CHAPTER 116: CHAPTER 115. THE END OF THE REIGN OF ERENGARD I

Before Roxanne could drive her claws into what remained of Dietrich’s chest, a soft, trembling hand caught her wrist. "Don’t kill him," Vivianne whispered, not weakly, but with a chilling, purposeful calm. "Not yet."

Roxanne’s snarl died in her throat. The demon-wolf hybrid inside her bucked angrily, demanding the final strike, wanting to tear the monster apart for every scar he’d carved into Vivianne’s past life and this one.

But the moment she met Vivianne’s eyes, soft, determined, and unblinking, the raging tempest inside her abruptly stilled. A thread tugged inside her chest. The mate bond. The grounding force is stronger than every instinct screaming to finish the kill.

Roxanne’s jaw flexed. "Vivianne, he—"

"I know," Vivianne said, voice steady as she stepped closer.

She placed both palms on Roxanne’s blood-slick cheeks, the touch featherlight yet commanding. "I’m the last person alive who carries every reason to want him dead. Every wound, every nightmare, every fragment of hatred is mine."

Her thumb brushed away a streak of Dietrich’s blood from Roxanne’s lip, slow and intimate. "You don’t carry that burden. I do."

Roxanne swallowed, sharp and audible, her entire body still trembling with the urge to rend and tear. "He tried to take you. He tried to own you."

Vivianne leaned her forehead against hers. "And he succeeded once, but not this life. That’s why you don’t need to kill him."

Roxanne’s breath hitched, deep and ragged, like a beast forced to remember it had once been human. The demon horns curved wickedly from her skull, pulsing with dark energy, and the wolf fangs glinted under the fractured light leaking into the ruined hall.

Her eyes, burning with feral hunger, flicked toward Vivianne with a sharp, instinctual recoil. But they softened. Just slightly. Just enough to show she heard her.

Vivianne lifted a hand, pressing her palm to Roxanne’s cheek. Even through the feverish heat of her mixed form, Roxanne leaned into the touch. A tremor moved through her, violent and uncontrolled, not fear but the crushing weight of instincts being forced back into their cage.

"Trust me," Vivianne whispered, voice low and sure. "I’m not sparing him. I’m choosing the moment."

The growl in her chest faltered. Her wings, once spread wide in absolute dominance, twitched, then folded. The monstrous tension in her shoulders eased, and the inhuman glow in her eyes flickered.

Vivianne stepped closer, wrapping her arms around her mate. Roxanne allowed it—allowing herself to be held, touched, and claimed. She pressed her forehead into the crook of Vivianne’s neck, inhaling her scent, letting it cut through the bloodlust like a cool stream over burning stone.

"...Alright," she breathed. The sound scraped her throat, half-human, half-beast, but hers.

Vivianne held her tighter. And the change began.

The wings are first, shuddering violently before pulling inward, folding until the shadows they cast shrank and shrank, becoming nothing more than the bare outline of her back. The massive demon horns cracked along their surface, glowing with fading embers before dissolving into smoke that curled toward the ceiling.

Roxanne winced, her fingers clutching at Vivianne’s waist as the claws at their tips retracted, ripping free of her skin before pulling back into more delicate, human nails. The fur along her arms and jaw thinned, then receded, melting into her flesh with a ripple that left her panting from the pain. Her fangs shortened slowly, agonizingly, teeth grinding together as bone shifted beneath them.

Her eyes are the last, blazing with crimson, fading, swirling, fighting, and then settling into the deep, breathtaking shade Vivianne knew so well. With every change, every snap of bone, every pull of magic, Roxanne clung to Vivianne like a lifeline. Only Vivianne’s scent, her touch, and her presence kept the wolf and demon from tearing back out through sheer force.

Finally, when the last pulse of demonic heat left her skin, Roxanne sagged in Vivianne’s arms, human again, trembling, bloodied, still terrifying but no longer monstrous.

Vivianne cupped her face, horrified by the wounds now visible. Torn flesh. Deep gashes. Burns that had been hidden beneath her demon form. "Undine! "Vivianne’s voice cracked into the throne hall.

Water surged instantly, wrapping around Roxanne in a shimmering veil.

Behind them, Dietrich wheezed. His body lay broken, half-melted, the false wolf hide dripping off him in grotesque sheets. He tried to lift himself, but his mangled limbs gave out, leaving him sprawled helplessly across the marble floor.

The watching nobles, knights, and guards said nothing. They couldn’t do anything. Roxanne’s dominance still crushed the air, even softened; Vivianne’s presence only intensified it. The combination of their auras pressed into every rib, every nerve, every soul.

The elite knights of the empire, sprawled and kneeling, made a sudden, instinctive movement forward. But before a single one could take a step, the world trembled. Vivianne’s power flooded the throne hall.

The four Spirit Kings surged through her veins, Undine’s water, Afrit’s fire, Terranova’s earth, and Tempest’s wind, blending into an aura that felt like the voice of nature itself giving judgment.

"Don’t you dare move," Vivianne commanded.

The air itself thickened, rippling with iridescent pressure. Her voice rang through the hall, echoing with more than one tone, a chorus of spirits speaking through her, enforcing her will.

"My wife has won this fight," she declared, every word cracking across the marble like thunder. "She is the Alpha you will bow to."

Dozens of elite shifters, wolves, beasts, non-shifters, those with titles, and those without collapsed fully to their knees, forced down by the authority woven into her pheromone and the Spirit Kings’ power.

"And I," Vivianne continued, her eyes gleaming with the brilliance of a rising moon, "am her Luna."

Her aura flared, a crown of light and ferocity. "Obey me."

No one could resist. Not even those who once called themselves loyal only to the emperor. Not even those who doubted her existence. Whether shifter or non-shifter, noble or commoner, demon-blooded or human, every warrior in that hall bowed.

The knights were already kneeling, crushed beneath the combined dominance of Vivianne’s spirit-crowned aura and Roxanne’s lingering alpha pressure. Even those who had never bowed to anyone in their lives found their bodies forced into the marble, trembling as if the air itself had hands around their throats.

Mara and Maxim held the line, guarding the perimeter with weapons drawn, refusing to let anyone come within distance of their Luna as Undine flooded healing magic through their lord’s half-broken form.

Roxanne didn’t stop staring at Vivianne even while her body knitted itself back together. Her eyes tracked every breath Vivianne took. It’s the look of an apex predator forced into stillness only because its mate commanded it.

And Vivianne walked toward the broken emperor.

Dietrich barely resembled a man. Flesh split open in jagged seams where the false skin created by the forbidden magic peeled away like rotten bark. His ribs were visible beneath ruptured muscle; patches of fur sprouted in places where glamours had failed; his wolf form flickered in and out of existence, as if unable to decide what shape he still deserved to wear.

Even so, when he lifted his eyes to Vivianne, something desperate and painfully human hid beneath the monstrous ruin.

"My Vivianne..." he rasped, his voice shredded by his own blackened blood. His hand, twisted, half-clawed, half-skeletal, reached for her with a trembling longing that seemed to shake him more than the pain tearing through his ruined body.

Vivianne didn’t take the hand. "I’m hers," she said softly, each word a blade sliding effortlessly under his ribs. "Vivianne de Borgia. Not an Erengard."