Fated To The Cursed Lycan Prince

Sylvia’s POV:

The look on Harry’s countenance spawned what might have been a chortle from my throat. How amusing! It seemed as though b***d was drained from his face, leaving only a soft trail of paleness.

“I assure you, Harry. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you; I’m real.”

My voice seemed to pull his senses back on ground. With haste and reluctance struggling whichever would surface, he rushed to me and eyed me carefully. He exclaimed, “Sylvia! I can’t believe you’re alive! But—well, this is good news!”

“Why do I hear a hint of disappointment from your tone that I didn’t die?” I narrowed my eyes at him as I teased to lighten up the atmosphere.

The bewilderment was momentarily lost as Harry rolled his eyes in return. “Who said anything about me wanting you to die? If any, it was you who scared me to death!”

Only then did I closely see how swollen his eyes were. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that his eyes were stung by bees. I mused, “I remember how your eyes give you away whenever you cry buckets of tears.”

Harry lifted his hands to hide his eyes from my view and tried to defend himself, “Who cried? My eyes are like this because I slept in!”

A chuckle broke out of Joanna’s lips as she snitched on Harry. She was not at all trying to be subtle about it either. “He sure took his time in prison crying his heart out. I couldn’t even do anything to make him stop.” She shrugged her shoulders.” Well, I tried.”

“You’re making things up! I only cried for a short while.” The b***d that left Harry’s face rushed back and painted his embarrassed face with a tinge of scarlet. He averted his gaze towards somewhere else, neither landing on Joanna’s eyes nor mine. He was also sporting a faint pout that was almost not there.

Joanna and I stole a glance at each other and laughed at Harry’s antics.

The light ambiance enveloping us reminded me of the good old days in school. Tears began to dampen my eyes as a ghost of a smile forcefully lifted my lips. We couldn’t go back to that time anymore. Looking back, those were fleeting moments.

I uttered my apology to Harry in a low voice.

Harry dropped his innocuous caper. He tried to decipher my thoughts through the expressions that swayed across my face before cautiously asking, “Sylvia, is something the matter? Are you hiding something from us? From the looks of it, it seems something’s bothering you. You and the queen must have orchestrated the events that unfolded. If my guess is right, it has something to do with Prince Rufus in a coma. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have chosen to ruin your life if you’re left with many other choices. Your goal is to leave the capital city, so that everyone would condemn you, which makes it easier for them to forget you. Did I get it right?”

Harry surprised me by his impressive deduction. He got most of the reasons right. In all honesty, I never intended to tell Harry—much less to let him know—about the truth. I just wanted to leave and exit from their lives with them thinking that it was all my fault as their last memory of me. But when I saw how Harry and Joanna believed me and defended me without hesitation, I couldn’t stop guilt from devouring me.

“I get his point, Sylvia. If you’re having a hard time, just tell us and we can figure it out together,” Joanna seconded.

Looking at them both, hesitation replaced my guilt before I decided that they had to know everything, including the black thorns. I told them what I knew, not leaving out a single detail.

Silence deafened our ears the moment the last word escaped my lips. None of us knew what to say, as if we were feeling each other out. Both Harry and Joanna had their eyebrows furrowed, looking lost in their trains of thoughts.

I couldn’t stand how heavy the atmosphere was becoming, so I cracked a joke to break the silence. “Now that Noreen is dead and Rufus is safe, we won’t have anything left to worry about in the future. I can rest assured and leave now and bring with me peace of mind. I haven’t traveled around since I was a child. Now I finally have the chance to go out to have fun and enjoy my life a lot sooner than I anticipated!”

It was now Harry’s eyes’ turn to redden when he heard my attempt to liven up their mood. His voice was low when he asked, “Where are you going?”

His question had me wondering. I hadn’t figured it out yet. I didn’t have the courage to stay in the empire, and I was certain I was not welcome in the vampires’ domain. Vampires had sharp senses of smell, and as soon as they would find traces of werewolf scent on me no matter how hard I might try to cover it up, they would definitely know that I was not one of them. The black witches had never had a fixed territory so I didn’t know where to find them.

Still, I needed to think about where to go.

“Where else can you go after leaving your life as Sylvia Todd?” Harry did not roar at me, but the boiling anger he was suppressing was handed to me by his eyes.

“Now, now, Harry. We shouldn’t let anger get the best of us,” Joanna persuaded in a soft voice.

Harry’s eyes became redder, and his voice was hoarse. He was slowly transitioning from a sad tamed dog that was abandoned by its owner into a rabid beast. “You have no place to go to, Sylvia. No matter what you have in mind, there’s no place for you to stay. You have ruined your life! Or perhaps, do you want to go back to the black witches and never see us again?”