, Nyland stumbled backward, losing his footing on a massive slick of engine oil leaking from the ruptured generators behind him. Before he could regain his balance, he hit the deck hard, completely soaked from head to toe in the viscous, highly flammable fluid.

Without even breaking his stride, Magnus reached into his trousers pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes along with a heavy steel lighter. He flicked it open and lit up, casting a fleeting glance at the worn engraving on its side—a relic he had bought years ago from an old fence in a black market, chosen solely for the words etched into the casing:

My personal hell is always with me...

His Jane. His exquisite mate. His sweet, personal hell. She was going to stay by his side forever now. And if he was going to live through the long years ahead—to watch their children and grandchildren grow—it was about time he kicked his bad habits.

With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the burning lighter into the oil slick where Dean was floundering.

A blinding flash lit up the night. Dean’s agonized, inhuman shrieks echoed across the water, settling into Magnus’s rage-torn chest like a dark, satisfying meal.

Silently, Magnus walked to the edge of the deck, seized the tethered rope, and dropped down into the speedboat where a tense Sayan was waiting. Behind them, the massive yacht groaned, blazing like a beacon as its structure buckled under the inferno.

They had carved a safe distance into the dark sea by the time Nyland’s vessel finally went up in a deafening explosion, tearing through the night sky before sinking into the abyss, taking the bastard’s sins down to the ocean floor.

Magnus feels the heavy, burning weight of her gaze against his skin.

Her gaze.

Jane paces in a panic along the old wooden pier illuminated by headlights. The second their speedboat slows near the shore, he doesn’t wait for docking—he leaps over the side, plunging knee-deep into the freezing water. And she jumps down from the rotting planks, running straight toward him without looking, stumbling and sinking into the wet sand.

A single second.

And they crash together, locking into a desperate, unyielding hold.

"My soul..." The words break against her hair before he can finish.

Her lips, slick with sea spray and tears, press desperately against his as her slender legs wrap around his waist, held high above the water in his grip. She truly is his soul—separated from his body by some cruel twist of nature. And if she were ever ripped from his side, who knows what horrors this feral beast would unleash to drag her back.

Not even Magnus himself knows what would become of the world then.