Vengeance of The Broken Lycan Prince [BL]-Chapter 478: The Day The Music Stopped

[KOSTA]

"...You demanded vengeance as the price for it all, and I completed it. I did it for both of us..."

He was not ready to style another loss from his nana.

He was not ready to spend another moment away from Tamiko.

This week has been the worst of hell for him.

Waking up with Tamiko beside him and not being able to touch or even kiss him that had been torture. It was the worst week of his life. Even worse than the time he had lost his parents back then.

This was not the time to be reminded of what he could have had, and Igor was not to take any for an answer.

"I cannot..." Yilena said, and Igor’s face went hard.

This woman was joking.

She really had to be.

This woman was playing with him.

This was the unfunniest joke that she had ever dared to tell him, and if she wasn’t careful with her words, he would kill her himself. He would ruin her for the sake of everyone that they both held dear.

If she wasn’t very careful with her words, then those would be the very last words that would ever come out of her mouth.

Igor walked closer to his guardian, his rage nearly blinding him.

He knew that he couldn’t kill her because it wasn’t fair to repay kindness with cruelty, but then this woman had been nothing but cruel to him and his Erasthai these past years. Surely, she deserved whatever fate karma was bringing for her, right?

"Wrong answer, nana. That’s a really wrong answer," Igor said, growling in waning, the distance between them suddenly a suffocating space that he wanted to be free of. This was the kind of shit that he refused to be forced into.

"You know I can’t undo the ultimatum, kid," Yilena said, and Igor began pacing.

If he didn’t resort to pacing, he would definitely slap the woman’s head off her shoulders, which was something that could scream ingratitude for the thousands of years she had been by his side as his guardian and the home he could come back to.

He was trying his very best, but gods, was it the hardest of things right now.

No one had ever prepared him for this. Not this kind of pain and certainly not this level of agony.

It was as if someone was tearing through his heart mercilessly without thinking of what the consequences would be, and he was supposed to just stand there and make it like an obedience to a child and a warrior.

This was too much even for Yilena. Surely, she had to have known that, too, right?

"I met the terms. Every single one of them. You said it was a condition that had to be met, did you? That Tamiko was to kill Yilena Sidorova by sundown, or we would stay apart until the vengeance on Grealor was done.

"And the vengeance is done. It may have taken eleven years, but it is done. Release it. Unbind us from the ultimatum, nana," Igor said sharply, like he wasn’t ready to play any more games with life right now. He was worn out, and he needed to rest.

Frankly, his guardian wasn’t making his life any better by acting up like this, and Igor didn’t like it one bit. What the fuck was so hard about unbinding them to that cursed condition then?

If anything, now that the vengeance was done, it would have been unbound automatically. The conditions had been met, and Yilena was still holding onto them, for what, though?

"Come on, kid," Yilena began tiredly.

Igor stared at her blankly, like she needed to speak, fast.

"You always knew what the truth was. Even back then. You knew what was at stake. You always knew that I was the ultimatum, that vengeance was just a way to keep you both together until it was done.

"But it was I who was the ultimatum, Konstantin. My life... You knew it that evening when he set out to find the name I had given him. When he set out to find Yilena Sidorova and skill her.

"You knew it back then, too," Yilena added as she sighed exasperatedly, like this wasn’t what she had signed up for when she had agreed to take care of Sahina’s brother.

Love was never supposed to be this complicated, and yet somehow, she had managed to get entwined in the worst of conspiracies that now demanded more than they could give.

Yilena had hoped that things would change, but what was to change as long as she still lived? As long as Igor was not ready to let her go? What was the hell supposed to change then?

"Nana," Kosta breathed in pain like he couldn’t even think straight at the moment. He breathed heavily if it was supposed to be what he had just heard. And he hated himself for that.

He had always known what the truth was.

He had been there.

He had tried to stop Tamiko from taking names.

But his Erasthai... gods, he was so beautiful back then that he never tried to agree to something that had seemed so simple.

A name that should have made their lives easier still haunts them ten years later, and Igor despises himself for not trying harder to convince Tamiko to let the name be.

He detested himself for not being the reasonable one for them, and even worse, he reviled himself for introducing Tamiko to Yilena that early.

But they were happy back then.

That day had been the happiest for them. Tamiko had touched him wholly, and it felt like heaven. The kind that only Tamiko could give him. Only for the day to end in the worst of ways.

And now the price for them to pay, even after a decade had gone by, was the heaviest of it all.

Time was the most punishing thing that anyone had ever done to him, and Kosta didn’t even have the energy to fight it, because deep down, he always knew.

Maybe that was why he cleared all of Grealor, hoping there would be a change. But as someone who had lived for thousands of years, he should have known better, right?

"I thought... After everything, after the sacrifices we made over the years, I thought you would let it all go. That you would accept vengeance for the condition. That you would... gods, I was naive back then, even to this day, hmm?" Igor said, his desperation taking a toll on him.

He was supposed to be the stronger Erasthai, and now he was so close to a breakdown. He was so close to losing his closure, and he didn’t have a valid way of crashing out just yet.

He couldn’t go to Tamiko feeling like shit because he knew that the prince would definitely hear his voice if he went there. It was too hard for him, but what the fuck was he supposed to say to that?

How the hell was he supposed to act whenever they seemed to be going sideways for him? When life was slowly losing meaning, and he didn’t even have a chance to breathe right because of the noose around both their necks?

"Tamiko accepted the task... and then failed. So, the oath still stands. He has a choice, kid. Either he kills me... or he dies."