The Lycan King’s Mark (Nevara) by Tiffanie L. Campbell novel Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26 – Pages Meant for No One

Nevara

I wasn’t planning to go to his office.

In fact, I’d spent the better part of the last two weeks avoiding every shadow that even felt like him. I

wasn’t ready to face whatever lived in his eyes now. Regret. Guilt. Something else. I didn’t want to know.

And yet… somehow, after training, I found myself climbing the staircase that led to the upper halls. My muscles ached, sweat cooling on my back, but none of that mattered. Not when something inside me

tugged with an invisible thread–steady, quiet, and unmistakably him.

When I reached his door, I told myself I was just curious. Just walking. Just… wandering.

But I wasn’t. I turned the handle and stepped inside.

The room was dimly lit, warm from the hearth but absent of the man who usually filled the space like a

stormcloud. The air still smelled like him–earth and pine and smoke. His jacket was folded over the back

of the chair. The desk was cluttered but strangely intimate, less like a workspace and more like a snapshot

of who he really was when no one else was looking.

And that’s when I saw it. A journal. Thick, worn at the edges, spine cracked like it had been opened and

closed a thousand times.

I hesitated. The decent thing would have been to leave it untouched. I should have walked away.

But I didn’t. Because the truth is–I needed to know. I needed something real. Not what he said to the

council, or what he showed the pack, or even the cold mask he wore whenever we were in the same room.

I needed him. I opened the journal and flipped to a random page near the middle.

“I wonder if she’s safe. If she’s warm. If she ever thinks about the day I told her she was a mistake. The

way she looked at me… like she was dying. I see it every night when I close my eyes.”

My breath caught. I turned another page.

“My father said she was dangerous. Said the Moon Goddess had cursed me by giving me a mere wolf

mate rather than a Lycan. He felt we are superior, being direct descendants of the moon goddess. He called wolves muddy blooded.”

I blinked hard. My chest was tightening.

“He told me I had two choices: reject her and ensure her exile… or watch her die. Quietly. Efficiently. A rogue attack, he said. No one would suspect a thing.”

I sank into the chair.

“So I did it. I looked her in the eyes and told her she was unworthy. Unwanted. I made her hate me because I couldn’t bear the thought of her dying for my love. I knew that if she knew I was being forced,

< CHAPTER 26 – Pages Meant for No One

she would have fought for us. I couldn’t let her do that and risk her life.”

Tears slipped down my cheeks before I realized they’d started.

I turned the page.

+25 Points

“I thought the bond would break. It didn’t. Not really. It dulled, frayed, but I still feel her. In dreams. In quiet

moments. In every ache that never fades.”

“They think I’ve moved on. That I’ve buried her like a king should. But I haven’t touched another. Haven’t

kissed. Haven’t claimed. I don’t want a Luna. I want her. And I would tear the kingdom to the ground if it

meant undoing what I did that day.”

My hands trembled as I closed the book gently, pressing my palms against the worn cover like that could

keep the words from seeping into my bloodstream.

He’d done it to save me. He hadn’t wanted to let me go. He never stopped loving me.

And I… I had spent four years carrying a blade forged from betrayal. Four years letting that blade cut me

over and over, convinced he’d cast me aside like I was nothing. Then I married a man that didn’t want me

and spent three of those four years trying to get my husband to even like me. I’d swallowed every sharp thought, every bitter dream, and turned them into armor.

But now that armor felt like it was crushing me.

I rose on shaky legs and slipped out of the room before anyone could see me. The halls were mercifully empty. My boots barely made a sound on the stone.

By the time I reached my quarters, I wasn’t sure if I was angry or heartbroken. Maybe both.

I shut the door behind me and leaned against it, staring blankly at the bed. I didn’t sit. Didn’t undress. I just

stood there, trying to breathe past the knot in my throat.

Because everything I thought I knew was wrong.

He wasn’t the villain in my story. He was the shield. The man who burned himself alive so I could walk

away untouched.

And somehow, despite everything, despite time and distance and pain, a flicker of that bond remained.

I could feel it. Faint and fragile, but there. Like an ember that refused to die.

I curled up on the edge of my bed, knees pulled tight to my chest, the wool blanket beneath me rough and scratchy–nothing like the smooth pages of that gods damned journal.

I could still feel them on my fingertips.

Words that weren’t meant for me to see.

Confessions that weren’t mine to take.

But I’d taken them anyway, and now they clung to me like ash–smudging everything I thought I knew

< CHAPTER 26 – Pages Meant for No One

about Thoren, about us, about why he’d destroyed me.

He didn’t want to.

25 Points

The thought felt too big to hold, too fragile to believe in. And yet I did. My instincts, my wolf, the aching. throb in my chest–I felt it. Not just emotionally. Physically.

Like my heart had spent four years learning to beat around a hole that had never truly closed.

I wiped at my face with the back of my hand. It came away damp. I hadn’t even noticed I was crying again.

“You’re pathetic,” I muttered to myself.

But I didn’t believe it. Not really. Because somewhere beneath the anger and pain, something had shifted.

That ember I felt earlier? It was growing. Not enough to warm me. Not yet. But enough to remind me what

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