Chapter 4 THE WOMAN EVERY MONSTER WANT

By the time Lena realized the world had changed, it was already watching her.

The transition from the sterile, fluorescent reality of the hospital to the jagged, supernatural underworld of London was as jarring as a plunge into icy water. It started in the service elevator of University College Hospital.

The doors slid shut with a soft, mechanical chime, sealing Lena inside a mirrored box with Adrian and a man who looked like he had stepped off the cover of a high-fashion magazine-and yet, his presence felt entirely too deliberate. He was leaning against the back wall, tall and impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit that cost more than Lena's yearly salary. His dark hair was swept back with practiced elegance, and his smile was charming in a way that felt rehearsed, sharpened by something predatory lurking just beneath the surface of his skin.

Lena barely noticed him at first. Her head was a storm of fractured memories and half-remembered lives. The silver mark on her chest-the crescent sigil-was pulsing faintly beneath her scrubs, warm and restless. It felt like a live wire under her skin, responding to something unseen in the air.

"You have an unusual aura, darling," the man said. His voice was smooth, accented with a lilt that sounded like wind through dead leaves. "People like you don't stay unnoticed for long in a city this hungry."

Lena stiffened, her hand instinctively flying to her throat. The air in the elevator suddenly smelled cloying, like rotting lilies and honey.

Before she could respond, the temperature in the small space dropped twenty degrees. Adrian shifted.

He didn't move closer to her, but the air around him changed instantly. It thickened, vibrating with a low-frequency roar of restrained violence. The elevator lights flickered, the hum of the motor groaning under the sudden weight of his aura.

Adrian smelled it then.

Fae. Ancient, sweet, and wrapped in a glamour thick enough to choke a mortal's senses. This wasn't a doctor or a visitor. This was a scavenger. The wolf inside Adrian surged forward, its claws scraping against the walls of his self-control.

"Step away from her," Adrian said. His voice was calm-the kind of calm that precedes a hurricane.

The stranger laughed, a tinkling, melodic sound that grated on Adrian's nerves. He clearly mistook Adrian's stillness for jealousy rather than a death sentence. "Relax, Alpha. I was only admiring the craftsmanship. It's been ages since a Sovereign walked the streets of London. Do you have any idea how much the Unseelie Court would pay for even a lock of her hair?"

Adrian moved.

He didn't run; he simply arrived at the man's throat. His hand closed around the stranger's neck and slammed him into the mirrored wall with enough force to crack the reinforced glass. The entire elevator shuddered, the emergency brakes screaming as the car groaned between floors.

Lena gasped, her back hitting the opposite wall. "Adrian! Stop!"

Adrian didn't hear her. His golden eyes were blown wide, his pupils jagged and inhuman. He leaned closer, his fangs lengthening, his breath a hot, predatory growl against the stranger's ear.

"She is not for you," Adrian whispered, his voice layered with the authority of seven hundred years of slaughter. "She is not for the Courts. She is not for the Order. Tell your kind that if they even breathe the air she walks through, I will hunt every one of you back into the shadows of the Otherworld."

The glamour shattered.

The stranger snarled as his illusion fell away. His eyes turned into black pits with slit pupils, his skin etched with faint, glowing green sigils. His fingers elongated into claws that scraped fruitlessly against Adrian's iron grip.

The elevator doors slid open with a ding that felt absurdly normal.

The fae didn't wait for a second invitation. Adrian released him, and the creature scrambled out, a blur of green light and silk, disappearing into the crowded lobby.

Silence fell like a guillotine.

Lena stared at Adrian. He was still vibrating with power, his shoulders heaving, the gold in his eyes refusing to recede.

"You almost killed him," she said, her voice shaking.

"I stopped myself," Adrian replied, his voice still carrying that terrifying, lupine rasp. "In 1820, I would have torn his head off before the doors even shut. That is progress, Lena."

She took a step back from him, her heart hammering against her ribs. "That's not reassuring, Adrian. That's... that's terrifying."

For the first time since she'd woken up, a new kind of fear crept in. She wasn't just afraid of the monsters in the dark anymore. She was afraid of the man who claimed to be her anchor.

By nightfall, Morgana had insisted they relocate.

"The hospital is a beacon now," the witch muttered as they climbed into the back of a black SUV with tinted windows. "The fae are gossips. By dawn, every supernatural faction in Europe will know the Sovereign has been found."

They drove in silence through the rain-slicked streets of London, eventually stopping before a narrow, soot-stained townhouse tucked between two derelict warehouses in the East End. The building looked like it was leaning against its neighbors for support, but as Lena stepped out of the car, she felt a hum of energy that made the hair on her arms stand up.

Morgana moved to the door, tracing glowing symbols into the air with her fingertips. The wood groaned, and a series of heavy iron bolts slid back of their own accord.

"Wards," Morgana explained, ushering them inside. "Old magic. This house predates the Great Fire. It's built on a ley line. It's the only place in the city that can mask your signature for more than an hour."

The interior was a labyrinth of books, dried herbs, and shadows that seemed to move when you weren't looking. The house felt awake. Protective. And very, very hungry.

"Who else is watching me?" Lena asked quietly, wrapping her arms around herself as she stood in the center of a room filled with ancient maps.

Morgana didn't answer. She was busy lighting candles that smelled of sage and bone.

Adrian stepped into the light. "Everyone, Lena. The Fae want your power to revitalize their dying realm. The Order of the Eclipse wants to kill you to maintain the 'cosmic balance.' And the witches... well, the witches just want to see if you can be controlled."

"Why me?" Lena demanded, her voice rising. "I was just a security guard yesterday! I liked my life! I liked being nobody!"

Adrian's gaze was steady, unflinching. "Because you are a convergence point. Every lifetime, powerful beings are drawn to you. Not just because you're my mate... but because your soul is older than mine. It's older than the moon itself."

Lena swallowed hard. "And you just let them kill me? Every single time?"

The words cracked something in him.

"I slaughtered kingdoms for you," Adrian said, the bitterness finally bleeding through his controlled billionaire facade. "I burned cities to the ground in the 1400s trying to find the men who took you. I broke treaties older than time itself. Every time I found you, I fought fate until my hands were soaked so deep in blood I forgot the color of my own skin."

"Then why," she whispered, her eyes filling with tears, "do I always die?"

Adrian looked away. He couldn't say it. He couldn't tell her that he suspected his own darkness was the catalyst-that the universe hated him so much it took her away just to watch him suffer.

That night, Lena slept in a bed that smelled of cedar and old magic, but she did not find rest.

She dreamed.

This wasn't a memory of a village or a library. This was something primordial.

She stood beneath a silver moon on a battlefield that stretched into infinity. The sky was a swirling vortex of starlight and ash. She wasn't wearing scrubs; she was dressed in armor that gleamed like liquid mercury, a cape of crow feathers trailing behind her. In her hand was a blade etched with runes that pulsed with a cold, blue light.

The ground was soaked in blood that shone like gold. And there, in the center of the carnage, was Adrian.

He wasn't the billionaire. He was the beast-a massive, shadow-furred wolf-man, his chest heaving with exhaustion. He was covered in wounds that would have killed a hundred men. He knelt before her, his golden eyes filled with an agonizing, desperate love.

"Do it," he begged. His voice was a thousand whispers in her head. "The balance is breaking, my Sovereign. If I live, the world dies. End it."

Lena felt the power in her veins-it was absolute. It was divine. It was cold.

"I love you," she sobbed, the tears freezing on her cheeks like diamonds.

"Then prove it," he whispered.

She raised the blade. The silver light from the moon overhead converged on the steel. With a scream that shattered the stars, she drove the sword through his heart.

Lena woke screaming.

She bolted upright in the darkness of the townhouse, clutching her chest. The mark was blaring silver, so bright it illuminated the dusty room. She was drenched in sweat, her breath coming in jagged gasps as the truth finally slammed into place.

Not a dream. Not a fragment. A core memory.

The door exploded inward. Adrian was there in a heartbeat, his eyes wild, his claws already extended. "Lena! What happened? Are you hurt?"

She looked at him, and for the first time, she didn't see her protector. She saw her victim.

"I killed you," she whispered, her voice a hollow rasp.

Adrian froze. His shoulders slumped, the tension leaving him as he realized the one thing he feared most had happened: she had remembered the end.

"I killed you," she repeated, tears streaming down her face. "Not the hunters. Not the witches. Me. I drove a sword through your heart."

She looked at her hands as if expecting to see the gold blood still there. "You weren't the one who cursed us, Adrian. I was."

The air in the room went deathly still. Morgana appeared in the doorway, her face pale, her hands trembling as she held a protective amulet.

"The Lunar Sovereign," Morgana whispered. "The legend says she fell in love with a beast of the earth. But the heavens are jealous gods."

Lena looked up at Adrian, devastation and love colliding in her silver-tinted eyes. "I was a cosmic entity. I was the balance. And when I fell in love with you, I broke the laws of my kind. I chose mortality to be with you, but the universe wouldn't allow a god to simply... quit."

She stood up, her bare feet hitting the cold floorboards. "When I killed you on that battlefield, I thought I was saving the world from our love. I thought if you died, the curse would end. But I was wrong. I bound us. I bound you to endless suffering, and myself to endless rebirth, because I couldn't bear to exist in a universe where you weren't somewhere in it."

Adrian fell to his knees at the foot of the bed. Seven hundred years of agony, of searching, of watching her die, collapsed into a single, unbearable truth.

She hadn't been his punishment. He had been the tether she used to keep herself from fading away.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed, reaching out to touch his hair. "Adrian, I'm so sorry."

He grabbed her hand, pressing his face into her palm. "Don't be," he choked out. "I would do it all again. I would die a thousand times if it meant I got to see your eyes once more."

The moment of peace was shattered by the sound of glass screaming.

The front windows of the townhouse disintegrated. It wasn't an explosion; it was a surgical strike. Shards of glass rained into the living room below, followed by a feminine laugh that echoed through the vents-soft, amused, and unmistakably cruel.

"Oh, how touching," the voice purred. "The martyr and his murderer, finally having a heart-to-heart."

Morgana stiffened, her eyes glowing with a protective blue light. "She's here. The wards... she walked right through them."

A woman stepped through the shattered frame of the window, moving with the grace of a dancing blade. She was pale, her hair like spun midnight, and her eyes were a poisonous, vivid green. She wore a dress of shifting emerald silk that looked like it was made of snake scales.

Selene.

She didn't look at Morgana. She didn't look at the ancient house. Her gaze locked onto Lena with a hatred so pure it felt like a physical weight.

"Hello, Adrian," Selene purred, her gaze finally flickering to the man on his knees. "You look pathetic. Seven lifetimes and you're still groveling at the feet of a woman who can't even remember how to use her own power."

Adrian rose slowly, his transformation beginning-his muscles swelling, his jaw lengthening. "Leave this house, Selene. Now."

Selene laughed, a sound like ice breaking. "I've waited seven centuries for this, Adrian. I've watched you mourn her, watched you find her, and watched her die. I even helped a few times. Did you know she was poisoned in the 20s? That was my favorite. She looked so surprised."

Lena stepped forward, the silver light in her eyes flaring until it drowned out the candles. The house groaned around her, the floorboards vibrating with her fury.

"You," Lena said, her voice carrying that strange, multi-tonal resonance of the Sovereign. "You were there."

"I'm always there, sweetie," Selene said, her fingers sparking with green witch-fire. "I am the one who ensures the cycle keeps turning. Because as long as you're dead, Adrian belongs to me."

"He was never yours," Lena said calmly.

Selene's face contorted into a mask of rage. "We'll see about that. The Order is five minutes away, Lena. Lucien is coming to put you down like the cosmic glitch you are. But I think I'll take your head before he gets the chance."

Selene raised her hands, the green fire roaring toward the ceiling.

Lena didn't flinch. She felt the Sovereign waking up-truly waking up this time.

"No," Lena said, stepping into the center of the room. "This time, I don't die. This time, I fight."

Adrian moved to her side, his hand finding hers. Gold met silver. The air between them crackled with the force of a thousand-year-old promise.

Somewhere in the rainy London night, Lucien Hale stopped his car and looked up at the moon. He smiled. The target was finally lit.