CHAPTER 93: CHAPTER 92. LOSING HIS MIND

Erengard Royal Palace

"Your Highness, we have reports that the Wyndham knights are moving along the capital’s border," one aide announced, voice tight with worry.

Dietrich doesn’t look up from the map spread across the table. The candles threw long shadows over his hands, and his jaw worked as if chewing on the words. He felt the room tilt around him, the safe, tidy world he had controlled started to collapse at the edges.

"We cannot pull most of the troops to the south," another advisor argued.

He paced, palms spreading white with the strain of the decision. "If we send them, the capital will be nearly undefended. We cannot leave Serathis empty, Your Highness. The palace, the treasury, the council, everything must be protected."

Dietrich’s eyes finally rose to meet the man’s. His voice is low, sharp as flint. "I want to burn the South to the ground," he said. The words left him like a verdict, cold and absolute.

A silence followed that felt colder than the candlelight. The council exchanged frightened glances. "Yes, Your Highness," the first aide said quickly, but his face showed doubt. "But if the capital is destroyed in the process, what then? What good will any victory bring us if Serathis falls?"

The question hung in the air and stung. It forced Dietrich’s mouth closed. For a long beat, he said nothing, and in the quiet, the old, rational part of him, the part that used to consult Gerhard before any dangerous move, nagged like a memory.

Dietrich missed it; it’s the voice that once pulled him back from the edge of his recklessness. Gerhard had been the balance of his temper, the mind that tempered his heart. Without him, the empire seemed heavier to hold, and every decision felt like walking deeper into fog.

He knew exactly how much Gerhard had done for the empire. His father, for all his pride, had never been as clever or as calculating as his sister, Morwenna. It was always Gerhard who made his father’s reign appear stable, and later, it was Gerhard who made Dietrich’s rule possible at all.

He had sworn to himself that he would surpass them all, his father’s weakness and Morwenna’s smarter planning and tactics and that he would be the emperor history remembered as strong, as the first alpha of the empire. But then Roxanne was born, and everything he believed about power and control had unraveled.

In her, he saw something he couldn’t master. And in losing to her, Dietrich saw history repeating itself, another emperor undone by someone he couldn’t bend. It was unbearable. The humiliation cut deeper than any wound a sword could give.

That was why he had leaned so heavily on Gerhard, why he couldn’t imagine ruling without him. Gerhard had always been there to reason when rage clouded his mind, to plan when his impulses drove him toward disaster.

Gerhard had been the steady hand behind the throne. He had smoothed over scandals, arranged cover-ups, and buried the worst of Dietrich’s crimes beneath a web of efficient plans. When Gerhard advised finding a proper mate or curbing the emperor’s worst excesses, it was not just prudence; it was survival. Without that counsel, Dietrich’s rage and obsession bled into every decision.

He remembered Gerhard’s quiet voice telling him to stop inviting unmated omegas to the palace. "Find someone to steady you," Gerhard had said once, when reports came of another late-night guest who had not left. "You cannot keep burying bodies. Eventually the holes will be found."

But Dietrich couldn’t stop, not when he was still weaker than Roxanne. Not when Vivianne lingered in his thoughts like a fever that refused to break. The desire to possess her had grown into an ache that infected every part of his life. It was no longer affection or want; it was obsession—hungry, unholy, and relentless.

To surpass Roxanne, he sought what the old scrolls called the Covenant of the Crimson Veil, the one he bought from the Black Covenant guild. A ritual forbidden even among his kind, whispered to grant power far beyond mortal limits. It demanded the blood of an unmated omega and the sexual intercourse of two souls, their essences intertwined beneath the full moon.

The ceremony was never gentle. Red candles burned around the room, their light flickering across the walls. Dietrich knelt on the floor and carved strange marks into the wood beneath the bed. Each symbol was drawn with his blood. When he spoke the ancient words, the air seemed to tremble. The language was old and harsh, twisting the mind with every sound.

The Offering was always the same. An unmated omega is brought to the palace under false promises. They never knew the truth until it was too late. The room would darken, the sigils glowing like embers, and the ritual would begin. What happened inside those walls was hidden from the world, sealed by blood and fear.

They will have sexual intercourse, Dietrich will drive the unmated omega to their brink of sanity, pushing them out of the boundaries. Scare is what makes the power grow bigger. He wanted them terrified, haunted.

When it ended, Dietrich took the last breath from his victim, slicing their throats. Their blood was the price. He drank it, feeling the power rush into him like fire in his veins. The world seemed to bend around him, shadows turning in his favor. For a moment, he felt untouchable.

But every time he did it, the hunger grew stronger. The more power he gained, the more his mind began to crack. He couldn’t stop. Each ritual took something from him: reason, mercy, and the part of him that still remembered what it meant to be human.

Because he needed to get stronger than Roxanne, he needed more unmated omegas, each one a sacrifice, each one a step further from his humanity. The elders warned that such strength came with a cost no soul could bear, that the magic would hollow him until only hunger remained.

But Dietrich no longer cared. He would have Vivianne. He would have everything. Even if it meant drowning in his own curse. And without Gerhard to control him, there was no one left to clean the blood or silence the whispers. The palace was filled with fear. Servants avoided his eyes. Soldiers obeyed without question.

"Bring me unmated omegas," Dietrich ordered, his voice flat.

The aide opened his mouth to object. "Your Highness—"

"I said, do it," Dietrich snapped.

The aide bowed and stepped back. "Yes, Your Highness."

The captain of the royal guard stepped forward, concern written on his face. "And the troops? If we send most south, the capital will be vulnerable."

Dietrich did not bother to look up. "Send a quarter of our forces to the South," he said. "Give them the best armor and the best weapons. Crush the Eisenwald strongholds, and make Duke Eisenwald regret his choice of betraying me. Destroy the South."

The captain swallowed, then bowed. "Yes, Your Highness."