Chapter 34: Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter 34

Lia's POV

The forest was colder outside Duskwood.

The kind of cold that didn’t just settle on your skin, but crept into your chest and curled around your ribs. It was the kind of cold that made your breath feel like knives in your lungs and your tears freeze before they reached your chin.

Each step forward felt heavier than the last, not because of the terrain, but because of what I left behind.

No... who I left behind.

The crunch of frost-covered leaves beneath my boots echoed like heartbreak with every step. My cloak whipped behind me in the wind, its edges catching stray branches and dragging pieces of Duskwood with me. A pine needle. A twig. The faint scent of burning wood still clinging to the fabric.

I wrapped it tighter around myself, my fingers trembling from exhaustion or grief, I wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe both. Probably both.

The further I walked, the more the bond felt like a ghost in my bones. It tugged at me softly at first, a whisper in the back of my mind. Go back. He didn’t mean it. You’re his mate. You’re his heart.

But then I’d hear his voice again. That ugly, twisted version of him. The one I didn’t recognize. The one that turned my stomach.

“You’re a bloody liar.”

“A witch who wants to put my family asunder because you don’t have one.”

Those words sliced deeper than any fang ever could. Deeper than the gash on my arm from Quinn. Deeper than the raw ache that bloomed when I walked out the door and didn’t look back.

I wasn’t just running from danger. I was running from the one person I thought would fight beside me.

Fight for me.

Edgar wasn’t just my mate, he was the first home I’d felt since my mother died. A flame I thought would never flicker, let alone turn cold.

And he broke me.

I stopped beside a stream, the moonlight casting silver reflections across the water like shattered glass. I knelt slowly, limbs heavy, and cupped the icy water in my hands. I splashed it against my face, hoping it would cleanse me of the tears I couldn’t seem to stop shedding. They just kept coming, like the dam inside me had finally cracked open.

“Elena was right,” I whispered aloud. My voice sounded foreign in the open air, hoarse and too fragile. “I’m turning into my mother.”

She ran too. When things got too hard. When people doubted her. When the weight of secrets became unbearable.

And now here I was, her daughter, carrying the same curse.

I hated how much of her I saw in myself. The same loneliness. The same haunted eyes. The same broken love story with a wolf.

Back then, I resented her for it. For disappearing. For not fighting harder. For leaving me behind with nothing but memories and an ache where a mother’s love should’ve been.

But maybe I understood her now. Maybe some hearts weren’t built to survive this kind of love. The bond was a blessing... until it wasn’t. Until it became a chain. A curse. A mirror reflecting every crack inside you until all you could see was the ruin.

A gust of wind stirred the trees around me. The rustling of branches and brittle leaves sounded too intentional to be the wind alone.

I stiffened, instinct flaring. My eyes scanned the tree line. My heart began to race, not from fear, but from that low thrum of something primal. Something half-wolf.

I was no longer fully human, no longer defenseless… but something inside me had dimmed.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to fight.

Not anymore.

My hand slowly crept toward the dagger tucked in my boot, but I didn’t draw it. Not yet. Not unless I had to. I crouched lower, breath held, eyes narrowed.

The brush to my left shifted.

A deer broke through, spooked, and sprinted past me with a flash of white tail and wide, terrified eyes.

I let out a shaky breath and sat back on my heels, a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh escaping my throat. Just breath and grief and weariness tangled together.

Maybe this is what I deserve. To be alone. To figure myself out without him. Without Duskwood. Without the mate bond pulling me in directions I didn’t understand.

Maybe this was the only way to know who I was when I wasn’t drowning in someone else’s storm.

But as I stood and gathered my pack again, the cold bit deeper. The wind seemed to carry voices from behind me, ghosts of memory, maybe, or echoes of the life I left behind.

Because no matter how far I went, a part of me was still in that damn town.

In that cabin.

On that porch.

In that war room.

In his arms.

With Edgar.

And the worst part?

Even after everything…

Even after the betrayal.

Even after the heartbreak.

Even after the loneliness that clawed at my chest like a living thing...

I still loved him.

God help me, I still loved him.

The tears came again, silent this time, carving icy trails down my cheeks. I let them. There was no one to see me fall apart now. No one to hide the wreckage from. The forest didn’t care if I broke.

I pressed a hand to my stomach, to the place where something new was growing. Something innocent.

I hadn’t even let myself say the words out loud yet.

But they were there.

Inside me. With every breath I took. With every choice I made now.

He would’ve protected us if he knew.

Wouldn’t he?

Or would his hatred for me have clouded everything? Would his rage drown out reason, even for his own blood?

I didn’t know anymore. I didn’t know who he was now, not really.

And maybe that was the worst part of all.

I stood there for a long time, listening to the river move beside me, the current strong and steady. I let the sound lull me into something like numbness, something like peace.

And when I moved again, it was quieter.

Not because the pain was gone, but because I’d accepted it.

For now, that was enough.

I turned from the water and walked on.

Toward whatever waited beyond the trees. Toward something new.

But with every step, his name followed me like a ghost.

Edgar.