Silent Crown: The Masked Prince's Bride-Chapter 325: Born Into Destiny

Leroy gripped her hand as if holding her could anchor her soul to her body. Lorraine’s fingers were cold and trembling, but she managed to curl them around his, her smile faint and exhausted yet impossibly soft.

She looked at him the way she always did, like he was her safest place, her favorite sight, her only certainty in a world forever tilting beneath her feet.

"I love you..." she whispered, her voice thin but steady, as though she needed him to hear it before anything else. Before the next wave of pain stole her breath. Before fate stole her away.

Leroy leaned closer, so close that their foreheads touched, so close that her warm, uneven breaths brushed his lips. He didn’t care about the midwives moving around them or the shadows flickering from the dying lanterns. He didn’t care about the blood staining the sheets or the worried voices murmuring prayers under their breath. He didn’t care about crowns or curses or the murmurs of everyone beyind the tent.

All he wanted, all he could cling to, was her.

Another wave struck. A sharp, vicious pain tore through Lorraine’s body, and for the first time that night she screamed, raw and terrified, a sound that ripped through the tent like something breaking. Leroy held her tighter, whispering her name, cursing the gods for not giving him the pain instead, wishing he could tear his own heart out if it would give her a moment of peace.

Hours blurred after that, an endless cycle of pushing, bleeding, crying, and praying. The lamps dimmed. The air grew colder. The night thinned into something pale and trembling.

And finally, as the first breath of dawn spilled into the sky, the cry of a newborn split the silence.

"A prince," Aralyn announced, her voice shaking with relief as she lifted the small, red, furious child to the light.

The tent erupted with soft gasps, whispers of praise, grateful sobs from women who had been counting every heartbeat.

But Leroy didn’t look. He didn’t turn. He didn’t even blink toward the child whose birth had just rewritten the future of the continent.

Because the only future that mattered to him was lying in his arms.

The baby’s cries rose louder, echoing off the linen walls, but Leroy tightened his hold around Lorraine, pulling her close as if he could protect her from the sound, from the world, from death itself. He buried his face in her hair, breathing her in, memorizing her warmth before it slipped away.

Lorraine’s eyes filled with tears, not from pain, but from longing. She tried to lift her head, tried to steal the smallest glimpse of the child she had fought so desperately to bring into the world.

But Leroy wouldn’t let her move.

His arms wrapped around her like a shield, like a desperate man clinging to the last piece of his soul. And as he held her, as her breath hitched and her strength trembled like a dying flame, he smelled it... the metallic, suffocating scent of too much blood.

The kind of loss a body doesn’t come back from.

The kind of loss that meant she was slipping through his fingers even as he held on with everything he had.

"Let me see my son..." Lorraine whispered, forcing out the words with the last threads of strength she had left. Her voice trembled, fragile as a dying flame.

But Leroy only held her tighter.

He knew. Gods, he knew exactly what she was asking. A last wish—her first and only look at the child who had nearly taken her life from her. He could not bear it. He could not let her make peace with dying. He would keep her here, even if it meant chaining her spirit to her failing body with the weight of his love and desperation.

His arms locked around her as though he could hold death itself back.

"Leroy..." she breathed, her tone turning into something pleading, something breaking.

He pressed his forehead against hers, refusing to lift his gaze, refusing to let her see how frightened he was, how undone, how close he was to falling apart.

"Survive, Lorraine," he whispered, and even he heard the cruelty in it. "Then you can see that thing."

Lorraine’s body stilled for a moment. Not from pain, though she was drowning in it, but from something deeper, something sharp and heartbreaking. That thing? Was that truly what he had said?

"He’s our baby," she whispered, her voice shaking. "Your son."

Leroy didn’t answer. He didn’t trust himself to. If he looked at the child, if he acknowledged him, he feared something inside him would break beyond repair.

"Leroy!" Lorraine’s voice cracked, sharper, desperate. Her husband, her gentle, stubborn, fiercely loving husband... why was he turning away from their child? From his own blood?

"He’s our blood," she whispered. "He’s my blood. He’s..."

Her words dissolved into a wince, her vision smearing into colors as the world slipped away in pulses of pain. She needed to see him. She needed to know he was real, that her suffering meant something.

"Let me see him..." she begged, voice thinning.

Still, Leroy clung to her, shaking, terrified, unwilling.

The tent flap burst open.

Vaeronyx entered in his human form, tall, furious, frantic in a way a demigod should never be. The midwives stepped back in fright, Emma stumbled away, Aralyn pressed a shaking hand to her heart. Men were never permitted here. Certainly not a demigod.

Leroy stood abruptly, blocking him, though his hands trembled. "You cannot—this is—"

"We do not have time," Vaeronyx snapped, and the ground itself seemed to shiver with his urgency.

Before Leroy could utter another word, Vaeronyx shed his human form. The air split with blinding light, heat, and power. The tent exploded outward as his vast dragon form unfurled, marble-white scales gleaming like dawnlight, wings stretching wider than the camp itself, the force of his presence scattering canvas, furniture, and terrified soldiers.

"Get her," the dragon thundered, his voice shaking the earth, "if you want to save her."

Sylvia, clutching the crying baby, wrapped the prince in a clean cloth with trembling hands and held him close. The future, the hope Lorraine had bled for, rested in her arms. She would protect him with her life if she had to.

Leroy didn’t hesitate. His soul had narrowed to one purpose—Lorraine. Only Lorraine. He lifted his half-conscious wife into his arms, ignoring the blood, the weakness, the way her head lolled against his shoulder. He would trust anyone, even a dragon-god he barely understood, if it meant saving her.

"My baby..." Lorraine whispered as the world spun around her. Leroy did not answer. His mind couldn’t hold anything beyond the fear of losing her.

He climbed onto the dragon’s lowered wing. Vaeronyx crouched, massive and shuddering with urgency, every scale humming with the pressure of time slipping through their fingers. And just as he prepared to launch into the sky, the dragon turned—one colossal claw sweeping down with the speed and certainty of lightning—and took the infant from Sylvia’s arms.

Sylvia gasped. The midwives froze. The world itself seemed to hold its breath.

The newborn prince, wailing moments ago as though protesting the violence of birth and the coldness of dawn, suddenly fell silent the instant he settled onto the dragon’s claw. His tiny chest rose once... twice... and then he simply looked up, eyes barely open, as though recognizing something ancient, as though he too understood what he was meant to do.

As if the blood of the Dragon King, buried for centuries, had stirred in him the moment those great talons touched his skin.

As if fate itself had reached down and claimed him.

Vaeronyx lifted his wings, light rippling across them like liquid fire, and the ground trembled beneath the force of his ascent. Leroy clutched Lorraine close, feeling her warmth slipping, feeling his own soul fraying, while the newborn prince rested in the claws of a demigod without fear, without a cry, quietly waiting.

As though the baby had already accepted that he was born into destiny, not safety.