CHAPTER 425: SHE CAN NEVER COME BACK

DAEMON’S POV

He didn’t feel her die.

Not at first.

For a few heartbeats that stretched into eternity, Daemon kept listening for the whisper of her breath against his chest — the faint flutter that had always reminded him she was still there, still fighting, still choosing to live.

But the silence that followed was obscene.

Deafening.

"Zina?" he rasped, his voice raw, almost unrecognizable to his own ears. "Zina, answer me."

She didn’t.

Her hair, a deathly silver-white and soft as frost, fell through his fingers like water. Her hand, the same one that used to grip his arm whenever she mocked him for being too serious, now hung limp against his thigh.

Lifeless—

"No..."

He pressed his palm against her chest again, desperate, wild— his power surging from his hand into her like he could force her heart to remember its duty. But it didn’t.

"Your Majesty," Malik Zorch’s voice came quietly behind him, strained, reverent, afraid.

Daemon didn’t look up. "She’s not gone." The words trembled, half promise, half prayer.

"Alpha King—"

"I said she’s not gone!" he roared, the power of his supreme wolf erupting from him like a breaking dam. The ground split. Walls shook. The dead and dying wolves nearby whimpered as his aura flooded the chamber.

His men fell into submission in their wolf forms. Even Rowan, who was in his Red Wolf form, while fighting against Zelkov and Kairos all at once flinched back, obscuring his face from what could be termed by most as the Ultimate Rage of the Supreme.

But Daemon absolutely loathed it. The fact that he had that much power and yet could not save the only one he had ever loved.

The fact that she left him so easily while wearing a smile.

Okay, it might not have been that easy for her. But he still absolutely loathed it. Loathed everything. And maybe even loathed her.

But somewhere at the back of his mind, it was clear that he had barely processed this rage. This feeling where two of his supreme wolves who were normally in conflict now shared a common grief.

The loss of their mate.

Blood splattered his hands, his arms, his chest. None of it mattered. He could taste iron on his tongue, feel the tears streaking down his face without remembering when he started crying.

He lifted her body higher, rocking her slightly like he could coax her awake. "You promised me," he whispered hoarsely. "You promised me you’d live. You said you would rule by my side. Bearing our children and creating a long lasting dynasty with me. So why would you break your promises? Why would you die in my arms like this?"

"Alpha," Marcus’s voice broke through the pack link, shaky and unsure. "The Deformed— they’re collapsing across the battlefield. They’re... they’re dying. Everywhere."

Daemon froze. Around him, the air felt like it was cracking.

He looked up. Through the crumbling ceiling of the cave manor, he could see the faint shimmer of the world beyond — a strange, golden light spreading like dawn. The Deformed inside the chamber were convulsing, their grotesque forms disintegrating, their black veins turning to ash.

Her death had severed the tether.

Zina’s sacrifice had broken the curse.

And the price of salvation was her. And perhaps, his soul also formed part of that price.

Because now, he was sure he would never remain the same.

"Your Majesty," Norima Talga’s voice rang abruptly behind him, having appeared when he stopped taking notice of the world. But he didn’t respond—merely kept cradling Zina. That was until he remembered something that he should have from the very beginning.

He turned to the woman from the Night Mages. "Zina was once raised from the dead," he said, jumping over his words in a feverish haze, "right before we acquired our bond, she was once dead. But she came back to life."

"Your majesty—"

"Perhaps there’s something I am missing. Something that I should have done. Zina has never been ordinary, there is no way she can leave me like this. So think about something! I command it!"

The atmosphere came to a complete halt, and that was when Daemon realized that the war he had spent days, wracking his brain over, was over and done. Everyone in the room now stared at him with varying expressions mixed with pity, fear, anger on his behalf, and some micro expressions he didn’t want to name.

Norima Talga stood at a loss, looking between the lifeless body that he cradled, and himself.

"Your majesty, I truly do not know—"

"It was either you, or her. And she chose herself," A foreign voice cackled, approaching him with confident steps.

It belonged to an old woman who he didn’t recognise, yet felt like she had existed past her time.

She swept a bow before him. "I’m the one once called Ada, and called Lysandra within these walls for three decades."

Before he could make sense of the woman and her possible identity, a younger woman stepped out from behind her. And the uncanny appearance had him tearing backwards a bit.

The woman in question looked so much like Zina. But more or less the gaunt and not much older version of Zina. Yet while she didn’t look much older, her light blue eyes held the kind of wariness that came from something far more complex than grief.

The woman whom he suspected was Zina’s mother was the only one who dared approach closer than five steps away from him like the rest stayed. And when she reached for Zina mindlessly, he clutched into Zina tightly, refusing to give her away.

He would never give her away.

Something flickered in the woman’s eyes "If she came back to life, the Deformed will come back to life as well." She croaked in a voice that seemed dry not just from thirst, but a hunger that formed for ages.

"Then I will fight them one by one!" He snapped, and only when he heard his voice did he realize he was in hybrid Lycan Form. Teetering between looking like a human, and looking like a wolf.

The woman smiled at him wistfully. "To know she was loved by you gives me great joy. But Zina was a step ahead of us—by killing herself under the Afternoon Blood Moon, she can never come back to life again. Not like that anymore."

On cue, Daemon saw the darkness fading away to light. Like morning coming when in reality it was just afternoon regaining its original color.

Understood — here’s a tight, visceral final paragraph that captures Daemon’s raw reaction to Ameneris’s words:

For a long, unbearable moment, Daemon just stared at her — at the woman who had given birth to the only light he’d ever known — and something inside him fractured.

His breath hitched once, then again, until it came out in a low, guttural sound that wasn’t quite human. His claws tore into the stone beneath him as his wolf surged and recoiled in the same breath, fighting to contain a grief too vast to name.

The world around him dimmed; he could hear nothing but the echo of her voice repeating in his head — she can never come back. And when the meaning finally sank in, he did the only thing left that his heart remembered how to do —he roared, a sound so brutal, so hollow, that even the gods must have turned away.