WOLFLESS: Accidentally Marked By The Devil's Son-Chapter 95: Mastermind

Chapter 95

A cold shiver ran down Isabella’s spine. The memory of those empty sockets staring into her own back in the cabin flashed through her mind.

"...Elena?" Isabella whispered, her voice trembling.

The woman’s bloodless lips curved into a sharp, knowing smile. Even without eyes, she seemed to "see" exactly where Isabella was.

"In the flesh," Elena purred, her voice like silk sliding over a razor blade. She moved toward the light, the heavy velvet of her robes devouring the orange glow of the candles.

"It’s refreshing to finally confirm that Lucian is your fated. I could taste the resonance of his agony the moment you spoke those delicious words of rejection."

Isabella felt a cold, hollow pit open in her stomach. "You..."

"Me," Elena whispered, tilting her head. The empty, black voids where her eyes should have been seemed to pulse with a dark light. "Caleb has the heart for a grand romance, but he lacks the precision of a Witch. He provided the face, the touch, the... domestic comforts. But I was the one who reached into your mind, Isabella. I was the one who wove the starlight into those memories, making sure every time you saw a hero, you saw him."

She gestured dismissively toward Caleb, who stood stiffly by the bed, his perfect, unscarred chest heaving with silent resentment.

Isabella’s head spun. The images—the starlit forest, the man shielding her from the nightmare, the broad, battle-scarred back—they all rushed back.

But this time, the face didn’t blur into Caleb’s gentle features. The memory shifted, aligning with the truth she had tried so hard to bury.

The scars belonged to the King. The voice that had screamed her name until the world broke belonged to none other than Lucain.

I rejected him, she thought, a sob catching in her throat. I called him a monster, and I trusted a stranger over him.

"So all I saw..." Isabella’s voice was a broken rasp. "Every act of sacrifice... it was Lucian? It was always him?"

"Every single one," Elena mocked, her eyeless face splitting into a wide grin. "He fought for you, bled for you, and nearly unmade himself to keep your soul intact to that pathetic human frame. And you? You just threw it all away with a single sentence. I can still hear his dead heart cracking across the veil. It’s a shame."

The mark on Isabella’s neck went haywire, burning with a frantic and desperate pulse that demanded her full attention.

But then, a flicker of confusion crossed Isabella’s mind through the haze of grief. She looked at Caleb, then back at the eyeless woman.

"But at the estate," Isabella whispered. "The Blight. Why did you...? Why save me at all? You hate Lucian. You could have let me in pain and die and watched him wither away from the loss of his mate."

Elena let out a dry, rattling laugh that sounded like dead leaves skittering over stone. "Oh, child. I didn’t save you out of mercy," Elena hissed, leaning in until the scent of grave-dust overwhelmed Isabella.

"I removed the Blight because if I hadn’t, Lucian would have sensed your end. He would have torn through space and time to stabilize you, to pour his own life-force into you until you were healed. He would have arrived too early, before the trap was set."

She straightened, her robes moved. "I didn’t cleanse you, Isabella. I merely transferred it. I took the rot out of your blood and kept it in mine, waiting for the perfect moment to give it back. If you had died then, it would had been a waste. Your bond hadn’t stabilized until you turned eighteen. He would have just been a mourning King who lost a girl with his accidental mark. But a King who has been rejected by his fated? A King whose soul is being shredded while his mate willingly walks into the arms of his brother?"

Elena’s smile turned razor-sharp. "That is a King who can be broken. And a broken King is much easier to bleed dry."

Isabella’s breath hitched. She had been the bait. Every memory, every touch from Caleb, even her own salvation from the Blight had been carefully orchestrated to turn her into a weapon against the only man who truly loved her.

"No," Isabella breathed, scrambling toward the edge of the bed, away from them both. "I won’t let you. I take it back. I didn’t mean it!"

"Too late, wolfless" Elena said, her hand snapping out to catch Isabella’s jaw in a crushing grip.

"The words are in the air. The bond is frayed. And listen..." She tilted her head toward the stone floor.

From the deep foundations of the Shadow Realm, a sound rose—a low,thrum that vibrated through the stone floor and up into Isabella’s shins.

it was the sound of a Sovereign’s grief. "He’s in pain" Elena whispered, her voice giddy with malice.

"And the rejection of a true mate bond rejection?" Isabella thrashed, her hands clawing at Elena’s skeletal fingers, but the shadows coiling around her limbs tightened, pinning her against the high-backed bed.

"Let me go! Lucian! Lucian, I’m sorry!" she screamed, the name tearing from her throat with a raw desperation that finally matched the truth of her soul.

"Silence!" Elena snapped. With a flick of her wrist, she forced Isabella’s head to the side, pinning it against the furs.

The motion was brutal, stretching the skin of Isabella’s neck taut and exposing the pulsing mate mark. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

The red lines of the bond were weeping faintly, shimmering with a light, looking like an open wound that refused to close.

Caleb took a step forward, his hand twitching. "Elena, you said once the rejection was complete—"

"I said what I needed to say to keep you compliant, you fool," Elena hissed without looking at him. Her empty sockets remained fixed on the mark.

"I am done with your ’romance.’ I will use her to get my revenge, and then I will leave what’s left of her for you to weep over."

Isabella’s eyes went wide as Elena’s hand hovered over her throat. The Witch’s long, blackened fingernail sharpened into a needle-like point, dripping with a thick, oily substance.

"The Sovereign carved my eyes out for a girl." Elena murmured, her voice dropping with terrifying hum.

"Now, I shall carve his soul out through his mate. Every ounce of pain he gave me, I return to him through you."

"No... please..." Isabella sobbed, her body shaking with a terror that bypassed her mind and went straight to her marrow.

"Don’t fight it.," Elena sneered as she slammed her finger down directly into the center of the mate-mark.

The scream that tore from Isabella’s lungs was unlike anything human.