Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 224

CHAPTER 163 PART 1

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Marcus Steel still stood beside the table he’d just lifted, his dragon aura beginning to fade back to its dormant state. The phones around the room had stopped recording, their owners staring at the footage they’d just captured with expressions ranging from awe to terror.

Atlas Lancaster, barely conscious on the floor, managed to focus enough through his swollen eyes to understand what he’d just witnessed. The table. The impossible strength. The demonstration of power that transcended anything human.

“You…” Atlas’s voice was thick with blood and broken pride. “You’re not… normal…”

“No,” Marcus agreed simply. “I’m not.”

He walked toward the table again, his dragon eyes measuring, calculating. The heavy oak structure sat exactly where he’d placed it-three hundred pounds of solid wood and expensive dishware, totally undisturbed.

Atlas watched through his haze of pain and humiliation, something cold beginning to creep up his spine. An instinct older than civilization. Prey recognizing predator.

“What are you doing?” Atlas managed.

Marcus didn’t answer. He simply gripped the edge of the table again, his muscles coiling, dragon power surging through channels most humans didn’t possess.

“Marcus, wait-” Ives started, but fell silent when his dragon aura flared.

“If you post that video,” Atlas forced out desperately, “the Lancaster Family will come for all of you. But if you stop now-if you just let me leave-we can still contain this. We can-”

Marcus lifted the table.

Higher this time. Above his head. Holding it steady with arms that didn’t tremble despite the impossible weight.

“Marcus!” Atlas’s voice cracked with genuine fear now. “What are you-”

The Dragon King’s eyes met his-cold, calculating, utterly without mercy.

“This is the difference between us,” Marcus said quietly. “You thought breaking Elize’s spirit would restore your pride. Thought making an example of her would prove your power. But you don’t understand what real power looks like.”

He adjusted his grip on the table, positioning it directly above where Allen’s men had dragged Atlas.

“Wait! WAIT!” Atlas tried to scramble backward, but his injuries made movement nearly impossible. “You can’t! The Lancaster Family-”

“Will retaliate regardless,” Marcus finished. “So I might as well give them a reason worth the trouble.”

The table came down.

Not dropped-that would have been less controlled, less precise. Marcus drove it down with dragon-enhanced strength, the full three hundred pounds plus the force of his supernatural power focused on a single point.

Atlas Lancaster’s right leg.

The sound was beyond description. Not just breaking-shattering. Bone splintered under impact that would have crushed concrete. Atlas’s scream started immediately, high and desperate and utterly inhuman, then cut off

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abruptly as shock and agony overwhelmed his consciousness.

He collapsed, mercifully unconscious, his leg bent at angles that made several onlookers vomit.

Marcus released the table and stepped back, examining his work with clinical detachment. “Get him to a hospital, ” he told Allen’s remaining men, who’d watched the entire scene with professional calm. “Make sure they understand-tell the doctors exactly what happened. No lies. No cover stories. The truth.”

The men nodded and moved to collect Atlas’s broken body.

The young elites in the room stood frozen, phones forgotten, staring at what Marcus had just done. This wasn’t a slap. Wasn’t humiliation. This was real, permanent, bone-deep damage inflicted on one of Five-River Province’s most powerful heirs.

“You crippled him,” Trevor whispered. “You actually crippled him.”

“Yes,” Marcus confirmed simply.

“The Lancaster Family will kill you,” Simeon breathed. “They’ll come with everything they have. There’s no walking back from this.”

“I know.”

“Then why-”

“Because now,” Marcus interrupted, his dragon eyes sweeping the room, “your slaps don’t matter. Your forced participation means nothing. Compared to a shattered leg, a few slaps are irrelevant. When the Lancasters come for revenge, they’ll come for me. Not you.”

The implication settled over the group like a revelation. Marcus had just made himself the primary target—had taken the full weight of tonight’s disaster onto his own shoulders.

“But you’ll be destroyed,” Madison said, confused by this apparent self-sacrifice. “Why would you do that for us?”

“I’m not doing it for you,” Marcus corrected coldly. “I’m doing it because you’re all witnesses to what happens when people cross me. When you tell your families what happened here, when you explain to anyone who asks- you make sure they understand. Atlas Lancaster came for revenge and left with a broken leg. The Dragon King doesn’t forgive insults, and he doesn’t lose.”

He looked at each of them in turn. “You want to survive what’s coming? Injure yourselves. Small cuts, bruises, nothing serious. Then tell everyone Marcus Steel forced you to participate. Tell them you were terrified. Tell them you had no choice. Throw me to the wolves-I’m counting on it.”

“You want us to betray you?” Brandon asked, disbelief in his voice.

“I want you to survive,” Marcus said. “And the only way you do that is by making me the villain. So be smart. Be strategic. And when the Lancaster Family comes asking questions, make sure they know exactly who to blame.”

Ives stood apart from the group, her phone clutched in trembling hands. She understood what Marcus had done – had taken a situation spiraling toward disaster and transformed it into something controlled. Brutal, yes. Violent, absolutely. But controlled.

“We should go,” Allen said quietly to Marcus. “The hospital will contact the Lancaster Family within the hour. We want to be somewhere defensible when that happens.”

Marcus nodded and turned toward the exit. Ives fell into step beside him without being asked, her earlier tears dried but her expression still shaken.

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