Chapter 187

Chapter 187
LUCIUS

My heart clenched to bleed. Fury, grief, terror, and enraged rocked through me.

I instantly felt the pain searing in my chest, way more painful than the sword she speared into my abdomen. 

I was beyond exhausted. Every inch of my body was still painful from the fight, but watching her was way unbearable, a never-ending pain, the vitriolic agony that tore at my heart.

My wolf howled in pain from watching his mate fall unconscious on the ground, bleeding with a hole in her chest.

When I thought I could have her in my lifetime, that opportunity was taken away again as quickly as twenty years ago. 

Maybe I was cursed to suffer from loss. Every time, I felt real happiness, it was quick to vanish when I hadn’t fully grasped it.

It was unfair. What did I do to deserve this kind of torture and harrowing pain? I deserved a little happiness, even just by watching her smile.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as Ryden took her into his arms and began rocking her lifeless body. 

At that moment, I knew she was gone. I couldn’t hear her heartbeat anymore. I couldn’t feel the tingling of my skin when she was near, the extra beat of my heart for her.

“No!” My knees shook as I stepped away. 

I could barely stand. I could barely breathe, let alone watch her die again. It was a deja vu like I was brought back to the past where I watched her die in bed and beg me to take her life because she couldn’t take the pain anymore— she couldn’t watch me suffer anymore.

“Alpha, this is not happening.” I felt Drak gripping my shoulder, Eann on the other.

I shook my head as the hollowness, loss, and guilt permanently settled in my chest, the very same emotions I felt when I lost her the first time. The very same unsettling agony had pierced through twenty years ago.

I lost her again, the woman I’d ever loved for twenty years.

My wolf stirred inside me as the intense pain consumed us completely. One moment I was standing on my two feet, in a matter of a second, I was running into the woods on my four-legged form. He took over me and controlled my body so he could mostly submit to the pain, but he knew for a fact, that it didn’t work that way. His pain was my pain. So, I took control and shifted back.

Kneeling before the earth, I shut my eyes closed as I found myself in the middle of the forest, lost in my grief. I cried there alone. My bones shook intensely. I wished I would feel numb for a second, but I was living in a reality, and the reality was fucked.

“Isn’t it enough that she died once? What did I do to deserve this, watching her die for the second time?” Through my blurry eyes, I looked up at the now clear sky, hoping someone up there would hear me and bring my mate back. “Why did she have to die again?”

I sucked in a breath as a blast of wind sent through me and the world seem to stop. The leaves stopped moving. No sounds or anything. Insects froze in the air, but myself. Then I stared before Enoch with my mouth hanging open.

I swallowed hard. My eyes were wide. I was speechless for a few moments. “This is not you.”

“Son.” I instantly saw the pain in his eyes.

“Where the hell have you been all this time? When I needed you, you weren’t there. I mourned for her loss alone and you just disappeared because you could.”

“I have my own way of mourning and coping with my grievances.”

“I lost my wife, your daughter. Then I found her again and I lost her just right now. You really don’t love her do you?”

“You have no idea what the love of a father to his child is until you become one.”

“Spare me the bullshit, Enoch. Go on, condemn me, curse me. I’d rather go to hell than not see Amelia again. Sharing her with someone else was painful enough, but losing her again kills me over and over again, and I don’t think I can take it anymore.” I shook my head in despair. My heart constantly clenched, and he didn’t give a damn about my feelings. “You must be happy you’ll see her sooner.”

He shook his head. If I had to read his gesture, he seemed to be grieving too. “I feel you.”

“No. You don’t.” I sniffed, wiping the tears away so I could see him. “My mother showed me how it should end, and that didn’t include Amelia getting killed. I was supposed to die, not her. Do something, please? I can’t let her die. Take my life I don’t give a shit. Just bring her back to me.”

“I can’t,” he mumbled which made me furious.

I stood up and glared at him. “You’re a goddamn angel!”

“Don’t curse God,” he said calmly.

“Well, your God doesn’t seem to exist now, does he? Where is he when I need him?”

He breathed deeply. “It wasn’t your mother who showed you the glimpse of her future.”

“What?” My voice was barely audible as I gasped in shock. “Then who?”

He didn’t reply but looked at me.

“Son of a bitch. It was you all this time? You did the rituals. You asked me to take her heart out. Where’s my mother then?”

“She was there the whole time but you couldn’t see her until I was done glamouring her. I helped you to have my daughter’s back. I can’t do it again.”

“Stop lying to me. Of course, you can! That’s your daughter, for God’s sake. I lost her and found her again with another man. Do you know what it feels like? It’s killing me deep inside! But I still stayed and protected her till the end until she fulfilled her destiny, but I didn’t sign up to watch her die. I was supposed to be in her position. She will live longer and live a great life. She’s supposed to have children—”

“She can’t.”

“What the fuck do you mean?”

He stepped forward and touched my head. A rapid reel of events flashed through my head, making me suck in a breath. I dropped to the ground, squeezing my head shut as an intense pain pierced through my brain. I could barely comprehend what I saw, yet I understood everything as clearly as day. It was traumatizing.

“Now you understand.” He barely pressed his fingers on my forehead, and the headache was gone.

I caught my breath as I looked at him. “I’ll give my soul, my life for her. Just bring her back to life. Please?” I dropped my gaze, went on my knees, and begged him for Amelia’s life. “A life for a life. A soul for a soul. I beg you, Divine Enoch. And it doesn’t have to be his.”

“Very well. Just place your palm on her chest.” Those were his last words before he was gone. 

Then just like that, everything went back to normal.