CHAPTER 378: A CRAZY DEMON

Winter/Sylthara~

"In a month," Vaelthor said, his voice folded into the shadows, calm as a blade and twice as certain. "We take the Lycan King and Queen — the ones who broke our mother’s life into splinters. We take Sebastian and Cassandra, too. We strike the heart, burn the map, and then we leave this palace behind for good. We vanish from the shadows that have hunted us since we were children and build something that’s ours."

The words landed like a stone in still water — but the pond was deeper than I remembered. My breath snagged. For a second the garden itself seemed to tilt, a private planet thrown off its axis.

This wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t a scheme neatly folded over a cup of tea. It was a challenge hurled at fate’s face — reckless, brilliant, and gleefully suicidal. Vaelthor didn’t propose an idea so much as summon ruin with a whisper.

The Lycan King and Queen weren’t mere rulers to be boxed and unboxed at whim. They were the pulse beneath the soil: a fortress made of bone, ritual, and weathered malice. Their halls thrummed with old magic that tasted of iron and winter. Wards lay over their domain like cobwebbed armor, alive with a low, insect hum. Guards moved without sleep, the kind of men who had been taught to forget mercy. In that kingdom, loyalty was not spoken; it was wielded like a blade and left to bite. And most importantly, this people were gods. Literally!

And Nicholas’s parents—gods, their names weren’t just remembered; they were carved into the marrow of every story that shaped our world. A Vampire Lord with the purest blood that the demons sorted after. According to demon tales, his presence once made entire courts fall silent, his name alone a crown that needed no jewels. And his mate... a Werewolf Warrior whose legend didn’t just live in books or crumbling stone—it burned through the night in the whispers of soldiers and the crackle of campfires. They said she could bring a battlefield to its knees with a single roar. That when she fought, the earth itself trembled beneath her steps.

I even heard that my mother, the demon queen herself, had taken that woman beneath her wing because even monsters admired power when they saw it. Together, Nicholas’s parents stood like living myths, untouchable, unstoppable. The world had built empires around their love and bloodline.

And then there was us. Two orphaned demons, forgotten scraps left in the shadow of their glory. We had no crowns, no armies, no names that carried weight. Just the kind of hunger that gnawed at your ribs and turned into something dangerous. And a plan—thin, reckless, and fragile as morning light.

I looked at Vaelthor properly, this time. Early sun struck his profile and made him look carved — hard planes, a jaw gone white under his breath. His hair, dark as the inside of a gathered cloud, rustled in the breeze. There was a steadiness in him that did not belong to people who lived in fear; it belonged to those who had rehearsed death until it felt like an old friend. That steadiness made the words worse. If he sounded sure, it meant the tilt of the world was deliberate — not a mad gust, but a storm he had been cultivating.

"Vaelthor," I said, voice tearing higher than I intended, all the disbelief and fear grinding into it. "How do you expect us to kill the most protected people in the entire werewolf world? In a month? That’s not bold—that’s suicide. We’d be torn apart before we even got close."

The words trembled out of me, half-prayer, half-accusation. In my chest something cold and small unfurled—the knowledge that this wasn’t just a mission. It was a promise we might not live to keep.

He He smiled then — slow and predatory, the kind of smile that felt like a blade sliding over your spine. It was charming in a way that made my skin crawl, threaded with that old, reckless hunger our blood shared. "It’s simple, Syl," he said, words smooth as silk and cold as iron. "We use Katrina and Nicholas — they’re the door."

He unfolded the plan between us like a ceremonial map — creases catching the light, inked promises of ruin. "We don’t crash the gates, that would be crazy." he said, voice low as smoke. "We go slow. Get close. Love their children, make the parents laugh, earn their trust. Then we quietly pull at the threads holding them together until it falls apart. When they’re worn down and think they’re safe with us, that’s when we strike." His eyes flashed, thrilled by the geometry of betrayal. "I’ll call the shadows. You’ll slip into their dreams, whisper the softest poisons. Turn tenderness into suspicion. Make every touch taste like a lie. And when they look inward, confused and raw—we deliver the final blow."

He spoke with the calm of someone planning tea, not treason. The casual, domestic cadence of his words made my stomach lurch; it was surgical cruelty wrapped in a hostess’s smile. Still, beneath the sickening politeness there was a terrible, ruthless logic — two orphaned things learning to turn affection into weaponry. The thought of shaping love into a blade felt obscene, and for a fraction of a breath I imagined us as architects of ruin, drawing blueprints across hearts.

My eyes widened until the world narrowed to a pinprick of panic—horror unfurling in my chest like a black blossom. Every syllable of his plan scraped against my ribs. Desperation rose hot and raw; I had to find a crack in this armor of vengeance before it sealed us inside. "Vaelthor," I forced out, my voice thin and urgent, "even if we pull this off in a month—god, think—what about the mate bond? Ours, Katrina’s, Nicholas’s. After we kill their parents, what then? You can’t just sever what ties us. The bond will tear at us from the inside."

Images slammed into me: Katrina’s face collapsing in grief, Nicholas folding into himself, the way mate bonds don’t just break—they recoil, they lash. I could already feel the imagined friction, the sick, intimate violence of love turned into a blade. "We wouldn’t walk away clean," I said, teeth clenched. "It’d be like setting fire to a home while your family’s still inside. That’s not strategy—that’s madness. It won’t work."

His smile didn’t falter. If anything, it carved itself deeper, that familiar glint in his eyes sharpening into something fierce—triumph dressed as certainty. He stepped closer and laid a hand on my shoulder, warm and steady, the same touch that once pulled me out of nightmares and cold alleyways. For a heartbeat, I almost saw the brother who used to shield me, not the man plotting regicide.

"Last night," he murmured, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that slid through the air like smoke, "I had a little chat with Nancy. In the bathroom."

Nancy. My pulse stuttered at the name. The witch who had guided us through every impossible corner, smoothed paths where there should’ve been none—yet no matter how much she’d helped us, I could never trust her. There was something about her that felt... wrong. Dangerous. She was the kind of woman who smiled like she’d already read the end of your story.

She was terrifying in a quiet, bone-deep way. Her eyes always seemed to know, like they could peel back your skin and look straight into the rot beneath. Every word that left her mouth dripped with something sweet and poisonous, like honey masking venom. Secrets clung to her like perfume, thick and inescapable, promising salvation and ruin in the same breath.

"She told me," Vaelthor continued, his whisper curling around the edges of my resolve, "the mate bond can be broken. Easily. Just a few words."

Something inside me cracked open. A cold wind swept through my chest. "What words?" I breathed, the tremor in my voice betraying the panic blooming in my veins. The thought of severing the bond was a blade twisting slowly, deliberately.

He didn’t hesitate. His gaze locked onto mine, unflinching, as if daring me to challenge him. "All we have to do is look them in the eyes," he said softly, almost reverently, "call them by their full names—Nicholas Sebastian Lawrence for you, Katrina Anderson-Moor for me—and say: I reject you as my mate." His lips curved like a devil unveiling a trick. "The bond snaps. Just like that. And we’re free."

Free. The word felt poisonous. My breath hitched as terror surged through me, drowning the serene hush of the palace gardens outside. Reject Nicholas? The man who had cracked open the fortress around my heart with his crooked grin and reckless loyalty? Who saw the monster in me and stayed anyway? Who held me through the darkness when even I couldn’t stand myself?

The very idea was unbearable. It wasn’t just betrayal—it was erasing a piece of my soul. Tears burned at the edges of my vision as the weight of our choices closed in, pressing against my ribs like iron bands.

What had we become—two siblings who once clung to each other to survive—now standing on the edge of burning everything we’d dared to love?