The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl novel Chapter 98

Chapter 98: Ninety Eight

Turns out Lucien isn’t so weightless after all.

Heaving him onto the horse takes half an hour of grunting, slipping, cursing, and praying I don’t rip open the holes already leaking black blood through his shirt. By the time we ride out of the forest and leave the bodies behind, the sun is high and blinding, and I’m shaking with exhaustion.

He slumps against my back, heavy and limp, arms hanging loosely around my waist. I barely breathe, afraid to jostle him, whispering to the damned horse not to gallop. It doesn’t matter. Every time the wind picks up, Lucien groans, complaining about something or nothing, and then goes quiet again, his head dropping against my shoulder.

His skin is clammy. His pulse, weak. His breaths, uneven. Each one feels smaller than the last.

I can’t stop glancing back, afraid that one time I’ll look and he won’t be breathing at all.

The mountains refuse to appear. I keep riding north--or what I think is north--but everything looks the same. Endless white. The same cliffside. The same twisted trees. The same gods-damned boulder. When I see it for the sixth time, I realize I’m lost. Hopelessly, impossibly lost. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"Luke," I whisper, brushing his arm where it’s wrapped around my waist.

No response.

"Lucien." My voice trembles. "I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know where home is." My tears freeze on my cheeks. My throat burns from the cold. "I don’t know the way."

Then, something shifts in the air. A faint tickle ghosts past my ear, and every hair on my arm rises.

I turn sharply and find nothing. But then I see it. A ridge of snow shaped too perfectly to be nature, carved into the roaring head of a dragon.

Something pulls at me. Instinct, magic, or madness, I am unsure, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m tugging the reins, steering the horse west toward the roaring cliff. My heart pounds, a strange, aching familiarity building in my chest as we begin up the slope. It feels like coming up for air after being underwater too long.

The fog on my mind clears slightly and I forget myself completely as I take in the view, the trees on either sides of here, the crisp, clean air, the utter lack of movement, the stillness of the world, like everything had come to a complete halt here, and this is the very top of the brilliant world.

But there’s nothing else here. Just... snow and emptiness, and we’ve drawn precariously close to the cliff’s edge.

However, just as the horse takes another lurch forward, we... rebound, for the lack of a better word for it.

The horse neighs a harshly cry, flinging us off it’s back and we hit the snow, rolling.

"Lucien!" I call out, catching his wrist before he can roll off too far. He’s still unconscious, his chest rising and falling too slowly. I rise to my feet, making a beeline for that invisible demarcation, and sure enough, I slam into what feels like a hard wall of air.

Confused, I raise my hands to punch the air in front of me, only to hiss as pain reverberates through my arm. I glare at whatever it is, but it looks rather silly as I seem to be glaring at nothing but horizon.

Recalling what Lucien had done when we’d entered Ebonheart for the first time, I raise my hand tentatively, placing it against that invisible wall.

I feel something scrape against my mental shield, a voice old and cunning and rather playful, reminding me of Lucien’s. "Good of you to return home, little liar," the voice says, and I yelp, scrambling back from it.

"Who are you? What are you?" I echo, wondering how many levels of crazy I have become, talking to nothing but thin air.

"I believe most would call me a door? As to who... I don’t exactly exist. Sometimes, wards take on lives of their own. I’m not a person. I am a few words casted into a spell that earned sentience. I protect my liege’s keep from intruders and outsiders." I feel it once more, staring at me with eyes I cannot see. "You both look worse for wear."

And with that, the earth trembles, growling silently, and out of nothing, something appears at the the top of the cliff, stretching wider beyond my imagination.

The building is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s the size of a small castle, its walls a smooth obsidian black and grey, sleek like polished glass. Tall windows climb from floor to ceiling, framed in goldleaf and etched with faintly glowing runes that hum with quiet power.

The roof is made of interlocking metal tiles that shimmer beneath the late afternoon sun. Elegant gargoyles guard the edges, winged lions and robed maidens carved with unnerving precision.

It looks less like a home and more like a monument from the future. Opulent. Lush. Private.

Two guards rush out of the side building, a woman in blue between them and I nearly sob when I see Nath among them.

"Hurry," I say, throat tight with I shed tears that I’d somehow found here. Found help. Nath lowers his head in deference, lips parting to offer greeting, but I brush him off, returning to Lucien’s side. "Please help him."

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