Chapter 235
Elowen's POV
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything but stare at the nightmare unfolding in front of me.
Sarah. In bed. With Casper.
And Cassian just... sitting there. Like this was fucking normal.
My legs moved before my brain caught up, stumbling backward out of the room. The hallway spun, and I grabbed the doorframe to steady myself.
This isn't real. This can't be real.
But the image was burned into my retinas. Casper's naked back. Sarah's satisfied smirk. The scattered clothes on the floor.
"Elowen—" Casper's voice cut through my paralysis.
I whirled around and ran.
Straight into a wall of people.
Luna Ella stood in the hallway, her lavender and rain scent mixing with the sickening perfume still clinging to my skin from that room. Alpha Austin beside her, his face grave. Ronan. Cindy and Ethan.
They'd all been watching.
"Oh my God," I choked out. "You all—"
"I guess you're not that special after all!" Sarah's voice rang out behind me, dripping with triumph.
I spun to see her in the doorway, wrapped in nothing but a sheet, her red hair wild and her green eyes glittering with malicious glee.
The hallway tilted. Everyone was staring. At me. At her. At the disaster my life had just become.
Cindy's face twisted into something cruel, something I'd never seen on my best friend before. A laugh. She was laughing at me.
"Everyone out." Cassian's voice cut through the chaos, cold and commanding. "Now."
Nobody moved.
"OUT!" Casper roared from inside the room.
I flinched. My wolf Juno stirred, confused and hurt, pulling against the mate bond that suddenly felt like a noose around my neck.
We should run, Juno whimpered. We should—
We should what? I shot back at her. We're pregnant. We're stuck.
The crowd began to disperse, shooting me pitying glances that made my skin crawl. But Sarah? She took her sweet time.
She sauntered to Casper's side—still shirtless—and pressed up on her tiptoes.
Then she kissed his cheek.
I watched Casper's body go rigid. Saw the almost imperceptible flinch.
That's just what you want to see, Juno warned in my head.
But I didn't care. Because Sarah was turning to face the twins now, her expression hardening.
"Reject her," she said, voice like ice. "Or I reject you. Right now."
Something inside me shattered.
Not my heart—that was already in pieces. Something deeper. Some last thread of hope I'd been clinging to.
"I will not share you like you shared me," Sarah continued, eyes flashing between amber and human green.
Fine.
Fine.
If they wanted her, they could fucking have her.
"I, Elowen Hartley of the Thornwood Pack..." My voice came out stronger than I felt. "Reject you, Casper and Cassian Thornwood..."
I couldn't finish. My hands moved instinctively to my stomach, to the lives growing there. Our babies. The ones who would now grow up knowing their fathers chose someone else.
"I'm carrying your children," I whispered, tears streaming down my face. "And you—"
"GET OUT!" Both twins shouted at Sarah in perfect unison.
Then Casper was there, his hands cupping my face, forcing me to look at him. His amber eyes were wild, desperate.
"I, Casper Thornwood of the Thornwood Pack, refuse to accept your rejection!"
"What—" I started.
"I, Cassian Thornwood of the Thornwood Pack, refuse to accept your rejection!" Cassian's voice joined his brother's, firm and unwavering.
They surrounded me, their bodies forming a protective cage, and I felt it—the mate bond pulsing, alive, real.
"You belong to us," Casper said, his forehead pressing against mine. "Only us. Do you understand? Only. Us."
"But Sarah—"
"Do you remember?" Cassian cut in, his hand covering mine on my stomach. "Elowen, do you remember what we planned?"
Remember what?
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think through the fog of pain and betrayal. But all I could see was—
A gothic cathedral. Red-tinted shadows. A man with eyes that burned like coals.
"The marks," Casper said urgently, tilting his neck to show me. "They're not from her. They're tricks. Illusions. Raven—"
Raven.
The name hit me like lightning.
Suddenly, memories flooded back. Not mine—or were they? The conversation in the cathedral. The deal. The plan to fool Selene, the Moon Goddess who'd given me an impossible choice.
Sacrifice my mate bond or my children.
Unless we tricked her into thinking it was already broken.
"Oh my God," I breathed. "This was—this was the plan. We—I agreed to this."
"Yes." Casper pulled me against his chest, and I could feel his heart hammering. "Yes, baby. You agreed. We all agreed."
"But Grimm—" I gasped. "Where's Grimm?"
The hellhound. Raven's creature. Part of the plan to—
"She needs to be alone with both of you," Cassian said quietly. "That's what Raven told us. That's when the memories come back fully."
As if summoned by his name, the air shifted.
The temperature dropped. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to writhe and twist, and then he was there.
Raven.
His eyes glowed crimson in the dim light, his presence filling the space with something ancient and dangerous.
"You just need to be alone together," he said, his voice like silk over gravel. "And she will remember everything."
He turned those burning eyes on me, and I felt my knees weaken.
"But you don't have long, little wolf. Selene is not patient. And once she realizes you've deceived her..." He smiled, showing too many teeth. "Well. Let's hope it doesn't come to that."
"You'll protect us," Cassian said. Not a question.
"I will guard against detection," Raven replied. "As we agreed. But you three must sell the performance. Make her believe the bond is severed. Make everyone believe it."
He stepped closer to me, and both Casper and Cassian growled.
Raven just laughed.
"Possessive, aren't we? Good. You'll need that fire for what comes next." His gaze raked over me, pausing on my stomach. "All of you will."
Then he was gone, dissolving into shadow as if he'd never been there at all.