Chapter 183
Casper's POV
The silence after Mom's tears felt heavier than any words could. I watched her hands twist together, knuckles white, and something dark twisted in my gut. Leo stirred beneath my skin, restless and suspicious.
She's afraid, he murmured. But not of losing you. Of what comes next.
"So explain," I said, my voice coming out rougher than intended. I deliberately kept my gaze on Mom, refusing to look at Dad. "Explain why you thought making a deal with a fucking demon was better than just... I don't know, trusting that your son would be okay?"
Mom flinched. Good. Let her feel a fraction of what I'd felt, discovering my entire existence was built on lies and dark bargains.
"The pack—" she started.
"Fuck the pack," I interrupted, and Leo's approval rumbled through our bond. "I'm talking about me. Your son. The one you supposedly loved enough to sell your souls for."
Elowen's hand found mine, her fingers threading through mine with quiet strength. Through our bond, I felt her own turmoil—anger at her mother, fear for our children, love for me and Cassian that burned so bright it almost hurt.
Easy, she whispered through the connection. Remember what we discussed. Get the full truth first.
Right. The plan. Keep my shit together long enough to extract every dirty secret before I let Leo loose to tear something apart.
I took a breath, forcing my voice into something resembling calm. "You know what? Let me make this simpler." I turned to Cassian, whose ice-blue eyes were fixed on Dad with predatory focus. "Cass, you want to tell them what we learned? About how selective their moral panic really is?"
Cassian's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Gladly." He shifted his attention to our parents, and I felt Zero's presence surge forward through our twin bond—cold, calculating, utterly merciless. "You made a deal with a demon to give Casper a wolf. To protect him from being ostracized, from being weak, from potentially threatening your precious Alpha legacy."
"That's not—" Dad started, but Cassian continued as if he hadn't spoken.
"But here's what's interesting. You weren't the first to make that kind of choice, were you?" Cassian's voice dropped to something dangerous. "There was someone else in this pack who didn't get their wolf. Someone you both knew about. Someone you watched suffer."
Mom's face went pale. Dad's jaw clenched so hard I heard his teeth grind.
They know exactly who we're talking about, Leo observed, satisfaction coloring his tone.
"I don't—" I started to say I didn't remember, but then Elowen spoke, her voice quiet but clear as crystal.
"Rosy," she said. "You're talking about Rosy."
Every head in the room swung toward her. She stood there, looking small but somehow bigger than all of us, one hand resting protectively over her still-flat stomach.
"You remember her?" Cassian asked, surprise flickering across his usually controlled features.
"Of course I remember her." Elowen's amber eyes found mine, and I saw old pain there, carefully contained. "Short, yellow hair, always looked... hollow. Like she was disappearing from the inside out."
"I don't—" I tried to pull up the memory, but it was like grasping smoke.
I remember, Leo said suddenly, and his certainty anchored me. The girl who smelled wrong. Not bad, just... incomplete. The pack avoided her like a disease.
"She never got her wolf," Elowen continued, and her voice cracked slightly. "I thought... I mean, I was young, but I thought maybe it was just late, you know? That it would come eventually."
"It didn't," Mom whispered, tears starting fresh down her cheeks. "It never came."
"And what happened to her?" I demanded, though some part of me already knew the answer. "Where is she now?"
The silence that followed was answer enough.
"The pack..." Mom's voice broke. "The pack wasn't kind to her. She was ostracized, given the worst tasks, treated worse than omegas. We tried to help, but—"
"But you didn't do enough," Cassian finished coldly. "Did you, Alpha?" He emphasized Dad's title like a curse.
Dad's face had gone hard as stone. "The pack has rules. Traditions. A wolfless member is—"
"Is what?" I exploded, Leo's fury merging with mine until I wasn't sure where he ended and I began. "Is expendable? Is acceptable collateral damage? You let them torture a child—because that's what she was, wasn't she? A fucking child—rather than stand up and protect her!"
"We did what we could—" Dad tried, but I was already moving, getting in his face, my eyes probably flashing amber-gold with Leo's rage.
"You did what was convenient," I snarled. "What wouldn't rock your precious boat or threaten your alpha position. You let that girl suffer and die—"
"She's not dead," Mom interrupted, her voice sharp with grief. "She left. When she turned eighteen, she left the pack, and we... we don't know where she went."
"But you didn't stop her." Elowen's words fell like stones in still water. "You could have tracked her, brought her back, given her protection even if the pack rejected her. But you let her go into a world that would be even crueler to a wolfless wolf."
"It was her choice—" Dad started.
"Was it?" I challenged. "Or was it the only choice you left her with?" I turned to Mom, something ugly twisting in my chest. "How old was she when she started getting sick? When the pack started treating her like garbage?"
Mom's silence was damning.
"She was twelve," Elowen said softly. "I was nine. I remember because Cindy and I tried to sit with her at lunch once, and Sarah's mom pulled us away, said we'd 'catch' whatever she had." Her voice hardened. "But it wasn't a disease, was it? It was just the absence of what makes us... us."
Like you were supposed to be, Leo supplied grimly. If they hadn't made their deal.
The realization hit me like a physical blow. I staggered back, needing space, needing air that didn't smell like lies and old guilt.
"So when I was born," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, "and you realized I didn't have a wolf, you saw Rosy's future staring you in the face. And instead of fighting the pack, instead of protecting me the way you should have protected her, you made a deal with a demon."
"We were desperate—" Mom tried.
"You were cowards," Cassian cut her off, his ice-blue eyes blazing. "You'd already watched one child destroyed by pack politics. You knew exactly what would happen. And instead of using that knowledge to change things, to be better, to protect both your sons from a toxic system..." He shook his head slowly. "You just made sure the burden fell on someone else's shoulders."
"On Leo's shoulders," I finished, and through our bond, I felt my wolf's complex tangle of emotions—gratitude for existence, rage at the circumstances, fierce protective love for me and Elowen.
Dad's face had gone red. "We did what we had to—"
"To protect yourselves," I interrupted. "Your reputation, your status, your perfect alpha family image. Don't dress it up as love, Dad. This was about you being too afraid to challenge the pack's bullshit, so you sold your son's soul instead."
"Casper—" Mom reached for me, but I jerked back.
"Don't." The word came out harsh enough to make her flinch. "Don't touch me. Don't act like you did this for me when we both know you did it for you."