Felicity's Beast World Apocalypse

Lucan pushed himself up from the gravel, his mouth filling with the taste of copper. His predatory acceleration flared again, but as he shifted through space, the movement was jagged. Sloppy. Every time he jumped, he saw a flash of Felicity turning her back on him.

Pop.

He appeared to the left, tearing his claws through the General’s shoulder plating, but as the black fluid sprayed, he heard her voice scream: Stop it! You’re making it worse! You’re disgusting!

Pop.

Lucan shifted behind the zombie, driving his knee into its spine, but the impact felt distant, muffled by the overwhelming certainty that he was already too late.

Voss is in the nest with her, the voice whispered in his ear. He’s holding her right now. She’s smiling because you aren’t there.

"She’s mine," Lucan roared, his voice dropping into a full, feral feline snarl as he abandoned his magic entirely, throwing his weight into the General, his talons ripping chunks of leathery flesh from its chest. "Mine! I decided how far I’d go! I would let it burn! Felicity!"

The General didn’t even try to parry the feral assault. It let Lucan tear at it, its hollow eyes glowing brighter as it pushed the illusion deeper, expanding the psychic rot until it filled Lucan’s entire reality.

The terrace disappeared again. The world went completely black, save for a single, spotlighted view of the master suite’s bed.

Felicity was there, but she was packed. Her old-world clothing was folded neatly, and she was holding the hands of the other husbands, leading them away from the manor. Lucan tried to reach out to her, tried to phase his hand into her grip, but his fingers passed straight through her like smoke.

She stopped, looking back at the empty space where he stood, her expression completely empty. Cold.

"Don’t follow us, Lucan," she whispered, her voice a heavy, final weight that crashed over his heart like an avalanche. "We’re leaving you behind. You’re too dangerous for the babies. You’re too broken to keep us safe. I hate the way you look at me. I hate your obsession. I don’t need you."

"Fel..." Lucan fell to his knees in the dirt, the cold CEO entirely dead, the terrifying apex predator reduced to a bleeding, trembling wreck. His hands hung limp at his sides, his claws dragging in the gravel as the hallucination finally faded, leaving him staring up at the smirking Zombie General.

Lucan could fight. His chances were higher. He could still tear this monster’s head off with a single concentrated spatial rift. But as he looked up through his wet, dark hair, his golden eyes were entirely hollow. The light behind them had gone out.

The obsession hadn’t saved her. It had made her hate him.

The voice in his head, the one that sounded exactly like the small, gentle fennec fox who was his only reason for breathing, had completely shattered the tethers holding his soul together. He didn’t move as the General lifted its heavy, bone-plated fist for the killing blow. He didn’t phase. He just sat there in the dirt, completely convinced that the only home he had ever known had already shut its doors to him forever.

The level eighty-two Zombie General did not hesitate when its prey stopped moving. Seeing the high-level black panther beast-man collapse into the gravel, its rotting lips stretched wider, revealing the black, infected gums beneath. It raised its right arm, where the leathery skin had fused with thick, calcified bone to form a jagged, three-pronged blade.

With a wet, whistling swing, the General drove the bone blade downward.

The strike cleaved through the air and tore directly across Lucan’s chest. The fabric of his dark jacket shredded instantly, the obsidian-sharp edge cutting deep into his torso, leaving three long, jagged tracks that immediately filled with dark, thick blood. The force of the blow rattled his ribs, throwing his body hard against the base of the broken stone fountain.

Yet, Lucan didn’t flinch. He didn’t even lift a hand to pressure the wound.

He lay against the stone, his breath hitching in a shallow, broken rhythm, his hands resting loose in the blood-soaked dirt. The physical pain was nothing more than a distant, meaningless vibration compared to the absolute void expanding inside his skull. The hallucination magic had settled deep into his grey matter, a lingering psychic poison that kept replaying the image of Felicity’s disgust.

"I hate the way you look at me. I hate your obsession. I don’t need you."

The words were an execution method for his mind. To a creature whose entire existence had been recalibrated around the exact frequency of one small fox’s heartbeat, the concept of her rejection wasn’t just sad, it was an unmaking. If she didn’t need him, the air in his lungs had no business staying there. The level ninety-eight, the spatial control, the predatory acceleration, all of it was just useless noise if the nest was closed to him forever.

The General stepped closer, the black fluid dripping from its claws onto Lucan’s wet, dark hair. It lifted its blade a second time, aiming directly for the centre of his chest, wanting to pierce the heart that was currently dragging his entire system down into the dirt.

Then, a sound tore through the heavy, yellow mist.

It didn’t come from the terrace. It didn’t come from the horde scraping their way through the rose bushes. It came from high above, from the master suite balcony where the glass doors had been violently thrown open.

"GET UP! PLEASE GET UP, LUCAN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I LOVE YOU!"

The scream was ragged, desperate, and raw with a terrifying amount of emotional panic. It was a voice that had no business being that loud, a voice that was straining against the raw ache of a throat that had only just woken up from a magical slumber.

Lucan’s ears, still pinned flat against his head in his state of total surrender, gave a violent, involuntary twitch.

Up on the balcony, Felicity was gripping the stone railing so hard her knuckles were white against her fur. Her honey-blonde hair was wild, tangled from the bed, and her fennec ears were pressed back in absolute terror as she looked down at the courtyard. Her chest was heaving, her small frame trembling as she looked past the mist straight at the bleeding, broken shape of her panther mate.

Beside her, the other men had materialised like a wall of protective, furious iron. Voss’s hand was on her shoulder, trying to pull her back from the ledge, his wolf ears straight up as his jaw set into a hard, dangerous line. Ivan stood on her other side, his golden eyes wide, his massive shoulders rigid as he tracked the movement of the horde below.

But it was Dimitri who drew the air out of the courtyard.

The alpha leopard stood at the centre of the balcony, his arms crossed, his dark hair catching the dim, grey light of the mountain morning. His eyes, cold, burning, and thick with an ancient, territorial dominance, were staring daggers directly down into Lucan’s soul. There was no pity in that gaze. There was no sympathy for a fallen packmate. There was only a ruthless, suffocating disgust.

Dimitri tilted his head, his nostrils flaring as he took in the sight of Lucan sitting in the dirt like a beaten dog. Beside him, Exile and Rowan shifted their weight, their heads tilting in identical expressions of profound, dangerous confusion.

To the pack, Lucan’s behaviour was an absolute anomaly. They were alpha predators. They were the apex wall that kept the world from touching their female. For one of their strongest to simply sit in the mud and allow a dead thing to carve him open was an insult to their queen.

They could feel the spike of absolute agony rolling off Felicity’s bond. Her tears were spilling over her cheeks, her small hands shaking as she screamed for him again, her voice cracking under the weight of her distress.

Lucan was purposely upsetting their female. His pathetic surrender was causing their Felicity physical and emotional pain, and the collective territorial instincts of the remaining husbands were beginning to curdle into something lethal.

Dimitri’s jaw tightened, a low, rumbling growl starting deep in his chest that carried over the courtyard, a silent warning to the panther below: Fix it, or I will put you down myself for making her cry.

Then Felicity moved.

She tore out of Voss’s grip with a strength none of them expected from something so small, and Voss let her go rather than risk bruising her. She leaned so far over the railing that Ivan’s arm shot across her waist on pure reflex, hauling her back against the solid heat of him.

"Little sun..." Ivan’s rough rumble brushed against her ear. "I have you. You’re not falling. Not while I draw breath."

"Then let me down there," she sobbed, twisting in his hold. "He thinks he failed me. I can feel it. He’s down there thinking I’d rather have a Lucan who never bleeds than one who bleeds for me, and that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, and I have met Tommy."

A startled bark of laughter escaped Voss before he could swallow it. Even Dimitri’s growl stuttered.

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