chapter 194 Eric's Journal (3)

chapter 194 Eric's Journal (3)
Eric's Journal

Age 25
The plan is set in motion. Seraphina has proven surprisingly useful. Her hatred of Lyra makes her willing to participate in schemes that serve my purposes.

I cannot simply steal an Alpha's mate. But if that bond were broken naturally, if Lyra were rejected and cast out, then she might be vulnerable to recruitment.

The baby switch serves my needs perfectly. Celeste was pregnant when she died. Delacroix managed to sustain the child in her womb, and after months of magical intervention, I have a daughter. Raven.

When she became weak and nearly died, Seraphina will ensure Lyra takes the blame. Dorian will reject his mate for child endangerment, and Lyra will have no choice but to leave Silver Moon territory.

Then she will come to me, desperate for purpose and belonging. And I will give her both, in exchange for the blood that will save my wife.

Age 26
Lyra disappeared.

After Dorian rejected her, after the scandal broke, she simply vanished. No trace to follow. My contacts in every major pack report no sign of her.

This is a disaster. Without Lyra's healing power, I may lose both my daughter and my wife.

Age 29
Lyra has returned.

The reunion between Lyra and Dorian exceeded all my expectations. I don't know how she managed to expose the elaborate lies I'd constructed, but somehow she did.

Seraphina survived her dramatic suicide attempt. I had searchers waiting at the bottom of the cliff, healers standing by to ensure she lived. She's proven too useful to lose, and her desperation makes her malleable. The face modification allows her to impersonate Lyra when necessary.

But none of it matters now. My own family remains trapped in their magical sleep while other people live and love and prosper.

The kidnapping scheme is my last hope of voluntary cooperation. If Lyra comes willingly to save her child, if she offers her blood freely, then the magic will be most potent.

Vera accused me of changing. She said that before I met Celeste, I was a kind and upright young man, and that Celeste had made me evil. How could I tell my naive sister the truth? How could I explain that Father's brutality had already planted seeds of destruction in my heart long before I ever met Celeste? The darkness was already there, growing in the spaces between my screams, feeding on my helplessness.

Age 29, continued
Dorian took her from me again. Once again, love conquers all for everyone except me.

Raven is dead. The magical treatments that kept her alive have failed, and she died fighting in a war I started to distract myself from the pain of losing everything that mattered.

Celeste is dead. The spell that preserved her body couldn't sustain her forever, and without Lyra's blood to renew the magic, she simply... stopped.

I am alone with my grief and my rage.

If I cannot heal my own pain, then I will ensure the entire world suffers with me.

The war will be my final gift to a world that denied me happiness.

Final Entry

My wife. My daughter.

I see their faces in my dreams. Celeste, beautiful and serene, the way she looked on our wedding night when she held me and promised that love would conquer all darkness. Raven, fierce and determined, calling me daddy even as the monster I'd allowed her to become consumed her humanity.

I failed them both.

History will remember me as a traitor, a warmonger.

I go now to face whatever judgment awaits me. Before they take me to my execution, I will hold Celeste one last time. I will kiss her cold lips and beg her forgiveness for all the ways I failed to be the man she believed I could become.