Chapter 33: Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter 33

Edgar's POV

I stood at the center of the war room, maps and scrolls scattered before me like the remnants of a broken strategy. Border threats. Supply lines. Patrol rotations. All of it buzzed around me like bees without purpose, but I couldn’t focus.

Not after last night.

“Your mother tried to poison me.”

Lia’s voice still haunted me, echoing in the hollow spaces between my thoughts. It sounded like madness. Like betrayal wearing the mask of sorrow. And worse, like something I almost believed.

I pressed my hands into the war table until the edges dug into my skin. My claws threatened to push through, begging for release I didn’t grant. Pain was easier to control than confusion. Then guilt.

The door creaked open behind me.

“Alpha,” Callan said cautiously. “Elena’s here.”

I didn’t look at him. “Send her in.”

Footsteps. Then silence.

I turned just enough to see her standing there, her eyes red-rimmed and tired. No bow. No sarcasm. Just quiet, solemn weight. Something was wrong.

I saw it before she spoke.

“Where is she?” I asked, already fearing the answer.

Elena didn’t respond.

I straightened. My voice sharpened. “Where is Lia?”

A pause.

Then: “She’s gone.”

The words dropped like a blade through my spine.

I blinked. “What?”

“She left this morning,” Elena said quietly. “Took only what she could carry. No note. No trail. She’s gone, Edgar.”

“No,” I whispered. “No, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t”

“She did.”

I moved before I could think, slamming my fist into the wall. Stone cracked beneath my knuckles, and a painting rattled off its hinge.

“Why didn’t anyone stop her?” I growled. “Why didn’t you stop her?”

“I tried,” Elena said, stepping forward. “But she wasn’t fleeing. She was releasing herself.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“She didn’t leave out of spite,” she said. “She left because you broke something in her that may never heal.”

I turned toward her, something wild and defensive flaring in my chest. “She lied to me. She accused my mother of”

“She dreamed it, Edgar,” Elena snapped. “A vision. A warning. And instead of listening, you called her a witch. You treated her like she didn’t belong here. Like she wasn’t worth believing.”

Her words slammed into me harder than my fist had hit the wall.

“She trusted you,” she continued. “Even when everything else was falling apart, she came to you. And you burned that trust.”

I looked away.

“She told me maybe things would go back to normal now,” Elena added bitterly. “That maybe she was never meant to be part of this world. And when I asked if she wanted to become like her mother, she said nothing. Not even a denial.”

Something shifted in my chest, slow and awful. Like a door slamming shut in a part of me I didn’t know could close.

I gripped the back of a chair to keep steady. My balance felt wrong. Like the floor itself had tilted beneath me.

I wanted to scream. To roar. To destroy something and pretend that it would fix what I’d broken.

But I didn’t move.

“She thinks you hate her,” Elena said, voice lower now. “And I think… maybe part of you hates yourself for letting her go.”

She was right.

But I couldn’t say it.

So I stayed silent.

And the silence said everything.

“She loved you,” she added. “Even when she was scared. Even when she was half-broken. She still loved you.”

I closed my eyes.

“And you chose the lie you were raised to believe, your mother’s version of the world, over the truth right in front of you.”

A long breath dragged from my chest. My shoulders ached from the tension I held there.

“Where did she go?” I asked, my voice barely more than air.

“I don’t know.”

I believed her. Lia was clever. She wouldn’t leave a scent trail. She wouldn’t risk being followed.

I cursed under my breath and pushed away from the chair.

“She’s not safe out there,” I said. “Connor’s still hunting her. She has magic, but she’s not ready. Not alone.”

Elena met my eyes. “Then maybe you should’ve fought for her instead of against her.”

She left after that.

And I didn’t stop her.

Later, after the war room emptied and the moon climbed into the sky, I sat alone in my chamber. The silver light poured through the high windows, painting the room in ghostlight.

But I didn’t feel the pull.

Didn’t feel the fire.

I didn't feel anything.

My wolf… was silent.

The bond, once alive with heat and longing, was cold. Dormant. As if Lia’s absence had severed something vital.

I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the floor. My armor lay discarded beside me, the weight of it still lingering on my skin. But even that pressure felt meaningless now.

I’d chosen wrong.

No, I’d destroyed something that had never been mine to break.

I thought of her laugh. Of her stubbornness. Of the way she’d flinch when she was touched too suddenly, but lean into warmth when she trusted it.

I thought of her hands trembling when she told me the truth.

“Your mother tried to poison me.”

And I had looked her in the eye and doubted her. I’d let centuries of noble loyalty blind me to the rot in my own bloodline.

What kind of Alpha couldn’t protect the one person who truly believed in him?

What kind of man?

The ache in my chest wasn’t sharp. It was slow. Deep. A dull, gnawing grief that felt like it had no end.

And then, sitting there beneath a moon I couldn’t feel, in a fortress full of silence, i did something I hadn’t done in years.

I wept.

Not for the kingdom.

Not for the war.

Not even for the betrayal festering in my bloodline.

I cried for her.

For the girl who had seen something good in me.

And for the man who crushed it in his hands.