SEVENTY EIGHT

SEVENTY EIGHT
SPECIAL CHAPTER THREE: ABIGAIL

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Special chapters serve to shed light on the perspectives of minor characters, providing insight into their roles in the unfolding narrative.

"The merging is near. If the stillborn is the reason for this, I will allow her breath for now," I mused, more to myself than Ophelia.

"What?" The girl seemed genuinely horrified by my stance. My eyes shifted back to her as she fidgeted with her phone before meeting my gaze. "Camille does not sound alright. She needs us."

I chuckled. "Don't make me laugh. You speak as if you're her family, as if you care for her. Yet, you're merely spying on her for favors."

"I'm not claiming to be superior. But Camille seems to be going through hell, all because of your vengeful vendetta. If you hadn't brought that forsaken child back to life, Camille wouldn't be enduring this torment."

"Vengeful vendetta?" I scoffed. "The mother of that girl killed my daughter. She orchestrated Bo's unnatural death. I couldn't even bring her back to life. That was justice. But none of the hell Camille is enduring would have happened if Bo had just listened to me and not married that Alpha."

"I apologize for what I'm about to say, Supreme. But this is why Bo cut communications with you. You can be controlling. You did it with Bo, and now you're doing it with Camille. She doesn't even know you're alive. This is messed up—fucked up!"

"I wasn't controlling. I did what I did because I loved Bo. Just like I'm doing now. I'm doing this because I care about my granddaughter. Bo caused these anomalies. If she had listened to me—"

"Bo was my friend," Ophelia retorted. "You know that. She confided in me. She told me why you were against her choosing her mate. A druid told you that if Bo got with Alpha Lucian, then the Galdina line would surely not die. You were willing to sacrifice your daughter's happiness for some old grievances. You're doing it now, making Camille suffer because she got involved with a bloodline you want exterminated. What about your great-grandchildren? They have the cursed Galdina blood, too. Are you going to let them die out, too?"

She was speaking out of line.

Ophelia's words cut deep, slicing through my carefully constructed facade of righteousness.

"How dare you?" I seethed, my voice a low, dangerous growl. "You presume to lecture me, to judge me, when you know nothing of the sacrifices I have made, the burdens I carry."

But Ophelia stood her ground, her eyes blazing with defiance, unyielding in the face of my wrath despite knowing how consequential it would be for her.

"I simply speak the truth. Bo was like a sister to me," she countered. "She confided in me, told me of your manipulations, your attempts to control her life. And now you seek to do the same with Camille."

She kept on bringing Bo and insisting I was some sort of monster to my beautiful baby girl.

Without a second thought, I raised my hand and delivered a sharp slap across Ophelia's cheek.

"Don't you dare to speak to me like that!" I hissed. "You forget your place, girl. Stick to your duties and your obligations. Save your companion and leave the matters of destiny to those who understand them."

Ophelia recoiled from the slap, her hand flying to her cheek, but she did not cower. Instead, she met my gaze with a defiant glare.

"I will not stand by and watch you condemn Camille to a fate she does not deserve," she declared with conviction. "If you continue down this path of vengeance and destruction, I will have no choice but to oppose you."

Her words hung in the air like a challenge, causing me to look into her eyes.

There was indeed fire and grit. But the girl also had a prominent weakness.

"Be warned, Ophelia," I spat, my voice dripping with venom. "The next time you speak out of line, the next time you dare to lecture me, I will leave your companion to die. And you will have only yourself to blame."

Having given my piece, I turned on my heel and stalked away, leaving Ophelia behind to ponder the consequences of her defiance.

She didn't understand where the reason for my actions came from. She couldn't. She didn't know what it was like to be made for another.

I wasn't born a mistake. I was born a tool to fix an error. That realization didn't hit me until I was sixteen. It was a bitter truth that twisted and coiled around my throat like a serpent savoring its moments to strike.

My family was untraditional. I was born into a union of a shifter and a warlock.

Growing up in a coven, I had been told that I was a unique gift to the numinous. The universe could not have a creature with too much power in its hands.

Then, I could imagine. A hormonal wolf with access to magic? It was only fitting that the universe had a safe lock for unique situations like ours.

I was a healer. I had known for as long as I could remember. My gift was something my father insisted I grew to love.

I did like fixing things. I was a natural at it. So talented in the art that questions were thrown at my father, which caused him to pick me out of his coven and never look back.

I could remember the look on my grandfather's face when he whisked me out of Begonia.

But whatever my father made me into the issue. The issue was he and my mother.

As a child, I didn't quite understand why they were so distant from each other. But with age, came knowledge.

My father didn't love my mother. No matter how much he tried to ensure she did not feel that chasm, nothing really helped.

I remember my mother used to dump her traumas on me. Tell me the reason she felt so empty inside was because of me. She didn't mean it in a horrid manner. But it still hurt.

My father had married her to make a creature like me. The chances of the offspring of a warlock and a human being of magic were abysmally low, and witches would not touch another witch who had a companion with a ten-inch pole. It was an unspoken law. To increase his chances, my father trapped my mother in a loveless union.

She would leave. But I believed she loved the man. I was a secondary reason for her to stay.

But I always believed they would work. They could make it work. For my sake, at least.

I was wrong. Dead wrong.

The memory of that fateful day still haunts me, etched into the recesses of my mind like a scar. Healed but never to fade. It was the day my world shattered, the day I learned the whole truth about my existence.

I got home early from school to find my mother's lifeless body swaying gently in the stillness of our home.

She had hung herself with a bedsheet and with the help of her fan.

Some cheap farewell letter lay crumpled on the bedside table.

I had read it. It was a heartbreaking confession of her despair and longing for an unattainable love.

My father was madly in love with a king who chose his duty over him. For the sins of a man I didn't know, I had to suffer. I had to be born, trapping my mother in a loveless marriage until she eventually took her own life.

When my father returned, I confronted me. What did the man have to say for himself?

"How badly do you want her back?"

Those were words that I would never forget.

He had followed it with more callous words. "If you want her back so badly, then bring her back."

I was sixteen—a young girl who had just stumbled into her mother's limp body. I needed comfort. I needed him to take accountability. But all he needed from me, even at that moment, was to use my gifts.

"A healer cannot bring back the dead. I know there are limits to what I can do." I had told him, tears burning my vision.

"There is no limit to you, Abigail." My father's words echoed.

"You're not just a healer, child," he had said, his voice laced with guarantee. "You were created for a greater purpose, to right the wrongs of the past."

I tried. I truly did. Day after day, I poured every ounce of my being into bringing her back, ignoring the whispers of doubt and the gnawing ache of failure. But each attempt only deepened the wound, a relentless reminder of my inadequacy and the heavy burden I carried.

Her body remained on her bed—bloated and reeking of death.

Whatever my father has believed he made was a failure. Realizing that only made the emptiness wider.

That emptiness was the turning point.

That fateful night, something within me snapped. The grief and anger that had simmered beneath the surface erupted, unleashing a primal force that I didn't even realize lay dormant within my soul.

My wolf, my one faithful companion, emerged from the shadows and became one with me.

With a reckless determination born of desperation, I reached out to the darkness, beckoning my mother's spirit back from the abyss. And against all odds, she returned.

With it came a consequence. I brought back what didn't want to return. Whatever I brought back wasn't my mother. It was a mere shadow of her former self—a husk wearing vibrant flesh.

In the aftermath of her resurrection, the weight of my father's revelation pressed down upon me like a suffocating darkness, permeating every corner of my being with a sense of betrayal and disgust.

Sitting across from him, I listened in disbelief as he callously laid bare the truth of my existence, the reason behind my mother's suffering, and my own wretched fate.

His words hung in the air like a foul stench, poisoning the very air we breathed.

"I had a mate once," he confessed, his voice thick with remorse and self-pity. "We didn't work out, and in my folly, I cursed him and his children. I have to fix that mistake."

Fix that mistake. The words echoed in my mind like a mocking refrain, a cruel reminder of the sacrifice my mother had been forced to endure, and the burden that he had now forced upon my shoulders.

"Is that why you had me, father?" I demanded, my voice trembling with rage and disbelief. "As a backup plan? An insurance for the one your heart truly belonged to?"

But my father's response was a mere sigh, a feeble attempt to justify his actions in the face of my righteous fury. He grasped my hands in his, his touch a pathetic plea for forgiveness, for absolution.

"Abi, please," he implored, his eyes wanting mercy but not for my sake. "Promise me you'll help the Galdinas if any of them tries to find you."

I recoiled from his touch, my disgust bubbling up like bile in my throat. With a bitter laugh, I shook my head in disbelief, my hands trembling with suppressed anger.

"No," I spat, the word dripping with venom. "I think the Galdina line deserves to perish. It's only fair given what you and that man have put me and Mother through."

But my father's desperation only grew, his pleas falling on deaf ears as I turned away, refusing to acknowledge the pain in his eyes and the guilt that threatened to consume him.

"What about me?" I demanded, my voice rising to a crescendo. "What about my suffering, my pain? Do I not deserve justice? Does mother not receive reprieve from the suffering you put her through? Where is retribution for us!?"

But there was no answer. How could I have expected solace to be found in the hollow words of a broken man? And as I stood before him, consumed by rage and despair, I made a promise to myself.

I would not be a pawn in my father's game. I would ensure the opposite of what I was created for happened.

I was created to save the Galdina bloodline from my father's curse, but I would be the one to ensure the curse exterminated every last one of them.

I would watch them struggle to keep themselves in the present and fail. It was only justice

And woe be to those who dared stand in my way, for I would show them no mercy, no quarter.

"It is alright, Abigail." My wolf assured me. "Just three more."