Chapter 30: Past Reflection

Chapter 30: Past Reflection
Ivy’s POV

"I didn’t know if you’d come,” I said quietly.

He didn’t respond. Just stood there, staring at me like he didn’t know whether to walk away.… or tear down the bars.

I gripped them instead, knuckles white.

“I was going to tell you,” I said quickly. “I tried. That night under the stars, remember? I... I just…. I couldn’t find the words.”

Still, silence.

“I never meant to lie. I swear. I just thought if if people knew I was carrying his child, I’d never be seen as anything else again. Not by the pack. Not by you.”

He finally spoke.

“But it is his child, isn’t it?”

I flinched. “Yes.”

His eyes dropped, then rose again, steely. “And you were going to stay here. Let me trust you. Let me protect you. While hiding that truth.”

I didn’t have a defense. Only tears I refused to let fall.

“I’m sorry.”

Lucien took a single step forward.

“Sorry doesn’t undo betrayal.”

I closed my eyes, gripping the bars harder to stay grounded. “No, it doesn’t.”

He tilted his head slightly. “Why didn’t you trust me, Ivy?”

That question broke me more than any accusation could have.

“Because no one ever has ever genuinely cared about me,” I whispered. “Not Kael. Not his pack. I didn’t know what it meant.… to be safe. Until I came here.”

Lucien stood in front of my cell for a long time, and just when I thought he was going to walk away without another word, he turned back around. His eyes found mine in the dim torchlight, stormy and unreadable, but no longer empty. There was something there now. Pain. Fury. Betrayal. But something else too, something old, something haunted.

“Do you know why I took you in?” His voice was low, barely above a whisper. “Why I gave yoi protection, even when my gut told me I shouldn’t?”

I swallowed hard, staring at him, unsure whether to speak.

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“It was the night before my ascension,” he said, gaze locked on the stone wall above me, like he was seeing something else entirely. “There was a coup. Some of my own pack members didn’t want me to take the title. They gathered in the dark and raided the mansion while we slept. They weren’t there to make a statement, they came to kill me.”

I froze, my breath catching in my throat.

Lucien continued, voice strained. “It was chaos. Screams. Blood. Fire. They came for me, but they didn’t care who got in their way. My sister…. she was sixteen. She managed to slip out of the house during the attack. She ran. Barefoot. In her nightgown. She ran until her lungs gave out.”

He took a sharp breath and clenched his jaw.

“I fought until sunrise. When it was over, I was crowned Alpha. But she never came back.” His eyes finally dropped back down to meet mine. “Three days later, one of my patrols found her body at the edge of a neighboring pack’s territory. Collapsed just past the borders. Unkempt. Starved. She’d begged them for shelter, but they turned her away.”

He paused.

“They thought she was a spy.”

The silence crushed the air between us like stone.

“I buried her myself,” he said softly. “And I made a vow that day, if someone ever came to me the way she came to them, lost, hunted, desperate, I would never turn them away.”

My throat burned. My heart felt like it was fracturing inside my chest. I was shaking.

“That day in the forest,” Lucien went on, “when my warriors were ready to rip out your throat, I looked at you, blood on your skin, eyes full of fear…. you reminded me of her. Godess help me, I saw her in you.”

He exhaled hard, chest rising and falling with the weight of it all.

“And so I took you in. I gave you a bed. A home. Protection. Everything she was denied.”

I couldn’t speak. I didn’t even know if I was breathing.

Lucien stepped closer, voice sharper now.

“And still…. you lied to me. You hid your truth from me”

I flinched at the heat in his tone.

“I didn’t mean to,” I choked out. “I swear I didn’t mean to....”

“Don’t,” he snapped, not with cruelty, but exhaustion. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Ivy. You chose to hide the truth.”

“I was afraid,” I whispered.

“So was she,” he said, eyes burning. “But she died for it.”

Those words knocked the breath out of my lungs.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, the words trembling out of me, useless and too late.

Lucien stood there, staring at me, looking at me like I was some cracked mirror reflecting back the worst parts of his past.

“I offered you what no one offered her,” he said. “And you spit on it.”

“Lucien, please…”

The words slipped out of me like a breath I’d been holding for hours.

He turned to leave again, but I couldn’t let him go. Not without trying, one last time.

“I know I messed up,” I said, rising to my feet, gripping the cold iron bars. “But please.… give me a chance to earn your forgiveness. Let me prove that I’m not the enemy.”

Lucien stopped.

For a moment, he just stood there, his back to me, completely still.

The silence dragged out, sharp, agonizing.

Then he walked away.

No words.

No promise.

Just footsteps fading down the corridor until only the echo of them remained.

I sank back onto the floor, arms wrapping around my knees, shame curling deep in my stomach like rot. Time stretched. I didn’t know if minutes passed or hours. All I knew was the ache in my chest and the cold stone beneath my skin.

Then, footsteps again.

And the jangle of keys.

I lifted my head just as the heavy door creaked open and Dorian stepped inside. He didn’t speak right away, just looked at me, unreadable.

Then finally, she said, “Alpha Lucien has ordered for you to be released.”

I stared at him, breath caught in my throat.

Released?

Dorian’s jaw was tight. “Don’t waste this chance, earn his forgiveness”

He stepped aside, giving me space to rise.

And as I walked out of that cell, I didn’t feel free, I felt the crushing weight of a second chance.

And I knew I couldn’t afford to lose it.