CHAPTER 431: A FLICKERING LIFE

DAEMON’S POV

Zina had not spoken loudly when the words left her—just a breath, nothing more—but Daemon heard it like a blade scraping over bone.

She had called her mother. Albeit a desperate plea, barely above a whisper, but he was sure of what he heard.

His body stilled. Completely.

No growl. No order. No crackle of power. Just stillness—the kind that comes before ones world ends.

The people behind him froze on instinct, not because of command but because they had felt and heard the same thing he did: something impossible had just been undone. Something no power in the world accounted for.

He didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe nor move. He was afraid he couldn’t even if he wanted to. His gaze stayed pinned to her corpse—except she was no longer a corpse.

She was breathing.

Alive.

The audience before him had not yet processed it—shock travels slow through a crowd of that magnitude—but Daemon did not share their delay. He was not a king at that moment nor an alpha.

He was simply a man whose entire soul had been returned to him without warning.

It wasn’t until his knees gave the slightest bend did he finally process the shock.

Their bond was gone. Their link, severed. Yet some part of him still recognized her. The part that remembered nights she slept curled into his chest, the smallest things she said, the sound of her laughter like the soft lullaby of night. The part of him that he never let the world see—yet she had seen anyway.

Someone behind him dared whisper, "The Luna... Luna Queen breathes—"

Daemon moved.

Not fast nor too violently.

Just with the inevitability of a force that no one living or dead would ever stand in front of. And true to that, none dared intercept him. No one tried to speak. Not one of his elite warriors so much as shifted in his shadow.

He gathered her into his arms, clutching her tightly as tears of sheer shock misted his eyes.

"Zi... Zina." He muttered, afraid of his own voice, fearing the sound of it would shatter this dream, and he would then wake up in the North only to find that this was her one year anniversary of death. And that his subconscious had been merely conjuring up a dream so sweet and delusional at the same time just for him to escape reality even if only for a moment.

Indeed, he had gone as far as imagining the hellish years that would follow without Zina by his side. And while there was a popular saying that the pain of grief only got easier, the life he imagined he would live in the next five years without her seemed even more hellish than all that he was currently feeling.

It would never get easier for him.

He clutched her closer till a painful point as though she were made of breath and memory, not bone or flesh. Her head rested against his chest, and his arms locked around her—not protectively, but possessively... like someone who had lost everything once and would not survive losing it again.

"Prepare a carriage." He commanded no one in particular, and they didn’t waste time to scramble to do as they were told in spite of the fact that their confusion was far greater than his.

Before Daemon descended from the great square, Malik Zorch was already waiting by a carriage with blinds so dark no one could see through them.

He entered with Zina still held against him, refusing to release even an inch of her weight to another hand. Then the door closed behind them, sealing out the roar of the square.

He communicated through the pack link that they would be discreetly journeying to the Lunar Den and that the best healers in all of the Western Lands should be summoned

The kind that presses into the lungs and stings behind the eyes.

He did not unclench his jaw. Did not speak. But his chest rose too sharply beneath her cheek, and she realized he was holding himself together by threads thin enough to snap if he blinked the wrong way.

Instead he waited. Waited for a silent confirmation that he wasn’t dreaming. Her face was still set in anguish—so expressive of someone who was very much alive. But he still waited. Waited for her to speak again.

A tear rolled down her face from her still shut eyes causing an instant knee jerking reaction from him while her lips muttered the words. "Mother" in the most heartbroken voice he had ever heard from her.

Even as the venomous emotion of relief coursed through his veins like poison, he wanted to raid her world and rid it of every single person who was causing her so much anguish and so much pain all in one breath.

He raised a trembling finger, wiping away her hot tears in disbelief.

"Zina..." he called again because the suspense and uncertainty was killing him already. And maybe it was something about the way he called her right then and there with a voice made out of paper and grief, but her eyes finally pried opened.

Very slowly like a new child would the first time they graced the world.

"Daemon...." She said, more like a question, and a tear he didn’t know he had been holding back rolled down his face.

He had never cried in his entire life. Not even as a boy. Yet Zina had managed to make him cry two times in a row in the space of minutes.

"You... you can hear me," he whispered as if scared the bubble would burst, "you are alive?"

She swallowed painfully. That alone nearly broke him. Then the most dramatic thing happened as though she was breaking off from a trance that once held her captive—she lifted her once immobile fingers, and then wiped away his tears while hers ebbed endlessly.

"I am most undeserving of it. Do not cry for me."

He gripped that hand, refusing to let go of it and relief like no other coursed through his veins in dizzying successions. He had never felt like this. Never wanted to feel like this again. But wouldn’t mind feeling like this again if it meant that she wouldn’t leave him.

His grip shifted—tighter, as if absorbing her silence into his own. "Talk to me. Are you okay? How are you feeling?"

She didn’t say anything though. Just kept on silently crying while she stared aimlessly at the roof of the carriage.

That was when he remembered it—the wound to her chest from where she stabbed herself.

He made quick work of tearing her clothes slightly at the chest area, only for him to see nothing.

No wound, not even a scar. Only caked blood that remained evidence of the harrowing incident that happened.

It was like a miracle straight from hell. And he would pay anything to have that miracle.

But Zina... Zina didn’t look like she would pay anything to have that miracle. If anything, she seemed to loathe the fact that she was there, alive and with him.

It only made unease grow in his heart.

"Speak to me!" He whisper-screamed in frustration, "please, do not be so silent before me. Not after... not after everything."

Tears brimmed in her eyes. Then she mouthed, "I am sorry." before her eyes shut close.

Fear settled in his heart as he checked for her pulse and heartbeat. But it was all there to his relief. Albeit weak but still there.

He opened the window and roughly commanded. "Faster!"

The carriage then went from fast, to a dizzying speed.