CHAPTER FORTY THREE

CHAPTER FORTY THREE
Lyra’s POV

I blinked.

Once.

Twice.

But the image didn’t change.

She was still there, still standing in front of me like a ghost pulled from the seams of my forgotten dreams. Still smiling with a calmness that shook me to my core.“Delyria ,” she said again, her voice quieter this time. “My twin. You don’t remember me yet, but you will.”“No,” I breathed. “No, that’s not possible.”I stumbled back, my heart pounding so loud I could barely hear myself think. But her eyes followed me patiently. As though she’d been waiting for this exact moment her whole life.“I’m not—” My throat tightened. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t have a sister.”“That’s because your memories were sealed,” she said softly, as if trying not to startle me. “For your protection. And for ours.”She took a slow step forward. I didn’t move.“You were taken when you were barely four. There was an attack… the rebellion fell. Our parents were killed. We lost everything. And you—” her voice cracked slightly, “you vanished. We thought you died. I thought you died.”I shook my head. My fists curled at my sides. “I grew up in a pack house. My parents were traitors. That’s what they told me. That they were killed as punishment.”She looked at me with something between sorrow and pride. “You were never just Lyra.”Her silver eyes lit with something else now. “You are Delyria . Royal blood of the Fox Line. You were born with magic in your veins. Trained before you could even shift. You are not a servant. You are not nothing. You are everything we lost. My sister.”My breath caught. My chest felt tight, like I couldn’t get air no matter how hard I tried. My mind swam with broken images, flashes that made no sense. A lullaby I didn’t remember learning. A laugh that wasn’t mine.Still, one question pushed through the fog.“Why now?” I asked, my voice hollow. “If you knew who I was,if you’ve always known, why wait until now? Why leave me in that place?”She didn’t flinch. Just nodded, like she’d been expecting the question.“Because the moment you left that territory,” she said slowly, “your power started coming back. You’ve felt it already, haven’t you?”I wanted to deny it. I opened my mouth to tell her she was insane, but I could not.Because she was right.I felt something. Ever since I was exiled. The way my instincts sharpened. Everything wasn’t the same way with me anymore. It hadn’t just been fear. It had been something else. Something bigger.“The seals are fading,” she said, beginning to circle me slowly. “Your exile triggered it. The bonds are breaking. You’re waking up.”I stood still. My breath was shallow and my thoughts raced.Then she said something else. Something that snapped the air straight from my lungs.“You have to believe me,” she said, stepping in front of me again. “I am your sister. I’ve known you all my life. Even when you were hidden, I never stopped searching.”Her voice trembled—not from weakness, but from something deeper. Truth.“While you were exiled… I was trapped here. Held by the remains of the rebellion. Our parents were never kidnapped. Our mother—she survived. And she took you to safety. She sealed your memories to protect you. She gave you a new name, a new life. But me—” she swallowed, “I was left behind.”I stared at her.“I grew up here. I rebuilt everything from nothing. I lived in hiding. But I remembered you. I looked for you. I couldn’t find you for so long, our mother’s spell was that strong. She told me, ‘I’ll be watching over her.’ She said you’d come back to us when the time was right.”Her voice cracked again, but she didn’t look away.“And then I saw what was happening to you. I saw what they were doing. And I—I couldn’t just watch anymore. I couldn’t stand back while they tried to destroy you.”She hesitated. Her shoulders stiffened.“That girl, the one who caused your exile… I ordered her execution.”My stomach dropped.“You-you were the one who killed Annie?”She slowly nodded.“She treated you horribly. I ordered her killed. A few others saw me, it was why you were blamed.” she said quietly. “She would have ruined you. So I ended it. I made sure she couldn’t hurt you again.”My words were heavy and tangled in my mouth. I couldn’t breathe through it.My entire world was shifting and she stood in the middle of it, steady, unshaken.They had indeed since me that night except it wasn’t me. It was her.“You are not who you think you are, Delyria,” she whispered. “You are Delyria Jerad. And whether you believe it or not… you’ve always had a kingdom and people who loved you.”I stumbled back a step, my heart suddenly clawing at my ribs.“Kade… Kael…” I whispered.Her expression didn’t change. Still calmMy eyes widened. “What did you do to them?”She blinked slowly. “Delyria—”“No!” I backed up farther, the air around me suddenly too thick to breathe. “You’re a monster! You’re Anna still!”A flicker of something passed through her eyes. Not anger, regret. But I didn’t care. I“You were admitted into the pack and you still did something so horrible.” My voice cracked. “They trusted you. Kade trusted you. Kael, what did you do? What did you do?!”I was shaking now. The walls felt like they were closing in around me.“You killed their parents,” I said, barely recognizing my own voice. “You were there. You—you were the one behind it all.”“No,” she said softly, her voice steady but not cold. “That’s not it at all. You’ve got it wrong.”I stared at her, waiting for a lie.“I didn’t go to them to destroy anything. I went to find you.” Her eyes burned now with fierce desperation. “But I had my heart into it too much and that caused me to fail.  I failed.”She took a step closer. I flinched.“And besides…” she whispered, “that bond, it was abnormal. Don’t you see it yet? Don’t you feel it?”“What the hell are you talking about?”“It’s not possible to be admitted, soul-linked, to one twin and not the other. That’s never happened before. Not in any  bloodline. Not in any history. But it happened to me. Just Kade not Kael.”She paused, silver eyes meeting mine.“Don’t you get it. You are special and I am the abnormal twin. I am the cursed one, not you. I was born different. There’s something in me that never quite matched. I’ve known it since I was old enough to feel it. That’s why the bond skipped me.”I shook my head, disoriented. “That doesn’t make sense. I felt them—Kael, Kade. That connection… it was real. I don’t believe.”“They were never supposed to choose just one,” she continued, in front of me now. “And deep down, they knew it too. That’s why they could never fully explain what they felt. Because they were bonded to you. All of you. Even the pieces that were hidden.”I looked up at her, jaw trembling. “Why does this feel like I’m losing everything?”“You’re not losing,” she said, touching my shoulder gently. “You’re finally waking up to what’s been yours all along.”“But if this is true,” I whispered, barely able to hear myself over the pulse crashing in my ears, “then what happened to their family? Are you saying you didn’t have anything to do with it?”Her jaw tensed.“I had no choice.”She took one step forward.“It was because of their pack,” she continued. “Because of them.”“They are part of it, Lyra. All of them. The ones you trusted. The ones you loved.” She spat the words like they tasted like blood. “They were part of the reason we lost everything. They were part of the reason we got separated. They were part of the hunt.”“No…” My voice cracked. “You’re lying.”“You never asked how our beloved mother died.” she roared. Well that is how. Their fathers, their alphas… they wiped out all our people. The Fox Rebellion wasn’t crushed by strangers, Delyria. It was murdered by people you now call your own. They killed our parents.”My knees gave out. My whole life was a lie.She crouched beside me again, but I couldn’t look at her.“We’ve been in hiding ever since. Waiting. Surviving. Watching while they rebuilt their empires over the bones of our family.”My mouth opened. “Kade… Kael… They wouldn’t—”“They don’t know,” she cut in. “They were just children. They don’t know the truth of what their pack did. Of what they were raised to protect. But it doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t change what we lost.”Then she whispered.“There are so many that still need to be brought to justice. So many who’ve never paid for what they did. And now, finally, you’re here. You’re awake. You can help me finish what