Chapter 77 Everything he knew

Chapter 77 Everything he knew
Sera's Pov

We brought Noah back to camp after his outburst.

Nobody spoke on the walk in. Not because there was nothing to say, because there was too much to be said.

The main chamber gave him an audience, and an audience was its own kind of pressure.

He sat in the chair they placed in the center of the room and he didn't ask for anything and he didn't look afraid.

"You can start whenever you're ready," Damien said.

Noah looked at me. "I owe you an explanation," he said.

"You owe me significantly more than that," I scoffed loudly. "But you can start there."

He nodded once.

"I watched everything that happened to you. Every day at Crescent. Every time Brielle went after you and every time the teachers looked away and every time Caden—" He stopped. Glanced at Caden briefly. Looked back at me. "Every time you walked into a room and made yourself smaller so you'd take up less space and give people less to target. I watched all of it. And I did nothing."

"This isn't news to me, everyone watched me get maltreated," I rolled my eyes.

"I want you to know that it wasn't indifference," he said. "I need you to understand the distinction."

"Then what was it?"

"It was calculation, I calculated that helping you wasn't worth the cost to you,”

"While I was being destroyed in front of you." I held his gaze, trying not to lose my temper, "Say the next part."

He blinked. Something moved across his face. The first crack in the composure.

"When the Moon Goddess chose you," he said, "I was….I had been preparing. My whole life. Everything I knew about hybrid bloodlines, everything I'd studied, everything I'd built toward the signs pointed to me. Everyone in the faction believed it was me. I believed it."

"And then she chose me instead," I said.

"Yes,n she chose the powerless human girl," I said. "The one everyone ignored."

"And that made you angry enough to join the people who tried to kill me."

"It made me desperate enough," he admitted.

Caden moved from his position against the wall. One step forward, jaw tight.

"You were at Crescent the night of the bridge."

Noah looked at him. "Yes."

"Were you there when Brielle—"

"No," he said. "I wasn't on the bridge. But I knew what she was planning. I didn't stop her."

The room went so still I could hear the lanterns.

"You knew," I said. My voice came out very quiet. "You knew she was going to push me off that bridge and you didn't stop her."

“Part of me thought if the choice was wrong. if you weren't actually the one, then the Moon Goddess would let you die. And I would be next."

I stared at him in horror.

"As you can see, I didn't die. She let me come back."

"She did.”

"If you know the truth, why are you still choosing them?"

"By that point I had been with them for months, it was harder to leave than to stay."

"That is the most cowardly sentence I have ever heard," Caden interrupted.

Damien stepped forward. "The faction. Tell us exactly what they want."

Noah looked at me when he answered. Like the information was mine and Damien was just the intermediary.

"They've been tracking hybrid bloodline hybrids for forty years. Not because they're afraid of one existing. Because they need one." He paused and held my gaze. "The throne they built their entire organization around requires a hybrid bloodline to activate it. It's not ceremonial. It's literal, the seat won't recognize a ruler unless the person sitting in it carries all three. They don't want to harvest you, Sera. That was never the plan. They want to put you on their throne and control everything you do from behind it."

"A puppet," Maera said flatly.

"A very powerful one," Noah said. "One that legitimizes everything they've built."

"They were never going to kill me," I said slowly.

"No."

"What about the attack tonight?”

"It was to capture, not to kill," he said. "Everything they've done has been to get you in a position where you had no choice but to go with them."

I felt something cold move through me. Not fear. Something older than fear. The specific feeling of realizing the danger was never what you thought it was.

"What else? You said you know things about my power that nobody else does. So tell me."

He hesitated for the first time.

"Your three bloodlines," he said. "They're not just coexisting. They're converging. What happened on the ridge tonight, that pulse, that wasn't you losing control. That was the beginning of integration. When all three fully merge—" He stopped.

"Say it. I can take whatever you want to say, trust me.”

"There is no recorded instance of a fully integrated tri-brid surviving the convergence, tphe power becomes too large for one body to contain. The faction believes they can extract and stabilize it before that point. Channel it into the throne instead."

The silence that followed was a different kind than all the others.

"How long do we have?" Gia asked. Her voice was barely above a breath. "Before full convergence."

"The Blood Moon," he said. "The ceremony accelerates it. Whatever happens that night, it won't just be a claiming. It'll be the final trigger. You won't survive it, Sera.

I turned away from him and walked away.

"Sera, wait." Damien called out to me.

"I'm fine,"

"You're not." His hand closed around my arm gently. "Come with me,"

"Damien, I need to be alone,"

"Please, two minutes," he pleaded. "Just two minutes."

The corridor outside the chamber was empty and cold and I put my back against the stone wall and closed my eyes and pulled in one long breath that didn't entirely cooperate.

Then Damien's hands settled on my shoulders.

I opened my eyes to see he was closer than I'd registered. Both hands on my shoulders, his face level with mine, and the corridor was narrow and the lantern behind him was the only light and I was suddenly very aware of all of those things at once.

"He's not wrong," I said. "About the convergence."

"We don't know that."

"I felt it on the ridge, Damien. When all three came up at once, I felt what it was doing. He's not wrong and you know it."

"I know it's one source's information, I know we don't move on one source."

"You believe him."

He didn't answer immediately.

"We will figure it out together."

I looked up at him. He was already looking at me.

He dropped his forehead to mine.

I didn't pull back, neither did he.

Then he straightened. His hands dropped, and he stepped back. Neither of us said anything about it.

"Ready?" he asked.

I nodded with a smile. We walked back into the chamber.

And Tobias was standing in the middle of the room with his face twisted into worry.

"What?" I said immediately.

He looked at me. "Your father is gone."

My blood went cold. "What do you mean gone—"

"His room is empty," Tobias corrected. "The guard outside is unconscious. No sign of struggle inside. They didn't come through the front, Sera. The ambush on the ridge was a distraction. It was specifically designed to pull everyone out of camp at the same time."

I turned to look at Noah, still in the chair, still watching me.

His face said he already knew.

"They have him," I became pale.

“They planned this from the beginning. The attack tonight. Brielle walking in. All of it was to get you all out of camp at the same time."

Noah looked at the floor.

"He was taken cleanly," he said. "While you were distracted by the ambush.”