Chapter 206 206
Chapter 206 206
Auren POV
“And you thought the best solution was to make everyone believe I’d done it?” Lorien’s question was flat with disbelief.
Lucen’s shoulders shook. “He was starting to wake up,” he choked out. “I there was nothing else I could do. I grabbed dirt from where he’d been bleeding and ” His voice broke and tears cut clean tracks down his face. He stared at me like a man wishing to be struck down.
“What was left of her,” Lysandra spat, acid in her tone. The image rose up sick and sharp in my mind and bile burned my throat.
I wanted to rip her throat open, but I needed the whole truth. I needed every last awful piece.
“You were half out of it when you woke,” Lucen said, words tumbling in a rush. “I don’t think you were fully there. When you found Sylira you” He swallowed so hard it rattled. “You were grabbing at her, trying to put her back together. You were frenzied, screaming for her to wake. I don’t think you even realized.”
“By the time the Alpha found you, you were covered in her blood,” he went on. “Your scent was all over her. Everyone assumed you did it. I didn’t stop them. I didn’t correct them. I’m sorry, Auren. I’m so sorry. It was the curse. I would never hurt Sylira. She was like a sister”
The confession cleaved through me. A nausea rose until I thought I would retch. How could he have let me drown in that guilt for years? How could he have stood beside me while I burned myself alive with blame?
“Auren, I swear I never meant to hurt her,” Lucen pleaded, burying his face in his hands and shaking his head until his breath came ragged.
My breaths were shallow, frantic. The room tilted; the walls narrowed and breathed with a life of their own. I stared at the man I had called brother for decades, and my world unraveled.
“Then how did Lysandra find out?” Lorien’s voice cut through the white noise in my head like thunder, and I sucked in a ragged, grateful breath.
Lysandra’s face had gone hard. She kept hold of the chain with both hands, no more pretense left to play. “I watched,” she said, low and sure. “I’d just shifted. I saw him tear her apart. If he’d been stronger, he would’ve stopped. But he didn’t he was weak.”
Lucen did not deny it. He stared at the floor, jaw set, while tears tracked down his cheeks from red-rimmed eyes.
A violent want rose in my chest wanting him dead, wanting him to pay for Sylira, for the years of my punishment, for letting me believe the worst of myself.
A hand settled on my lower back light, grounding and whatever haze blurred my vision thinned enough to cut through the fog.
“And you thought you could blackmail Lucen into helping you get into my mate’s bed and then into killing me?” Lorien’s voice was stunned. I couldn’t blame her.
Lysandra laughed, a brittle, scraping sound. “Oh please. Lucen is still weak. He’s useless just like you!” Her eyes flashed; she shifted the chain with a casual twist of her wrist, and it slid easier than it should have, as if the shackle weren’t taut at all.
“What were you hoping to gain?” Lorien asked, stepping around me to stand at my side. “Power? Status?”
“He was supposed to be mine long before he became Alpha!” Lysandra snarled, venom and hurt braided in the sentence. My gaze flicked to Lucen broken, crumpled and then back to the woman who had smiled in my face for years. Both needed to be punished. Both had blood on their hands.
“He was never yours,” Lorien said, voice low and fierce. “He was Sylira’s. And now he’s mine.”
Lysandra’s face contorted. “I should have killed you when I had the chance!” she screamed and lunged.
Her leap was raw, sudden, fueled by everything she’d been holding inside. The chain swung with her motion; the room snapped into motion around us, the ugly calculus of retribution closing in.