kvmb Chapter 298: Maddie’s Men
Chapter 298: Maddie’s Men
Marcus felt the sting on his face, but it was nothing compared to the ache in his chest. Twenty of them. That’s all that remained of the sixty men who had sworn themselves to her. The others, the strongest, the most powerful, the ones she’d favored, were gone. Dead. He could still smell their fading life force on Maddie’s clothes, a scent that would haunt him forever.
"We need to talk about what happened." He kept his tone level despite the storm building behind his ribs. "About what comes next."
Derek shifted nervously behind him, and Marcus could sense the other men’s tension coiling through the room like smoke. They were all thinking the same thing. Once a beastman mated with a female, that bond was unbreakable. It rewired something fundamental in their brains, made it impossible to even consider another female. Even when that bond was toxic. Even when the female treated them like disposable weapons she could throw at a wall and forget.
"There’s nothing to discuss," Maddie spat, turning away from him. "We’re going to make that fox bitch pay. All of you will!"
"With what army?" Marcus interrupted. The words hung in the air like a death sentence.
Maddie whirled back to face him, her eyes blazing with fury. "How dare you!"
"Forty of your men died today, Maddie. Your strongest. Your most loyal." Marcus forced himself to speak calmly, though every instinct was screaming at him to back down, to submit, to crawl on his belly like the bonded creature she’d made him. "The men at that manor killed over two hundred soldiers in seconds. Seconds."
The memory of the eagle’s power made Marcus’s skin crawl. He hadn’t been there, but the residual energy still clinging to Maddie told him everything he needed to know. If those men could destroy an entire fighting force that quickly, what chance did twenty low-level beastmen have?
"So what?" Maddie laughed, the sound sharp and brittle. "You’re all afraid? Pathetic!"
Derek stepped forward, his voice trembling. "Maddie, please. Think about your cub. About what would happen to him if..."
"My cub?" Maddie’s laugh turned cruel. "My cub who has a father who’s too weak to protect him? Who has fathers who cower at the first sign of real power?"
Marcus felt the blow to his pride land like a fist against his sternum, but pushed past it. Pride was a luxury they couldn’t afford anymore. "We need to be smart about this. If you push them, they’ll destroy us. All of us."
"And if they don’t destroy us, what then?" He pressed forward, desperate to make her understand, to crack through the wall of rage she’d built around herself like armour. "We’ve all seen what happens to beastmen who lose their mate. They go insane. They turn into those mindless mutants, or they waste away in agony. Is that what you want for us? For yourself?"
Maddie’s gaze narrowed dangerously, her pupils thinning to slits. "You’re suggesting I should just accept this? That I should let that slut take everything that’s mine?"
"I’m suggesting we survive." Marcus kept his tone quiet, steady, even as his blood roared. "That we protect what we have left."
For a moment, something flickered in Maddie’s eyes—fear, perhaps, or the first hint of reason breaking through like dawn through storm clouds. But it was quickly swallowed by the rage that had consumed her since she’d witnessed her men’s destruction. The rage made her feel powerful instead of small.
"Get out," she whispered, her tone deadly flat. "All of you. Get out of my sight before I do something we’ll all regret."
Marcus hesitated, then nodded. There was nothing more to say tonight. As he turned to leave, he caught Derek’s gaze. The wolf-beastman looked terrified, jaw tight, shoulders hunched,but beneath the fear was a dawning realisation that burned like embers catching flame. They couldn’t continue like this. None of them could.
As they filed out of the room, Marcus couldn’t shake the feeling that they were running out of time. If Maddie couldn’t be reasoned with, they would all face the same fate as the forty men who had died today. And unlike those men, they wouldn’t even have the dignity of dying in battle. They would simply fade away, victims of a bond that should have been sacred but had become a noose.
In the hallway, Derek fell into step beside him. "What do we do?" he asked quietly.
Marcus shook his head. "I don’t know. But we need to figure it out quickly. Before she does something we can’t come back from."
Behind them, they could hear Maddie still raging, the crack of furniture, the shatter of glass against stone. But beneath the fury, Marcus thought he detected the first fractures in her carefully constructed armour of entitlement. Whether those cracks would lead to reason or total destruction remained to be seen.
They stood there in the dim hallway, twenty broken men scattered behind them, the sound of Maddie’s rage muffled through the walls. And Marcus thought about that fox beastwoman, the one Maddie was so desperate to destroy. The one whose men had fought with such terrifying, coordinated ferocity that two hundred soldiers had crumbled like dry leaves.
Those men hadn’t fought like soldiers following orders.
They’d fought like men protecting something they loved.
Marcus pressed his palm flat against the wall, steadying himself. The difference between their situation and Snow Team’s arrangement wasn’t power. It wasn’t numbers or strategy or combat skill.
It was the centre.
Those men had a female who made them stronger by caring about them. Who held them together not through threats and cruelty but through...
He didn’t even have a word for it. He’d never experienced it.
"Derek." Marcus’s jaw tightened. "We figure this out. We find a way to keep ourselves alive, keep the cub safe, and we do it without getting anywhere near that manor again."
Derek nodded slowly. "And Maddie?"
Marcus closed his fist against the rough stone wall. The sting in his knuckles grounded him. "We love her. That’s the curse. We love her, and she knows it, and she’ll use it until there’s nothing left of us to use."
"So what’s the plan?"
Marcus turned to face the other men gathered in the hallway, twenty battered, exhausted beastmen with hollow cheeks and haunted expressions. Men who deserved better. Men who would never get it, because the bond didn’t care about deserving.
"The plan," Marcus said, "is we stop dying for her pride. We protect the cub. We protect each other." He swallowed hard. "And we pray she doesn’t notice the difference before we figure out something better."