Marked By The Mad King Alpha (Phoebe and Perry) novel Chapter 54

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The shower ran on long after the water stopped feeling cold. My blood wound its way down the drain with it and left the floor a darker, quieter world. I sat there until my limbs forgot how to tremble and my thoughts went flat, a blank I mistook for peace.

Perry had left the bathroom in a storm. He’d taken everything with him — heat, anger, the final shred of control — and left me on the tiles to collect what remained: bruises, bite marks, a thin scar along my neck, and that tiny vial burning hot in the pocket of my jacket like a secret hammer.

Mason’s voice cut through the numbness. The sound of her panic yanked me back to the present. She knelt, turned off the water, and began moving with a tenderness that made my chest ache. She cleaned the blood without a question and pressed warm cloths to the marks Perry had made. Her hands shook; her tears fell freely.

“Should I fetch Helen?” she asked, voice small.

“No,” I whispered. The word was a dry reed. I couldn’t bear a healer’s examination — not yet. Not when the wound was still raw in everything but open flesh.

She hovered anyway, unwilling to leave. “The poison,” I murmured later, as she dressed me in plain clothes. The word felt obscene and finally forced me to focus.

Mason froze. She scanned the room like someone checking for eavesdroppers. “How long?” I asked.

She hesitated. “They said… a year,” she answered finally, eyes full of shame and something like hope. “You take a drop each time. They say it works slowly—so we can blame fate when the king weakens.”

A year. My throat closed. A year of letting someone I hated and hated me at the same time decline by inches. I pictured Perry growing thin while I watched. I pictured a court relieved. I pictured being the instrument of a change that might never make me safe.

“I’ll do it,” I heard myself say. It sounded like surrender and strategy at once.

Mason hugged me then, hard and earnest, as if that could stitch something back together. I accepted the comfort because exhaustion had drained me of illusion and choice. In private, the vial felt heavier than its size warranted. I slid it back into the pocket and pressed my fingers over it until my nails hurt.

Later, the front yard was a storm of anger.

Timothy exploded at Perry with a fury I hadn’t ever seen in him. He was usually the calm center of things — the man who could steady thousands of fighters — but when he spoke, his voice cut.

“How disgusting do you think I am?” he shouted. “Do you even know what she told me? I touched her to comfort her — nothing more. She was opening up to me because she trusts me.”

Flynn tried to temper the blow, but Timothy wouldn’t be softened. “You pushed her away and left her to rot,” he said. “She needed someone who would listen. You made that impossible.”

The words landed like stones. My chest clenched. Timothy was right — and it made the ache of being misunderstood worse than any bruise.

Perry’s face went dark, a mask falling into place. I watched him shift without seeing anyone else. He was small and terrifying in that moment — a king on the edge of something dangerous.

Standard POV Format

The words became a pressure I couldn’t bear. My hands moved before my mind finished. My shape changed in a heat that wasn’t mine; it was old and ancient and terrifying.

When you shift, there’s no middle ground. The air thins. Sound warps. Timothy’s voice became a drum in a tunnel and then even that faded beneath the pounding of my own pulse. I saw red, smelled iron, and every thought narrowed to one bright, violent line.

I didn’t think of consequence. I only felt the need to be seen, to be understood — and to be obeyed. The beast doesn’t ask why. It acts.

The yard turned to motion. Men stepped back. Even Flynn’s face went pale. Timothy stood his ground. That steadiness — that indignation — made the animal inside me roar.

I moved forward, fast and sharp and cruel. The warrior training grounds, the court, the orders — all of it compressed into this single undeniable thing: I would not be humiliated. Not by rumor, not by my mate, and not by the man who would tell me how to feel.

I barreled into action because it felt like the only correct response to a world that had finally shown its teeth.