Page 55 of The Unwanted Mate of the Lycan Kings (Unwanted #1)

Regan storms over to Zeke, grabbing him by the throat and hauling him to his feet. He slams him against the hard tiles before tossing him. He smashes against the sink basin when Regan snatches him back up. Both of his hands wrap around Zeke’s throat, and Regan’s eyes blaze with fury.

Zeke looks empty, void. He doesn’t even attempt to get free from Regan’s death grip, even when his face changes color from lack of oxygen.

“Regan!” Lyon rasps, and I see his face is just as red as Zeke’s. Looking at Regan, I realize that he, too, can’t breathe. My brows furrow in confusion. I saw them get hurt before, but when one was hurt, the others were not. Why is it different now?

“Regan!” Lyon rasps out, clawing at his throat. Regan turns his gaze to Lyon, and his eyes widen. He lets Zeke go, and Lyon gasps for air.

Zeke doesn’t even put up a fight when Regan grabs him again, almost as if he accepts whatever Regan is planning on doing to him. It confuses me. He whipped me without so much as a sliver of remorse, and he didn’t stop until he ran out of liquor and had to look for more.

Yet now he’s acting like he has no memory of what he did. Lyon growls, staring at them as Regan drags Zeke from the room.

Lyon turns his gaze to the guard. “What are you doing?” he snarls.

The guard jumps to his feet. “Go with him and make sure he doesn’t fucking kill him because he’ll kill us all if he does!” Lyon snaps. The guard rushes off, and Lyon shakes his head while I remain on the shower floor.

Lyon steps over me and sits next to me in the water. I hiss in pain when he grabs me, pulling me between his legs so I am forced to lean against him. He then peels his shirt off, tossing it out the door, and it lands on the floor with a wet slap.

Lyon mutters to himself as he moves me around and grabs the shower head, pulling it down from its holder so he can rinse the blood off me.

“So if Regan kills Zeke, you all die?”

Lyon nods his head. “Normally, three life forces combined makes us harder to kill. We’ve survived some pretty shitty situations, but by each other’s hand, it’s almost as if we’re mere mortals.

Hurting each other hurts us all. I think it was Litha’s fail-safe to ensure we didn’t kill each other.

She said our loyalty and love for each other bind us, so she bound our lives, too. ”

He maneuvers me so my legs drape over his as he turns me on my side, and I catch a glimpse of his chest and the markings on them.

On his chest are two tattoos in black ink.

On one pec is a beautiful woman sitting on a pile of coins with chains binding her wrists and ankles together while she burns.

On the other is a skull with a crown atop its head and a snake wound around it.

They were symbols of greed and pride, two of the Seven Deadly Sins.

My fingers brush over the tattoo of the woman burning as the coins beneath her melt. Lyon freezes, his hand catching my wrist, and I lift my gaze to his.

“What did you do to betray Litha?” I find myself asking.

Lyon ignores me and bites his wrist. “I’ll tell you, but only if you allow me to heal you,” he replies, holding out his wrist to me.

I press my lips together, not wanting anything from him.

They let Zeke do what he did when they left me with him, but I also want to figure out the curse, so I grip his wrist, wrap my lips around his bite mar k, and let his blood flood my mouth.

My injuries start to heal, closing quickly the more I drink.

“We were competing for our kingdoms. They weren’t handed to us. We had to fight for them. I sold her out,” he tells me. I let his wrist go, and I glance down at my legs. A relieved sigh escapes my lips. “Better?” Lyon asks, gripping my chin and turning my face back to his.

His thumb swipes across my lips as he wipes away the blood staining them. “Yes,” I breathe. Lyon watches me for a moment, keeping his hand on my face. “What do you mean by sold her out?” I ask, and he drops his hand on my thigh.

“We knew she was in the kingdom somewhere. Regan and Zeke didn’t want to kill her.

They saw the King’s death as payment enough.

When we found the blueprints for the High Kingdom, we saw that there was a hidden basement under the castle.

The maze was built on top of it. Regan and Zeke planned to tell our father that she was one of those killed in the raid. ”

“But you saw it as an opportunity to get one up on your brothers,” I tell him, and he nods.

“I gave my father the blueprints we found in exchange for my kingdom,” Lyon tells me.

“Why did you choose that kingdom?” I ask.

“It was the wealthiest out of them. I wanted to show my brothers I could do better than them.”

“And did you do better than them? Was her life worth your kingdom?” and that is exactly why he is pride, he can’t be outdone, refuses to be seen as less than. His pride and greed were his end, he just didn’t see it until it was too late.

“Of course not, and I’ve lived with that mistake ever since.”

I grit my teeth—so many deaths for self-gain. What a waste of life.

He reaches for my tattered shirt that barely clings to my body.

Panic engulfs me. I’ve barely managed to stop them from seeing the markings covering me.

I grip his wrist when he goes to peel it off.

He looks at me with a confused expression, and I realize I am preventing the inevitable, so I let him go. I’m done hiding what I am.

Yet when he attempts to remove it, his back suddenly arches, and he groans loudly.

The noise startles me, and I jump when I see the shower floor turn red and the scent of blood reaches my nose.

My eyes widen in horror, and I look at Lyon when his body jolts again.

However, this time red and angry lines carve open his chest. Blood runs down from his wounds onto his abs before staining the shower floor red with his blood.

“Lyon?” I murmur in panic, and his back arches again, and he lets out a pained noise and curses. “Fuck!” He breathes through gritted teeth.

“Lyon?” I cry, sitting up straighter and trying to grab onto him.

His pained laugh is heartbreaking. “Regan should have known better. He’s gonna get us all killed.”

My brows furrow. “What?” I ask, but Lyon shakes his head when more lines cut through his stomach this time.

“Regan, he’s wrath. He’s blinded by his fury,” He hisses through the pain when the ones on his chest, which were already closing, tear open again a second later.

“Zeke is a glutton,” Lyon rasps out. “And this will be no different. He won’t be able to stop. He won’t fight him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Zeke, he’ll let Regan kill him because he’s a glutton for punishment,” Lyon says before screaming when the markings carve from his back, over his shoulder and chest.