Chapter 131: The Blame

Chapter 131: The Blame


The argument started before the door finished closing.

We had moved to the Alpha's quarters, away from the healers, away from the pack, away from prying eyes and ears. The mark on my chest was covered by a clean linen bandage, though the bandage was meaningless, the sigil wasn't on my skin. It was in me, a ghost burning beneath the surface.

I sat on the edge of the bed, my hands clasped in my lap, watching the three men who held my soul tear at each other's throats.

Ronan paced like a caged beast, his massive frame eating the space between the door and the window, back and forth, back and forth. His wounds from the fight had been hastily bandaged, but he ignored them, ignored everything except the target of his fury.

"This is your fault." The words were a hammer blow, directed at Talon. "Your obsession with that stranger. Your late-night meetings. Your brilliant plan to use her as bait. The mark was transferred during your cleansing ritual. Your magic. Your failure."

Talon stood by the cold hearth, his arms crossed, his expression carved from ice. But the ice was cracked. I could see it in the tightness of his jaw, the way his fingers dug into his own arms. "My failure? I was trying to protect this pack while you were too busy posturing to see the real threat. The mark was on the stone for days before I could properly address it. Days when you insisted on brute force patrols instead of letting me work. Days when you dismissed Silas's warnings as paranoia."

"Silas." Ronan spat the name like poison. "The stranger you trusted more than your own brother. The man who just happened to have all the answers, who just happened to lead us straight to a trap. You handed him the keys to our territory, Talon. You gave him access to our maps, our strategies, our mate."

"I gave him nothing that wasn't already compromised." Talon's voice rose, cracking the ice. "The coven knew our weaknesses before he arrived. They planted that mark before he set foot on our land. He is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is your stubborn refusal to listen to anyone who doesn't hold a sword."

Ronan stopped pacing. He turned, and the look on his face was terrifying, not rage, but a cold, focused hatred I had never seen directed at anyone, let alone his brother. "Listen to what? Your theories? Your calculations? You sat in your library while she was in a kennel, Talon. You analyzed her suffering while I bled to get her back. You talk about listening, but you never hear anything except your own voice."

The bond, shattered and bleeding, transmitted every word not as communication, but as a weapon. Ronan's fury slammed into me like a physical blow. Talon's cold disdain wrapped around my throat like fingers. They weren't talking to each other. They were hurting each other through me.

Kieran stepped between them, his hands raised, his body a shield. "Stop. Both of you. This is exactly what the mark wants. Can't you feel it? Every accusation, every blame, it's feeding her. It's poisoning her."

For a moment, Ronan's eyes flickered to me. I saw the war in them, the need to protect warring with the need to hurt, to blame, to make someone pay. Talon looked too, and I saw his analytical mind trying to process Kieran's words, trying to see the logic in retreat.

But the bond no longer transmitted understanding. It transmitted discord.

"She's pale because of him." Ronan's voice was quieter now, but no less deadly. "She's marked because of his arrogance. And you," he turned on Kieran, "you keep trying to play peacemaker when there is no peace to make. You smile and joke and pretend everything is fine while your family burns."

Kieran's face went white. "I'm trying to save us, you idiot. I'm trying to do what you won't, think before you destroy everything."

"Think?" Ronan laughed, a hollow, broken sound. "You? You think with your dick and your charm. You've never had a serious thought in your life."

The words were a blade. Kieran's expression crumbled, then hardened into something I had never seen, a cold, wounded anger that made him look like a stranger. "At least I still feel something. At least I haven't turned into a monster who hurts his own family."

Talon stepped forward, inserting himself between Ronan and Kieran. "Enough. This is—"

"Don't." Ronan's hand shot out, shoving Talon back. "Don't you dare play the mediator now. You started this. You and your secrets and your precious logic. You made us vulnerable. You made her a target."

Talon's composure finally shattered. "I made her a target? I wasn't the one who kept her in a kennel for months. I wasn't the one who let Kael torture her while I played Alpha. You failed her long before I ever met with Silas. You failed her every day she was in that cage, and now you want to blame me for trying to fix what you broke."

The room went silent. Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.

Ronan moved. Not a shift, not a punch, just a single step toward Talon, his face a mask of such profound pain that it was worse than any violence. "You think I don't know that?" His voice was a whisper, raw and broken. "You think I don't live with that every second? Every night I close my eyes and see her in that cage, and I know it was my fault. My pride. My arrogance. My failure."

Talon's icy facade cracked further. "Then why—"

"Because I can't fix it!" Ronan's roar shook the walls. "I can't go back. I can't undo it. And every time you stand there with your perfect logic and your calculated strategies, you remind me that I'm not enough. That I wasn't enough then, and I'm not enough now. You don't have to say it. I feel it. Through the bond. Through her. Your contempt is a constant whisper in my soul."

The confession hung in the air, raw and bleeding. Talon stared at his brother, and for the first time, I saw something other than cold analysis in his eyes, shock, and beneath it, a dawning horror.

"I don't..." Talon started, then stopped. "I never meant..."

"Meant doesn't matter." Ronan turned away, his shoulders hunched. "Feelings don't care about meaning. They just are."

Kieran stood between them, his role as mediator useless because the bond no longer carried his warmth, his intent, his desire for peace. I could feel his frustration, his desperate need to fix this, but it hit the broken channels and scattered like light through shattered glass. They couldn't feel his love. They could only feel their own pain.

I sat on the bed, the mark pulsing on my chest, and I felt it all. Ronan's self-loathing. Talon's guilt. Kieran's helplessness. Three streams of agony, flowing into me, amplified by the sigil, twisted into something darker. The mark was feasting. Growing fat on our destruction.

"We have to stop," I whispered. No one heard me.

Ronan faced the window, his back to his brothers. "Get out. Both of you. I can't look at you right now."

"Ronan—" Kieran started.

"Out."

Talon moved first. He walked to the door, his steps measured, his face a careful blank. At the threshold, he paused, his back still to the room. "The mark is amplifying everything. The blame, the guilt, the anger. We're not just fighting. We're fueling it."

"We know," Kieran said quietly. "That doesn't change how we feel."

Talon nodded once, a sharp, jerky motion. Then he was gone.

Kieran looked at me, his green eyes filled with a despair that made my chest ache. He wanted to come to me, to hold me, to be the warmth he always was. But the bond was a wall, not a bridge. He couldn't feel if his comfort would help or hurt. He couldn't trust his own instincts anymore.

"I'll be outside," he said finally. "If you need me."

He left too.

Ronan stood at the window, his broad back a monument to isolation. The fire crackled. The mark pulsed. And I sat alone in the center of a bond that had once been my heaven, now a hollow, echoing ruin.

I looked at Ronan's back and felt nothing but a weary, exhausted love, the kind that exists after a long illness, when the patient is too tired to fight but too stubborn to die.

"I'm sorry," I said to the room. To all of them. To myself.

Ronan didn't turn. But I heard him whisper, so soft I almost missed it.

"So am I."

The mark pulsed, hungry for more. And in the silence, I knew that the worst was yet to come.