CH.77

Enzo stared at the anxious, questioning faces before him and released a heavy, world-weary sigh.

He rose from his seat with a slow and almost lethargic movement.

All eyes tracked the regal Don’s every move as he crossed the room with an air of somber melancholy and sorrow cloaking him like a shroud.

Enzo made his way to the lone, high-backed chair positioned in the corner, next to where Knox's frighteningly still and motionless body lay on the huge bed.

Not a single muscle twitched beneath the young man’s ashen skin. His handsome features hidden behind his face mask remained one of an eery tranquility that seemed almost...unnatural given the roiling darkness still undulating around him.

Enzo settled into the chair with a slight groan. His amber eyes swept over each person present, as if silently bracing them for the revelations and burdens soon to be imparted.

"Knox is...not an ordinary being. I'm sure you've all realized by now." He paused, letting that weighted statement linger as a tense hush once again descended over the room. "But then again..." A self-deprecating smirk quirked his full lips. "Neither is our family - the Delgaards - exactly what you'd call...normal."

Enzo's eyes slipped closed. His thick lashes fanning across his high cheekbones as his mind drifted back through the vast, winding river of his memories.

Flashes of lives long since passed flickered rapidly behind his lids - the turmoil, the heartbreak, the gut-wrenching loss and sacrifice he had endured over the endless march of centuries.

He could vividly recall going through that same harrowing torment Knox now suffered. The agonizing battle between one's fragile human side still clinging to lingering traces of mortality...and the other, darker, more primal nature lurking just beneath the surface. The all-consuming thirst, the insatiable hunger, the call to surrender utterly to one’s ravenous desires.

A muscle ticked rhythmically in Enzo's strong, clenched jaw as he was transported back to that fateful night so long ago...when he had nearly killed his beloved Queen Minerva in a blind, feral frenzy driven by instinct and lust alone.

Just as Knox had also killed Serena, in that same maddened haze of insatiable hunger and predatory need.

Enzo remembered all too well the gut-churning self-loathing and despair that had threatened to utterly drown him in the aftermath of that horrific tragedy.

The bone-deep anguish of having his own mate's life snuffed out by his hand...it was a wound that had never truly healed, even after all this time. It remained an indelible scar seared into the very fabric of his soul.

His brow furrowed as more haunting memories continued to surface unbidden. Of being the perpetual black sheep of the family, always on the outskirts looking in.

Of people recoiling from him in thinly-veiled fear and revulsion whenever he passed, for he was not the child of his father's primary wife and queen. No, Enzo's mother had been a mere princess, the younger sister to the reigning monarch.

A derisive snort slipped past his lips when he recalled the vicious rumors and whispers that had swirled through the palace halls, how his mother had been accused of seducing her elder sister's husband in a bid to usurp the queen's position. After all, the queen had been unable to bear children at that point, leaving the line of succession in perilous jeopardy.

So his mother was brought to the palace as nothing more than a concubine, seen merely as a way for the king to sire an heir to solidify his dynasty's future.

"My mother was a kind, gentle soul," Enzo murmured, more to himself than the others present.

A wistful pang twinged his heart as fleeting memories of her warm, loving embraces danced at the edges of his consciousness. "But my aunt...she was utterly vicious and consumed by jealousy, like most women engaged in those blasted harem power struggles."

He sighed again, a bone-deep exhalation that seemed to expel decades of lingering bitterness and pain.

Slowly, Enzo lifted his gaze to meet Meredith's concerned blue eyes, seeing the sheen of unshed tears swimming in their infinite depths.

"The reason I was exiled back then wasn't just because of my...unnatural appearance, or how I didn't resemble my father and brothers in the slightest." His full lips curved into a self-deprecating smirk, though it was devoid of any true mirth. "No, it was the power I possessed - the sheer, unyielding force of my abilities and dominance over others. I was seen as a threat, you see...a threat to my little brother's rightful claim to the throne."

Meredith's delicate brow furrowed quizzically as she processed this weighty revelation. "Why did you truly desert Queen Minerva and let her marry your brother instead?" she asked, confusion lacing her lilting tone. "Even though you two were true mates, bonded together for all eternity?"

The briefest flicker of anguish contorted Enzo's striking features before his expression smoothed over once more into an impenetrable mask. "Ah, Minerva..." He exhaled her name like a prayer laced with reverence and regret, his deep voice caressing each syllable with aching tenderness. "She was the other half of my soul, my destiny, my everything."

His amber eyes grew distant and unfocused as he was transported back to those fleeting, blissful moments with his mate - of her radiant smile, the musical lilt of her laughter, the way her golden tresses would tumble in silken waves across swanlike shoulders. Of how her supple body had molded so perfectly against his own.

"We did try to complete the bond, to link our life forces in that most sacred of rituals..." Enzo's tone turned grim once more. "But an accident occurred, just as it did with Knox and the girl..." He swallowed thickly, unable to force the words past the lump constricting his throat. "I killed her. I took the life of my own mate, my other half, with my own hands."

One could have heard a pin drop in that heavy, suffocating silence that descended.

Meredith's delicate hand flew to her parted lips as tears burned in her eyes. As the lady-in-waiting to Queen Minerva all those years ago, she had been the queen's closest friend and confidant.

She could vividly recall the devastation in the days after the tragedy - of finding her beloved mistress's body almost lifeless, of the royal palace being plunged into chaos…

"How...?" Meredith finally managed to choke out, her voice little more than a broken whisper. "How did she end up with Valerian after that? You and my lady were both so deliriously happy, so deliriously in love..."

Her eyes shimmered with a thousand questions and pleaded for Enzo to continue, to finally shed light on the centuries-old secrets surrounding that unfathomable incident that had shaped the course of their entire family's history.

Enzo's sculptured features hardened with grim resolution. "Because I had to go back," he stated simply. "I had to travel through the very stream of time itself and stop that from ever happening. Stop myself from making that...irreversible mistake."

The weighted words seemed to linger in the air like a thick, suffocating fog, every person letting the revelation slowly sink in as the seconds ticked by.

Meredith's delicate brow furrowed in contemplation, her eyes swimming with a myriad of emotions as she processed what Enzo was confessing.