The Betrayed Princess Rising Chapter 109

3rd Person's POV

“Yes.” Ezra didn’t hesitate.

What stirred him wasn’t the looming clash with Rowan or Logan—it was the fragile hope shining in Lylah’s eyes. She truly believed they would fail to move against him. She believed in him.

Ezra reached for her hand which hung at her side. Her fingers were cool and delicate, and he threaded his own through them slowly—binding them together one by one before lifting their joined hands to his lips.

“Ezra…” she breathed.

“Do you want me to crush Rowan completely?” His voice dropped, velvet-dark and edged with something lethal. “If erasing his dominance will calm the fear in your heart, I’ll do it. I won’t leave even a trace of him standing.”

l“I don’t want you to have anything to do with that trash anymore. But if this is the path Rowan chooses… then of course I want you to win.” She swallowed. “In every way possible.”

Something tightened in Ezra’s chest.

Her words dragged him back centuries—to another night beneath a silver moon, just after they had marked each other.

He remembered their fingers intertwined like this, her voice steady as she urged him to rise above the traitors who tried to sever their bond—her stepsister, her former fiancé, the ministers and elders of Lunareth who had called their mating unnatural and sought to destroy it.

She had believed in him then, too.

“Ah—sorry.” Lylah blinked suddenly, as if embarrassed by her own intensity. “I must sound like the greedy villain in a drama, trying to influence you.”

“No,” Ezra murmured, his gaze softening in a way no one else ever witnessed. “You sound adorable.”

Her eyes widened.

Adorable?

Heat rushed through her veins, warming her cheeks. Only then did she become aware of how intimately their fingers were laced. She had been too distracted by his face—by those eyes.

Ezra’s irises weren’t merely beautiful. They held impossible depth, like a galaxy suspended in shadow. When Lylah looked into them, she felt something inside her shift—pulled toward a gravity she couldn’t resist. As though the life she thought she knew was only a fragment of something far older.

“I’m also glad he no longer holds a place in your heart,” Ezra added quietly.

Lylah nodded, smiling faintly. Yes. Rowan was gone. That chapter had ended.

Suddenly, something stirred beneath her skin.

Selestine.

Her wolf shifted restlessly. Every time she stood this close to Ezra, it reacted—but now it felt different. Stronger. Wilder. As if recognizing something before her human mind could comprehend it.

“Ezra…” Lylah’s brow furrowed.

The world tilted.

For a split second, dizziness swept through her—and then light flooded her senses.

Images crashed into her mind.

Memories she had never remembered… yet they felt as real as the air filling her lungs.

She saw herself and Ezra beneath a full moon, their wolves circling before collapsing into breathless laughter. Their lips met beneath the stars again and again. A sacred clearing in the woods, carved with ancient runes, where he pressed his teeth into her skin and completed a ritual binding that burned with silver fire.

She felt the bond snap into place.

Felt his arms around her—warm, protective, unyielding. Felt the darkness prowling at the edges of their world, and the way he always stood between her and it.

The memories intensified. More primal. More consuming.

Marking. Claiming. Promises whispered against her throat.

Forever.

“Ouch.” Lylah gasped, clutching her temple as the visions overwhelmed her.

Her eyes squeezed shut.

“What happened?” Ezra’s grip tightened instantly, Alpha instincts flaring. He grasped her shoulders. “Lylah. Are you okay?”

When she opened her eyes again, the visions were gone.

Only Ezra remained—solid, present, concern etched sharply across his features.

“I—I don’t know,” she whispered. “I just felt… something strange.”

“Strange?” His voice sharpened with urgency.

She hesitated.

How could she possibly explain what she had just seen? Those visions hadn’t felt imagined. They had felt real. Lived.

“It’s nothing,” she said at last, forcing a careless shrug that didn’t quite convince either of them. “Maybe I just imagined it. Forget it.”

Worry darkened Ezra’s expression immediately. “We’re going to the hospital.”

“No, there’s no need.”

They were still standing far too close.

One of his hands remained on her shoulder; the other cupped her cheek possessively, his thumb brushing lightly against her skin.

Then—

“Lylah!”

Both of them turned.

Damon and Iris stood several steps away, clearly having walked in on something far more intimate than they had expected.

Iris’s eyes widened. “Ah! Sorry!” she blurted quickly, half turning away. “We didn’t mean to interrupt!