The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl novel Chapter 121

Chapter 121: One Hundred & Twenty One

"Val."

There is only black.

Not the kind that comes with night, but the kind that eats light alive. It stretches in every direction, vast and endless, and it breathes like a living thing. The air is thick with it. My feet find no ground, yet I stand.

"Val."

It is a summon, slamming into the edge of my mind, over and over, so that it is all I hear from within the belly of that darkness.

"Val."

Lucien.

I turn in a circle, breathing hard, searching, but I cannot find him, cannot follow it, when it has no direction. It is everywhere. Beneath. Above. Around. Inside. I call for him, but the darkness swallows the sound, and the sound of his voice ceases altogether.

I pant. I feel like I have been running for a while. My lips are parched with a thirst, my heart in a constant, painful race. How did I get here? What was I running from? What is this place?

Something wraps around my ankle. And yanks me down.

I fall into another hell of black, vertigo taking me as I scream. But when I blink, I am surrounded by soft light and familiar walls draped in finery. I am on my knees, my fingers curled into ice-cold marble, a few feet away from a pair of bare feet.

My gaze lifts from where I kneel, rising higher along the naked, pale skin, and my breath halts completely when violet eyes meet mine. Instantly, I am suffocating, choking on hard sobs, unable to draw in a single breath as every cell in my body shakes.

"You’ve been particularly hard to reach," the apparition of Lucien says.

"Is this real?" I sob. "Are you real?"

A hand reaches for me, waiting, and Lucien cocks his head to the side. "Does it matter?"

I feel an overwhelming compulsion to take his hand and I do. Very slowly. Our fingers touch, calloused against soft, strong against delicate. Our fingers entwine and hushed gasping breaths tear out of me. "Please tell me you’re alive. Tell me this isn’t another dream. Tell me you’re okay."

Couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating. I’ve dreamed so much of him, missed him so terribly, I have begun to see him, even when he isn’t there. And now, he seats on a throne, his chest and feet bare, wearing the leather pants I’d last seen him in. I knew it wasn’t real because his silver tresses run down his chest, long as they were before the incident and his face is unscarred.

His fingers tighten on mine, pulling me off the ground and the very scent of him is so real it makes me hurt inside. His hand curls on my waist as he pulls me onto his lap. My forehead falls against his chest, strands of his hair tickling my cheek as the tears won’t stop falling, wetting his torso.

He tucks my head under his chin, his thumb circling the spot behind my ear. "They may wrap you in chains and bind you, but do not let them remake you into something you are not. You are not, have never been a helpless woman."

"I can’t think past this pain," I whisper. "I’m... drowning in it."

His fingers drift to the curve of my ears, still raw, unhealing. "Do you know why I made you Queen?"

"I won the Selection," I say after a moment.

"No." His hand falls to my hip, digging in tightly. "Lilith did. But you, Valka, clutched the crown in your hands, even when your fingers were broken. And when it became inevitable that you would lose it, you refused to part with it, taking a piece of it with you, if for nothing more than to shove it up my ass."

The startled laugh that bubbles in my chest comes out as another sob. It seems like such a lifetime away, when my largest problem was a showcase and being ignored by him. And I’d give anything to go back there. If only to touch him again. Like this.

"You didn’t have to, but you fought. You’ve been fighting since you were born." He pulls back, cradling my head softly so I can meet his stare.

"Fight," he says, and the word shivers through me. "Hold on a little longer..." The world around us flickers, his outline rippling like what holds the fabric of our universe is breaking. "...until I can come back for you."

Come... back?

I cling to his arms, painfully, unwilling to let go as panic swells in my chest. I recognize the flickering world, the way his eyes seem to flick about him, like he isn’t quite here. "Where are you?"

Long lashes dust against high cheekbones. Silver brows furrow. A blink of... confusion. "Lost... in between." His frown smoothens into something soft, almost serene. "It is beautiful. Peaceful--"

And I know what it feels like, what it smells like--pollen and roses. The After.

A sound tears from me, part sob, part snarl, as I clutch his chin, forcing his gaze to mine. "Don’t go." My voice cracks on the words. "Don’t you dare."

"Valka..." he murmurs tiredly, and the world about us flickers again.

My fingers tremble on his jaw. "No. *You promised.* You become a fucking con man if you break your promises. And I will hunt you, Lucien. I’ll drag you out of whatever golden afterlife you crawl into and take what you owe me. Then I’ll murder you myself."

A sound escapes him, not quite a laugh, not quite a breath. It shudders through him. Then his hand lifts, ghostlike, tracing the corner of my mouth. His eyes, dim but still silver, focus on me. "Still feral. Even when you’re begging."

He presses his mouth to mine. Salt and heat and desperation, the taste of tears and blood and everything we’ve ever been gnashes together. His hands wander slowly, reverently, finding the back of my neck, my waist, gripping hard. Mine finds his hair, his face, his chest, his shoulders. My nails rake along his back, embedding them with marks as if I could trace him a map on his skin back to me.

The world begins crumbling around his and something in the back of my awareness--an unfamiliar touch--tries to shake me, wake me. But I want to stay. I never want to leave.

But the darkness wins, stealing him away from me again.

****

A chilled spreads in my blood as Rafael snarls, "Stay!"

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