Chapter 137 Celeste Pain
Jolie pov
"I'm not immune to anything." Her voice breaks. "I'm just good at pretending. But tonight, when Dominic explained what comes next, when he touched me and said "I'd make such beautiful test subjects" she doubled over like she's going to be sick. "I felt it. All the emotions I've been suppressing, terror and rage and helplessness. And I can't make them stop."
"Because the conditioning is breaking." I take another step closer. "You've been suppressing emotions so long that when they finally break through, they're overwhelming."
"I don't know how to feel like this." She looks up at me with desperate eyes. "How do you live with emotions this strong? How do you function when everything hurts?"
"You learn." I extend my hand slowly. "One moment at a time. You let yourself feel it, process it, and eventually it becomes manageable."
"Will you help me?" She asks. "Teach me how to—how to be a person again instead of a weapon?"
This could still be manipulation, it could still be a performance designed to gain my trust. But my empathy gift doesn't lie. And what I'm sensing from her is genuine—overwhelming terror mixed with desperate hope mixed with confusion at feeling anything at all.
"Yes." I say it firmly. "I'll help you but you have to help us too."
"Anything." She doesn't hesitate. "What do you need?"
"Everything you know about Council facilities. Where they're holding captive divine wolves, security systems, guard rotations, how many operatives still exist."
"I can give you all that." She pulls out a flash drive. "I copied files before I left. Everything I could access about Project Equilibrium."
"Why?" Ryder asks suspiciously. "Why gather intelligence if you were still playing your role?"
"Because part of me never stopped." She hands me the drive. "Part of me has been screaming inside the conditioning for years, trying to break free. Tonight it finally did. And the first thing I thought was—I need to help the Moonfire Luna destroy these people. Because if she wins, maybe I can be free too."
I take the drive, feeling the weight of it. Intelligence that could help us destroy Council facilities. Or a trap that will lead us straight into ambush.
"How do we know this is real?" I ask. "How do we know you're not still following orders?"
"You don't." She meets my eyes. "You have to trust your empathy gift. So read me, feel whether I'm lying."
She extends her hand across the space between us. An offering. Just like I offered her at breakfast. I look at Ryder. He nods once—permission and warning combined.
I take her hand. The moment our skin touches, my empathy gift surges forward. And what I find inside Celeste makes my heart break.
She's not lying. She's genuinely terrified, genuinely desperate, genuinely trapped between what she was conditioned to be and what she's trying to become.
But underneath that, I feel the conditioning. Layers and layers of trauma, systematic destruction of her emotional capacity, reflexive suppression of anything that resembles feeling. She's like a house that's been burned down and is just now starting to rebuild. The foundation exists, but there's so much damage that every emotion feels like agony.
"Oh Celeste." My voice comes out soft. "What did they do to you?"
"Everything." She grips my hand tighter. "They took a twelve-year-old girl and spent thirteen years destroying everything that made her human. And I let them, I believed them when they said emotions were weak. That empathy was a liability. That being empty was strength."
"It's not your fault." I squeeze her hand. "You were a child. They abused you, tortured you, conditioned you into believing their lies."
"I'm still believing them." She gasps as my empathy flows through our connection. "Even now, even feeling this, part of me is screaming that emotions are dangerous. That I need to shut down, suppress, become empty again because that's safe."
"Safe for who?" I ask gently. "Not for you, safe for the people who want to use you as a weapon."
"I don't know how to be anything else." Tears stream down her face faster. "I don't know how to be a person who feels things without falling apart."
"Then I'll show you." I let my empathy gift flow stronger, not forcing emotions on her but offering connection. Showing her what healthy feeling looks like through my bond with Ryder—love that doesn't hurt, protection that doesn't control, devotion that respects autonomy.
Celeste sobs. Raw, broken sounds that probably haven't escaped her in years.
"This is what they took from me." She gasps between sobs. "Connection. Real connection. The ability to love and be loved and care about things beyond tactical advantage."
"You can have it back." I keep the connection gentle. "It won't be easy. There will be days when the conditioning tries to drag you back into emptiness but you can heal."
"Will you help me?" She looks up with desperate hope. "Even after I humiliated you? Even after I performed vulnerability to make you look dangerous?"
"Yes." I don't hesitate. "Because you're not my enemy. The Council is. And you're their victim just as much as any divine wolf they've captured."
"I don't deserve"
"Deserving has nothing to do with it." I cut her off. "You're a person. You were tortured into becoming a weapon, now you're trying to become a person again. That's enough."
She pulls her hand free, wrapping her arms around herself as sobs continue to wrack her frame.
Ryder moves closer, hand on his weapon. "The intel, is it real?"
"Yes." She wipes her eyes shakily. "Everything I could access. Facility locations, security protocols, captive lists, breeding program details. It's all there."
"And the blessed silver modification?" I ask. "The weapon designed to torture me with reflected emotions?"
"Real." Her voice steadies slightly. "They've been working on it for months. Waiting for a sample of your blood to complete the formula, I provided that sample from our contact at breakfast."
"So they have it now." Cold settles in my stomach. "The weapon that could destroy my mind."
"Not yet." She looks up. "The modification takes three days to synthesize. They won't have it ready until after the seventy-two-hour mark. But once they do" She swallows hard. "Once they do, they'll come for you with everything they have."
"Then we hit them first." I look at Ryder. "We use the intel Celeste provided, coordinate our strikes, and end this before they're ready to move."
"What about me?" Celeste asks. "Where do I go? I can't go back to Nightshade. Dominic will know I betrayed them, the Council will"
"You come with us." I say it firmly. "You're under Iron Fangs protection now. Anyone who wants to hurt you goes through us first."
"Even though I'm married to your father?" She looks at me with confusion. "Even though I performed for him, seduced him, let him think he has power over me?"
"You did what you had to do to survive." I extend my hand again. "Now you get to choose differently. Choose freedom, choose healing, choose to be more than what they made you."
She stares at my hand for a long moment. Then slowly, carefully, she takes it.
"Okay." Her voice shakes but holds. "Okay. I choose freedom."
"Good." I help her stand. "Then let's go home. You're part of the pack now."
As we walk toward the bikes, Celeste stumbles. I catch her, feeling through our touch how overwhelmed she is. Thirteen years of suppressed emotions flooding back all at once.
"It's too much." She gasps. "I can't—I don't know how to"
"One breath at a time." I keep my arm around her. "You don't have to know how. You just have to keep trying."
Knox and Cass appear from their positions, weapons still ready.
"She's clean." I tell them. "No tail, no trap. She actually defected."
"Brought intel too." Ryder holds up the flash drive. "Everything about Council operations."
"Then we better get back and analyze it." Luna's voice comes through comms. "If we've got seventy-two hours before they move, we need to use every minute."
We load Celeste onto the back of my bike. She holds on carefully, like she's afraid of touching too much.
"You're allowed to hold on." I tell her over my shoulder. "You're allowed to need support."
Her arms tighten around my waist. And as we ride back toward the compound with dawn breaking over the mountains, I feel it through my empathy gift. Celeste isn't fully healed. Isn't even close. The conditioning runs deep and the road ahead will be painful.