Vengeance of The Broken Lycan Prince [BL]-Chapter 461: And The Monster Lingered Too Close

[KAWAI]

"I’m not sure yet. That’s why I came to the ball myself. I tried, but there is something else there. Something I didn’t put between them. If I break the ultimatum now, it will kill them both...

"...our kids will die, Zaffuto," Yilena said, her worries evident. It was like she knew there was more than she could tell her brother without ruining the after-war banquet.

Yet the more she seemed to be holding back, the more dangerous everything seemed to get for everyone, and more specifically, the two Erasthais who had suffered for the past decade.

This here was a ball for the success of their mission against the Grealors. Their first-ever public defense of Kawai, which had the king at the forefront. That was not the kind of shit that people woke up to all the time.

And Yilena really understood how important this was. How important it would be for the kingdom as a whole. She couldn’t afford to fuck it up for everyone.

Now, as she stood with the two men she valued the most in her life, Yilena hated what had become of them because of her deeds. The past had poked its face into the present, and it wasn’t in the prettiest of ways.

There was more to come, the kind that Yilena hadn’t wished for, yet now she had no power over the outcome, regardless of what the kids did anymore.

Life had slowly lost meaning along the way, and the only thing that they could show for all that was not even a possible acceptance speech.

This was crazy.

Perhaps it was what life had really had in store for them up until this moment, yeah?

"No fucking way... No fucking way! I won’t let this happen!" Zaffuto bellowed harshly as he nearly closed the distance between him and his sister in the cruelest of ways.

There was always so much pain and tension between them, and if this continued, the line between love and hate would blur really fast, leaving them with nothing to hold onto.

It was the kind of thing that was bound to bring down empires, a truth that even Zaffuto knew. Yet he didn’t seem to care this time.

This was about his son.

His child.

His little angel.

There was only so much pain his kid would be subjected to before the king stepped in.

And eleven years???

That was a damn long time for the cursed ultimatum to suddenly have another layer to it before they managed to solve it.

"Brother..." Sadako trailed off carefully as he looked at his brother, firmly gripping the king’s arm as if to remind the man of what they were in the middle of and what this meant.

It was like he was trying to remind the mad king that they were in public. That this was a different ball for them.

And Zaffuto, in his rage and desperation, turned to look at his dearest son, the kid who gave him a reason to keep going, and his heart shattered for his child.

The mad king had never been this kind of helpless in his entire life.

He had never been this defeated, and yet he seems to be. This was a battle he was slowly learning he had no weight in, and it hurt to the core because this wasn’t the happiness that his son deserved.

This wasn’t the life he had promised he would. Make it better for him and Liana’s little boy. This was cruelty, a different kind that never cared for what the outcome would be.

And it hurt.

Gods, it hurt so damn much.

The mad king saw the longing in his son’s eyes for Igor Konstantin, and he hated that his sister was telling him that there was a chance that their souls would be doomed to be lonely forever and ever.

That was not something that Zaffuto wanted to hear.

He didn’t want to see his son unhappy, and if his sister didn’t fix her shit and get herself together as soon as possible, Zaffuto would do that job for her. He would fix her up or fuck her up.

It all depended on what the fuck he was feeling, which wasn’t exactly something reliable.

Because at the moment, with Sadako’s hands gripping his arms tightly, the mad king was about to go mad from grief again. This was not what he had signed up for, and the fact that this was Yilena’s doing was just messing with him even more.

What more was the kind supposed to pay for his son’s happiness?

How much longer was this supposed to take, and why the fuck was it not making their lives any easier? Didn’t his son deserve to be happy like everyone around then at this damn banquet?

Was it so hard to accept that truth then? 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"Calm down, Zaffuto," Yilena said, and the king laughed in disbelief.

It was like the world was spinning, and his sister was still stuck in a version of delusions where there weren’t any threats to his son’s happiness.

A timeline that didn’t have Tamiko and Kosta yearning for each other openly and desperately, despite knowing that there was little they would ever be able to do to make things right.

Surely even the devil wasn’t this harsh, right?

"Calm down? Is that what you have to say to this? This was your doing. You fucking ruined their lives. And for what? An ultimatum? What the fuck was that for?

"You do know I could kill you right now, little sister, or do you think I’d choose you over the only living reminder of Liana?" Zaffuto bellowed slowly.

He was losing his goddamn mind.

The whole week, he had watched the kids be away from each other, and he wasn’t sure he was able to take any of this anymore.

No one had ever prepared him for this.

No one.

And now he had to stand there and act all calm while his psycho sister told him that there was a really high chance his son could die because of her ultimatum, something that was already making him unhappy.

This was a price too high.

Way too high for the king to stand by and wait for another bargain.

He was done bargaining.

He had almost lost Tamiko last week on the battlefield because of love, and gods would be damned if he lost his son again because of the fucking ultimatum.

"Fix it, Yilena. Fix it or I will kill you myself and put an end to the damn arrangement, little sister," the king said, snapping his arm out of Sadako’s hold.

He was done playing nice.

If his sister wanted him to go back to being the beast, then Zaffuto would do it. If that meant that his son would be happy. If he had to be a monster to save his son, then there wasn’t much for him to think about.

Lord Sadako knew that, too.

Perhaps that was why, when the king began walking away, Sadako didn’t try to stop him.

He couldn’t.

He understood his brother’s pain so well that it hurt.

"He is right, Yilena."