Chapter 138 The dying truth

Chapter 138 The dying truth


KAI'S POV

The Architect was dying.

I could smell it on him before his knees even buckled. Underneath the heavy, iron scent of blood, there was something sharp and chemical--bitter, synthetic, and distinctly metallic. A failsafe poison. The bastard must have swallowed it the second he realized he wasn't walking away from this airstrip alive. The toxic fumes burned the back of my throat, making my lungs reject the air.

Yet, even as his legs completely gave out, that infuriating, calm expression never left his face. He slid heavily down the side of the plane stairs, sitting hard onto the cracked concrete with a dull, hollow thud. A slow, dark line of crimson spilled from the corner of his mouth, dripping down his chin. His eyes, already starting to glaze over, found Ophelia first before drifting lazily to me.

"You still don't understand what she is," he whispered. His voice was growing thinner, dropping to a raspy scrape, but every single syllable cut through the quiet air. "Morwen is not just an Alpha. She is the original hybrid. Centuries old. The very first one who actually survived the process."

My stomach dropped like a stone into a bottomless well. The air around us suddenly felt entirely too thin to breathe. Centuries old? The stories we grew up on, the history of the alliance--it was all a curated lie. We weren't fighting a rogue faction; we were fighting history itself.

Beside me, Ophelia went completely rigid. Through our pack bond, a violent wave of shock slammed into me--sharp, freezing, and instantly followed by a dark, suffocating dread settling deep in her chest. Her hand clamped onto my forearm, her fingernails digging so hard into my skin I could feel the sharp sting of her grip. I wanted to pull her close, to shield her from whatever twisted truth was coming next, but I was frozen.

The Architect's dying gaze locked onto her, completely unfazed by her terror. Blood dripped from his chin, staining the front of his shirt. "You are her direct blood. Celeste was merely the closest vessel she ever managed to create. But you... You are the one who finally worked. Your child’s blood can finish what she started. True immortality. Absolute control over every single wolf who has ever carried even a drop of the old serum."

The horror of it settled deep in my gut. Everything we had done, every battle we fought, was exactly what Morwen had anticipated. Ophelia wasn't just a target to them; she was the final piece of a centuries-old puzzle.

He broke into a harsh fit of coughing, spraying more dark blood onto the concrete. The wet, rattling sound made my skin crawl.

I took a step forward with fear my hands balling into fists so tight that my claws tore right through my own palms. I barely registered the sharp pain, only feeling the warm, thick blood beginning to ooze between my fingers and drip onto the dirt. "Where is she?" I snarled.

A shadow of a smile touched his bloody lips. It was a grotesque, unnatural expression on a face so close to death. "You will find out soon enough."

Then, his eyes shifted back to me. The mock pity vanished, replaced by a pure, ugly satisfaction.

"Your mother tried to kill her once," he said, his voice dropping to a soft, almost gentle purr. "That is why she had to die. Elias didn't act alone."

The words hit me with the force of a physical blow to the chest, stealing the breath right out of my lungs.

My heart hammered against my ribs so violently I could hear the thudding echo in my ears, drowning out the sound of the wind. Inside my mind, Vai went dead silent for one terrifying second before erupting into a furious, deafening roar that shook my entire consciousness. The sheer rage vibrated behind my ribs, making my vision blur.

Elias didn't act alone.

My mother tried to kill Morwen.

That's why she died.

Everything I thought I knew about my past, the driving fury that had kept me alive and fighting all these years, fractured in an instant. My mother wasn't just a casualty of a senseless rogue attack. She had been an assassin. She had targeted the original hybrid, and she had paid for it with her life. And my father... Elias had help from the inside.

I couldn't draw a proper breath. The realization suffocated me, turning the morning air to cold in my throat. My jaw was clamped so hard the muscle in my cheek twitched violently. Ophelia squeezed my arm again, trying to anchor me, but I was entirely numb to her touch. My entire world had narrowed down to the Architect's fading eyes and the devastating lie I had lived for years.

"What did you just say?" The words tore out of my throat, low, rough, and dangerous.

He didn't answer. His eyes were already staring blankly at nothing, the light vanishing from his pupils. His final breath left him in a long, hollow rattle that seemed to drag on forever before his body went completely still. The heavy, chemical stench of the poison lingered in the air, mixing with the metallic tang of blood and the faint smell of jet fuel from the idling plane.

An oppressive silence stretched across the airstrip, broken only by the wind howling over the concrete and the soft, rhythmic ticking of the cooling plane engines.

Seraphina was the first to break the quiet. Her voice was tight, strained with agonizing pain, but entirely firm. She kept one hand pressed firmly against the deep slash on her ribs, fresh blood soaking through the messy bandage and dripping slowly onto her boots.

"We don't have time to stand here and process this," she said, her eyes shifting toward the horizon. "If Morwen already has what she needs, she is already moving. We go to the Ruins of the First Moon. Now."

The words barely registered through the ringing in my ears, but the raw reality of our situation forced its way through the fog in my mind. The Architect was dead, but the trap was already sprung.

Eve, who had remained entirely silent until now, visibly recoiled at the name of the ruins. The color drained from her face so fast she looked ghost-white and physically sick. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed hard, her eyes wide with sudden panic.

"That path is heavily guarded," she whispered, her voice barely loud over the wind. "I have seen what is waiting there."

I snapped my head toward her, forcing myself to push my own fracturing mind aside. My pulse was still racing from the Architect's final taunt, but the sheer terror in Eve's demeanor demanded attention. "What?"

Eve met my gaze, and for the first time since I had known her, there was genuine, unadulterated terror in her eyes--the kind of raw fear she usually hid behind sharp sarcasm and white-knuckled anger.

"The Dread Wolf."