Chapter 88
Chapter 88
Sera POV
When I woke up again, the room was quiet.
The sheets beside me were cold. The space where Jade should have been, where his warmth and his weight usually pressed into mine, was empty. I sat up slowly, the faint pain from earlier still moving beneath my skin like a memory that refused to fade.
My vision swam for a moment, and I had to steady myself with a hand against the headboard. My throat felt dry. My body felt weak. I could still taste the bitterness of last night somewhere deep inside me, as though my very blood remembered it.
I didn’t know how long I had been unconscious. I only knew Jade was gone.
Before I could call out, the door opened, and the healer stepped inside. She didn’t look startled to see me there.
Instead, she simply closed the door behind her and approached with quiet steps, her movements steady and calm, like she had expected this moment.
“You’re awake,” she murmured. “Good.”
I swallowed weakly. “Where… where is Jade?”
“He left.” Her tone was careful and not casual but cautious. “I’m not sure where exactly, but that’s not why I’m here.”
My heart tightened. I didn’t want to ask why.
The healer sat beside me, her eyes studying my face with a kind of sadness that made my skin prickle.
“How do you feel?” she asked softly.
“Tired,” I whispered. “But… I’ll be fine.”
She nodded, though I could tell she didn’t believe the second part of my answer. She reached out and took my hand gently, as though she were afraid it would break.
“Sera,” she said quietly, “you need to listen to me.”
There was something in her voice that made my breath still.
She looked at the mark on my neck, the place where Jade had claimed me before the entire pack. Her fingers hovered close to it but did not touch.
“You carry something with you,” she whispered. “Something not all souls are given. The Moon Goddess’s fire burns inside you. I saw it the moment they brought you in. It is in your blood. In your breath. In the way your soul does not move like theirs.”
Her words pressed deep, heavy, unsettling.
“Sera… You are not just Jade’s mate,” she continued. “You are chosen.”
I shook my head slowly, though there was no real force behind the denial. “Chosen for what?”
Her eyes softened, but her voice remained steady.
“For judgement.”
The word hung in the air like a blade.
My fingers tightened around the blankets.
She leaned in closer.
“The fire in you is not only meant to heal. It is meant to reveal. And to destroy, if necessary.”
My heartbeat stuttered.
I tried to pull my hand away, but she held it gently, not to restrain but to anchor me.
“You remember death,” she whispered. “You remember betrayal. You remember the man you once loved ending your life with his own hands.”
The air in my chest froze.
My lips parted, but no sound came out.
She saw the recognition in my eyes.
She saw the memory I had tried so hard to bury.
“Kade.”
The name trembled from my mouth.
Her silence was the answer.
My breathing turned uneven. The walls felt closer. My skin felt tight.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No… Jade is not… He isn’t…”
Her voice didn’t rise; she didn’t argue. She simply spoke the truth with the quiet, terrible certainty of someone who had seen too much for too long.
“He is the same soul,” she said. “Reborn into another life. Drawn to you again. Bound to you again. And the same fire that once burnt you both will rise again… unless you choose differently.”
My vision blurred.
Tears slipped down without my permission.
I didn’t even realise I was crying until she wiped one away with her thumb.
“You must be careful,” she whispered. “The love he feels for you is powerful. But power is not always safe. Jade is walking the same path Kade once walked. The same hunger. The same possessiveness. The same madness born from love.”
My stomach twisted and my chest ached.
My throat tightened as the healer’s words settled between us, too heavy to lift, too sharp to swallow.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head slowly, almost desperately. “Jade is not him. He’s not Kade. He’s not the man who…” I couldn’t finish. The memory was smoke, fire, choking heat. “He’s different. I know him. I’ve seen him try.”
The healer watched me with a quiet grief, as though she had once stood exactly where I was standing now, believing exactly what I wanted to believe.
“You’re holding on to the part of him that loves you,” she said softly. “But love alone never saved him. It never saved you. And it will not save either of you now.”
I pulled my hand away, not from anger, but because I could not bear the weight of her touch. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to steady the trembling beneath my skin.
“You didn’t see him last night,” I said. “He was scared. He was shaking. He… he didn’t want to hurt me. He begged me to stay. He begged me not to let him become something else. He is still fighting.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “And that is why you will find it hardest to see when the fight ends.”
Her words felt like a knife sliding slowly into my chest.
I shook my head again, but it felt weaker this time.
“Jade is human,” I said quietly, voice strained. “He bleeds. He fears. He loves. That means there is hope.”
The healer exhaled slowly, pain passing through her eyes like a shadow drawn across the moon.
“Hope is powerful,” she said. “But so is destiny. And destiny has already begun to move.”
I looked away. I didn’t want to hear the rest. I didn’t want to believe fate was already written, that we were simply walking toward an ending neither of us chose.
But she continued, her voice low, steady, and unflinching:
“Sera, listen to me.”
I forced myself to meet her gaze.
“If you cannot destroy him, he will destroy you.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
It was not a threat. It was not a prophecy spoken to frighten me.
It was simply truth uttered by someone who had seen this story unfold before.
My heart hammered dully in my chest, a slow and painful rhythm.
I didn’t answer her.
I couldn’t.
Because I knew deep in the place I tried never to look that the fire inside me was growing.
And Jade was changing.
And love, once again, was beginning to taste like doom.