Babysitting The Amnesiac Lycan King novel Chapter 129

Chapter 129

Chapter 129

His hands are rough. Not cruel. Not gentle. Just… desperate.

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Fingers digging into the backs of my thighs, Enoch hauls me up like I weigh nothing. “Ah!” My breath catches as my knees hook instinctively around his waist, heat flaring between us–between my legs, between our chests, between what the fuck we are and what we’ve turned into.

We crash against the edge of a wooden table, and the clatter makes me flinch. Old paint peels under my fingertips as I grip the edge behind me. The wood groans under our weight. Enoch stands between my legs, his chest heaving like he’s been fighting ghosts.

Maybe he has.

Maybe I’m one of them.

His pupils are blown wide, green barely visible now. His jaw ticks, his throat bobs, and his fingers flex around my thighs like he’s scared I’ll vanish if he lets go. Like I haven’t already been disappearing, piece by piece.

I reach for his face. My left hand lands first, the good one. My right is slower, trembling, bloody from earlier. I press the pads of my fingers to his cheekbone, and he flinches–not from pain. From restraint.

He’s burning. I feel it under his skin, in the way his body vibrates with tension, his lips trembling slightly. He’s definitely seconds away from losing control. He could snap my neck like a fucking twig and part of me thinks he knows it. Maybe that’s why he’s breathing so hard.

As though he’s trying to hold back the monster

“You’re coming back with me.” He growls. It

A threat.

God, I almost laugh.

everyone swears isn’t real.

a

question. Not really. But not a command either. It’s…a tantrum. A plea.

The Lycan King, reduced to begging like a boy who doesn’t know what to do with a woman who keeps slipping through his fingers. The same fingers now tightening slightly on my waist though he’s trying to imprint me into his skin.

“I am,” I lie.

I fucking lie through my teeth and I hate how easy it is.

“I’m coming with you.” I murmur with assurance dripping in my tone.

He nods once, jerky. His forehead drops into my palm as though gravity dragged it there. Like I’m some kind of anchor in this storm he hasn’t named. He takes my bloody hand and presses his much larger one over it, sealing it there against his face.

My skin burns where he touches.

Everything burns.

I try to ignore the way my lower back throbs from being pressed into the sharp edge of the table. I try not to react to the heat blooming between us again, how my stupid, hormonal body reacts to the smell of him–earth and spice and war.

He’s shaking. Barely. But I feel it. In his breath. In his grip. In the way his words tremble when he says, “You’ll be my queen after this, right? I’ll put you on the throne. They’ll kneel. They’ll all fucking kneel.”

His voice cracks around the fantasy. Like he can already taste it.

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10.30 Thu, 22 May

Chapter 129

He’s already trying to believe that it’s real. His queen? A woman that would rule beside him? Me?

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My stomach tightens–not just from nerves, but from the tiny life hiding inside me that he still doesn’t know about. The secret I’m cradling under all this goddamn lying.

I nod as I lie through my teeth again. “Yes, baby. I’ll be your queen” I murmur and his eyes close as I press my lips to his forehead.

One kiss. One trap.

Like we always do even back then and now.

Forehead.

Nose.

Mouth.

That’s the ritual. That’s how I soothe the beast. The routine that makes him calm enough to believe I’m still his.

He leans in again, nose brushing mine. His lips don’t move for a while. I think he’s scared to speak. And when he does, it’s barely louder than a whisper.

“I love you so fucking much, Tarv

The shake in his voice shatters me.

Please, please.” His voice breaks. “You’re not gonna leave me again, right?”

I blink hard. My throat clenches. And it happens without permission–one fucking tear slips free. It betrays me. It betrays everything.

Lturn my face slightly, quick. I hope he didn’t see it. But I know he did. I know he’s always watching me more closely than I think.

My voice comes out quieter than I intend. Fragile and false. “No. I won’t leave

you again.”

Lies, lies, lies.

I kiss him for the last time. Finally, on his lips this time.

His breath catches. Mine does too. The kiss is slow, uncertain, and I force myself not to fall into it. Not to let it turn real. Because if it does, I won’t run. And I have to run. For the sake of what matters most to me right now, my baby.

When I pull away, his eyes are still closed.

And for one brief second, I think–maybe I should tell him.

Maybe I should let him know I’m carrying his baby.

Maybe I should stop pretending.

But then he exhales, ragged. Hands still gripping my waist as if the world depends on it. Like I do. And I realize it’s too late. We’re too broken. Too fucked up.

He needs his queen.

But I can’t give him that.

Enoch stares at me and I shiver. Every fucking part of me shivers under his scrutiny.

16:30 Thu, 22 May MCU

Chapter 129

He takes off my hand from his cheeks and his lips brush over the pulse point of my wrist, slow and deliberate like he’s memorizing it.

I feel the drag of his breath against my skin right before he presses a kiss there, and it takes everything in me not to flinch. Not because I’m scared–okay, I am scared—but because part of me still wants to believe this moment is real.

That he’s mine again. That he’ll stay this soft, this gentle.

But I know better.

I need to let go of my own fantasies.

I turn away, “C–can you turn the lights on?” I whisper, voice small, almost sweet. I rest my palm on his cheek again, this time with less trembling. “It hurts my eyes. The dark, I mean. I’ve had it checked. One of the doctor here in Milan said it’s some kind of sensitivity. 1-1 get migraines.”

Bullshit. Complete fabricated, manipulated bullshit.

But Enoch fucking believes it.

Of course he does. Everything I say, he believes.

His gaze hardens for a second, his wolf instincts flaring as if he smells the lie but can’t quite put a name to it. He stares at me, trying to pin me to the moment, to make sure I don’t vanish again the second he blinks.

“You never told me that,” he mutters, hand ghosting over my jaw. “I would’ve—”

“It doesn’t matter.” I force a little smile. “I’m telling you now.”

He studies me, and something unspoken passes between us.

I think he knows I’m lying. Or maybe he’s just pretending not to. Maybe it’s easier for him that way–this little illusion where I’m honest and his and weak enough to be protected. He likes me like this, in the palm of his obsessive hands.

He steps back. Not far, just enough to breathe. Then–snap.

His hand snakes to the back of my neck and yanks me forward like a puppet on a string. Holy sh–His mouth crashes onto mine, brutal and bruising, teeth scraping, tongue forcing a whimper from my throat I didn’t mean to give. It’s all lips and threat and desperation.

His growl rumbles against my chest. “If you run from me again,” he breathes into my mouth, “I’ll burn everything in my fucking path to find you.”

He presses harder against me, his forehead resting against mine, voice low enough to kill.

“I won’t spare anyone.”

I don’t mean to shiver.

I don’t mean to clench my thighs.

But fuck, the way he says it–as though I’m his personal apocalypse. That he’d set the world on fire just to smell the smoke on my skin.

I nod, swallowing. My knees wobble as I whimper, “Yes… okay…”

Just a breath. Just enough.

He leaves without another word, steps echoing, the door clicking shut behind him with the finality of a gunshot.

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114, 26 may

Chapter 129

I stare at that door as it’s the fucking reaper.

This is it.

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I run.

Not metaphorically, not emotionally–physically. I bolt through the dark hallway, fingers scrabbling along the wall until I find the emergency exit Seraphina mapped out for me three nights ago.

It’s narrow, the metal door creaks, and my heart’s pounding so violently I can feel it between my teeth.

I don’t think. Thinking is for people who aren’t being hunted by a goddamn Lycan King with abandonment issues and claws that could rip steel. I just run. Down the stairs. Past the emergency generator. Out the back.

I don’t even stop to put on my heels.

I don’t need shoes to survive.

I just need distance.

The cold Milan air slaps me in the face as I hit the alley behind the building. I keep going. Left. Then another left. A tunnel Seraphina’s friend uses for deliveries–shitty lighting, worse smell. My lungs are burning, ribs pinching under my bra. I press a hand to my stomach to cradle it, to cradle them.

“We’re okay,” I gasp out, voice breaking. “We’re okay. I got you, baby. I swear I got you.”

But then-

BOOM.

The ground fucking shakes.

A tremor rips through the cement under my feet and echoes off the alley walls like the earth itself just snapped. A second later, a car alarm wails. Then another. Then glass shatters in the distance as if someone flung a body through it.

I whip my head around.

The building I just left is glowing. Pulsing. As though it’s alive and furious.

He felt it.

He felt me go.

“No no no no–fuck-”

I pick up speed even though my lungs are shrieking and my thighs are burning and I can feel the rage vibrating through the air like electricity. My teeth chatter–not from cold but from panic.