Kael POV
The poison burns through my blood like liquid fire, but I force my eyes open anyway.
I can't die. Not now. Not when I finally found her.
Celeste is holding me, her sapphire eyes wide with fear. "Stay with me! Don't you dare die!"
She doesn't understand. I can't die. That's part of my curse.
But I can hurt. And this poison—whoever made it knew exactly how to make a serpent king hurt.
"I'm not... dying," I manage to say, though my chest feels like it's ripping open. "I just need... time..."
"Time for what?" Celeste demands, tears running down her face.
Time to heal. Time to burn the evil out of my system. Time to find whoever shot me and rip their throat out.
But I don't say any of that because the world goes dark, and I fall backward through three hundred years of memories.
Three hundred years ago... I'm in my throne room, wearing my crown, when the messengers come to me.
"Your Majesty," they say, bowing low. "We have seen your future."
"Tell me," I demand, because I'm arrogant and young and think I'm invincible.
"You will fall in love with a human girl," the eldest prophet says. "A royal with hair like moonlight and eyes like sapphires. She will be your true mate, bound to you by magic older than the countries themselves."
I laugh. "I'm the Serpent King. I don't need a human mate."
"You will die without her," another prophet says. "Enemies will curse you, trap you, bind your power. Only your mate's choice—made freely at a Selection Ceremony—can break the curse and return your throne."
"Then I'll find her before the curse happens," I say firmly.
The elder prophet shakes his head sadly. "You don't understand, Your Majesty. You'll be cursed tomorrow. And you won't meet your mate for three hundred years."
I want to call them lies. But angels don't lie.
The next day, my attackers attack. Five countries unite against me because they fear my power. They can't kill me—I'm too strong—so they do something worse.
They curse me.
A witch says words in a language older than time, and my crown melts off my head. My throne falls to dust. My power drains away until I'm just... stuck.
Trapped in a shifter's body. Trapped in bars. Trapped waiting for Selection Ceremonies where nobles choose partners.
"You'll be offered at every ceremony," the witch says with a cruel smile. "But no one will choose you. You'll be feared, avoided, called cursed. Seven might be brave enough to try. Seven will die because they're not your mate. And you'll wait. Century after century. Until she comes."
"And if she never comes?" I ask, though I already know the answer.
"Then you wait forever."
Back to the present...
Three hundred years. Three hundred years of waiting in cages while people pointed and whispered. Three hundred years of watching nobles choose dogs and foxes and lions—anything except me.
Seven people chose me over the ages. Seven people who thought they could tame the "cursed" snake and become famous.
All seven died. Not because I killed them—I would never hurt someone bonded to me. But the curse killed them. It denied them because they weren't HER.
Then, two weeks ago, I saw Celeste for the first time.
She was in her father's yard, and I was being transported to another ceremony. For just a moment, our eyes met through the train bars.
And I KNEW.
The forecast hadn't lied. She existed. She was real.
But she was also in danger. I could smell it—the stink of fox shifter magic and human deception. Someone was planning to hurt her.
So I did something I'd never done before. I broke out of my cage.
It's easy when you're a three-hundred-year-old king claiming to be a cursed pet. The locks they use are nothing. The magic walls are jokes.
I followed her smell to her house. Found her father's room. Watched through the window as she read my file with such concentration on her face.
Then the fox shifter came. Damian. I'd seen him at events before, always preening and performing. Now he was threatening my mate, trying to force poison down her throat.
I couldn't let that happen.
Breaking into the house was easy. Stopping Damian was even easy. Erasing Celeste's memory of that night hurt me more than any poison arrow could.
But she wasn't meant to know yet. She wasn't ready.
Except today at the service, she walked straight to my cage like she'd been planning it for years.
When she said "I choose him," something inside me that had been frozen for three centuries suddenly cracked open.
Hope. Painful, frightening hope.
The bond formed between us, and her memories flooded into my thoughts through the connection.
She'd died. She'd been killed. She came back to life with all her memories intact.
And I realized the truth that made my frozen heart break completely:
She wasn't just my mate from prophesy. She was my mate from THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. The girl I'd loved before the curse. The one who died saving me from the witch's spell.
Her soul had been reborn. Again and again. Searching for me through lives.
And finally, FINALLY, she found me.
Then the arrow hit, and the poison dragged me under.
Now... I wake up in a cell. My hands are chained to a wall with silver—the one metal that can hold me.
Pain still pulses through my chest where the arrow hit, but it's fading. My healing is working.
"Finally awake," a voice says.
I look up. A man steps from the dark. Old. Wearing royal clothes. The king of this pathetic human state.
"Your Majesty," I say mockingly. "Come to gloat?"
"I came to make you a deal," the king says. "Break your bond with Lady Celeste, and I'll let you return to your cage peacefully."
I laugh. It sounds crazy even to my own ears. "No."
"She doesn't know what she's bonded herself to," the king continues. "She thinks you're just a cursed shifter. She doesn't know you're the Serpent King. That you could destroy all five countries if you wanted to."
"So tell her," I say coldly. "She deserves the truth."
"The truth will terrify her."
"Then she'll be scared. But she'll still be MINE."
The king's face hardens. "You're hooked. Dangerous. I should have had you killed three hundred years ago."
"You couldn't then. You can't now." I rattle my chains. "These won't hold me forever. And when I get free, I'm going back to her."
"Even if she rejects you once she knows the truth?"
That question hits harder than the shot did. What if Celeste learns I'm an old king, not a pet? What if she understands the bond between us is older than her lifetime? What if she's afraid of what I really am?
But then I remember her face at the ceremony. The determination. The choice.
She picked me when everyone warned her not to. She held me when I fell. She cried for me.
She'll choose me again. I'll make sure of it.
"She won't reject me," I say firmly. "Because she's braver than you think."
The king sighs. "Then you leave me no choice."
He pulls out a scroll—old paper that glows with magic. "I'm citing the Ancient Law. The one that says if a bonded shifter is thought too dangerous, the bond can be forcibly broken by royal decree."
My blood turns to ice. "You can't. That law hasn't been used in—"
"Two hundred years. I know." The king unrolls the scroll. "But Lady Celeste linked herself to a king in hiding. To a creature who could make war on humanity if he chose. That makes you too dangerous to let the bond stand."
He starts reading words in the old language. Magic starts to build in the air, pushing down on my chest.
The link with Celeste—that bright, beautiful thread connecting us—starts to fray.
"NO!" I roar, pulling against my chains. "You can't take her from me! Not again! NOT AGAIN!"
But the king keeps reading, and I feel Celeste getting further away, like she's being torn from my soul.
Then the dungeon door bursts inward.
Celeste stands in the doorway, her eyes blazing with anger. Her hand is glowing with silver light—magic that shouldn't be possible for a person.
"Stop," she says, her voice booming with power. "Touch our bond again, and I'll show you why you should fear me more than him."