Chapter 94
Violet's POV:
The call came just as twilight settled over Wildfire Pack territory, the sky bleeding orange and purple through my bedroom window. I stared at my phone screen, Lucian's name glowing there.
"Vi?" His voice came through hesitant, almost apologetic. "I know this is awkward, but Celeste is asking to see you. She's—"
Celeste wanted to see me. Of course she did. Daemon probably couldn't bring himself to ask, so he'd sent Lucian to do his dirty work.
"Why should I care?" I cut him off, my voice flat. Honestly, if Celeste actually died right now, I'd probably sleep better knowing she'd gotten what she deserved, that she'd paid for my daughter's life with her own.
"I know there's been misunderstandings between you two," Lucian tried again, his tone pleading. "But this is life and death, Vi. She's in critical condition, just got out of emergency care. She says if she wakes up, she wants to apologize to you properly. Could you just... think of it as a good deed?"
Life and death. My daughter's life had been just as precious, just as real, but no one had cared about that.
I heard Felix's voice in the background, sharp and hostile: "Don't let her come. What if Celeste gets stressed out and gets worse?"
Lucian went quiet immediately. So that's how it was—Celeste was the helpless victim who needed protecting, and I was the terrifying predator they had to keep at bay.
"What hospital?" I asked.
"Actually, maybe you shouldn't come after all," Lucian backtracked quickly, fear creeping into his voice. "It might be too much trouble—"
"Then I'll ask Sienna for the address." I let the threat hang in the air, calm and deliberate.
The effect was instantaneous. Lucian probably hadn't even told Sienna he was at the hospital visiting Celeste. "Frost Clinic, fourth floor, room 408," he blurted out in seconds.
I ended the call without another word. If they were so terrified I might upset their precious princess, then I'd be doing myself a disservice not to show up.
---
The hospital corridor reeked of antiseptic and werewolf pheromones as I stepped off the elevator. When I reached room 408, Daemon was leaning against the wall outside, his blood-red eyes shot through with crimson threads, exhaustion etched into every line of his face.
His gaze locked onto mine as I approached—surprise, guilt, and that maddening cold indifference flickering across his features. But he didn't speak. Just watched me with those haunted eyes as I pushed past him into the room.
Inside, Celeste lay in the hospital bed, small and pale against white sheets. Lucian sat by the window, his expression carefully neutral. Felix, however, had no such restraint.
"What the hell are you doing here?" He stood up so fast his chair scraped against the floor. "She's fighting for her life and you—"
"She asked to see me," I said calmly, choosing a seat and forcing him to either sit back down or continue looming. "So here I am."
"Lucian's an idiot for calling you."
"Really? Because I'm the one who honored her request." I leaned back with deliberate casualness. "If she wants to apologize, shouldn't I give her that chance?"
Through it all, Daemon remained silent just inside the doorway, his gaze fixed on Celeste's unconscious form with an intensity I couldn't quite read, his brow furrowed as if working through some complex problem.
The standoff stretched into awkward silence. I pulled out my phone, scrolling through messages with feigned disinterest while Felix glared and Lucian studied the ceiling tiles.
---
The silence persisted until around eleven, broken only by the rhythmic beeping of monitors and the occasional shuffle of nurses passing in the hallway
When Celeste finally stirred, the change in the room's atmosphere was immediate and electric.
"How are you feeling?" Daemon's soft voice cut through the quiet. He was beside her bed in an instant, his concern palpable in every line of his body. "Any pain? Difficulty breathing?"
The irony wasn't lost on me—when I'd lost our daughter, there had been only accusations and anger between us, harsh words thrown like weapons while grief tore us both apart in opposite directions. But here, for Celeste, he could summon tenderness, concern, the careful attention of a devoted protector.
"Did... did Vi come?" Celeste's voice emerged weak and thready, each word seemingly costing her effort.
I stood and moved closer, my face arranged in cold neutrality as I looked down at the girl in the bed. She looked exactly like what she was supposed to be—a fragile flower battered by storms, delicate and swaying on a broken stem, designed to invoke every protective instinct a dominant wolf possessed. Too bad I could see straight through the performance to the calculating predator beneath.
"I'm here," I said flatly.
"Vi." Her baby-blue eyes found mine, wide and glassy. "I'm so sorry. I've wanted to make things right between us for so long, to clear up all these misunderstandings and go back to being friends. When I was in that emergency room, thinking I might die, the only person I felt I'd truly wronged was you. There's been so much confusion between us, so many things taken the wrong way..."
She had to pause for breath, her chest rising and falling with visible effort, one delicate hand pressed against her sternum as if even speaking caused her physical pain. Felix shifted closer, his expression murderous every time he glanced in my direction.
What they didn't know—what none of them could see—was that this delicate victim had murdered my daughter, had stood over my hospital bed and gloated about it before pushing me off and watching me bleed. They were still trapped in the narrative she'd so carefully constructed, still drowning in the fiction of her innocence while I stood on the shore with the truth.
"What misunderstandings?" I asked, my voice deceptively mild. "Why don't you remind me which ones you mean?"
Celeste's eyes widened, genuine fear flickering across her features for just a moment before she caught herself. "We... I mean..."
"Are you talking about the time you received a call from a telemarketer during lunch with Zane and me?" I kept my tone conversational, almost friendly, ticking items off on my fingers. "Or maybe you mean when I was kidnapped and you claimed you didn't hear me screaming for help? Oh, or perhaps you're referring to the day you visited me in the hospital and I lost my baby?"
Her face had gone the color of old bone, paler even than the hospital sheets, and her eyes were darting between me and Daemon like a cornered animal looking for an escape route. Her breathing had picked up, monitors showing the spike in her heart rate.
"Just say what you need to say directly," Felix snapped, stepping between us like a physical barrier. "Stop playing games with her. Can't you see she's sick?"
But it was Daemon's voice that made me pause, low and dangerous. "What are all these events you're talking about? Explain. Now."
"They're all my fault!" Celeste's voice came out in a rush, desperate and slightly shrill, her words tumbling over each other in her haste to speak before I could. "Daemon, that first time you called, I was with Vi and Zane at lunch, but I was afraid Zane would get the wrong idea, so I said it was a telemarketer. Vi must have thought I was lying to her. When she was kidnapped, I swear I didn't hear her calling for help—I really didn't! She thinks I ignored her on purpose, but I would never... And your baby..."
Her voice cracked, and actual tears began streaming down her face, her small frame shaking with what looked like genuine anguish. "I never should have visited her that day. I know my presence upset her, made her emotional, but I didn't think... I never imagined something so terrible would happen. I would rather die myself than have your child hurt because of me!"
It was a masterful performance, delivered with exactly the right combination of guilt and innocence, self-blame tempered with enough exculpatory detail to maintain her victim status. To anyone who didn't know better, she looked like a young woman so consumed with remorse that it was literally killing her, desperately trying to explain away accusations that had been twisted by grief and misunderstanding.
To me, she looked like a liar who'd practiced this speech in front of a mirror.
"She didn't mean any of it," Daemon said, his blood-red eyes fixing on me with cold finality. "Let it go, Violet. All of it. We're moving past this."
"Am I? Because I don't think I can."
I heard myself laugh, sharp and humorless. "Daemon, we were supposed to have nothing to do with each other after severing the bond. Your relationships, your drama with Celeste, your whole complicated emotional mess—none of it should have anything to do with me anymore. So why do you all keep dragging me back into it?"
The silence that followed felt suffocating. Daemon's expression had gone dangerously still, ice crystallizing over his features.
Celeste stirred in the bed, her voice barely above a whisper. "Vi, I didn't mean to keep involving you in anything. It's just... Daemon still has feelings for you. He wants to reconcile, to fix what went wrong between you two. What he feels for me is just pity, nothing more."
I watched something flicker through Daemon's blood-red eyes—some emotion I couldn't name.
Reconcile? Was she serious? If this was his idea of trying to win me back, he had a severely distorted understanding of romance.
"We need to talk." Daemon's hand closed around my upper arm, his grip just short of painful. "Outside. Now."
He pulled me out of the room, his pace just slightly too fast for comfort, practically dragging me down the corridor toward the elevators.
The parking garage was nearly empty at this hour, our footsteps echoing off concrete as he led me to his black SUV. He opened the passenger door with barely controlled violence.
"Get in the car so we can have this conversation without an audience."
He had a point. I climbed into the passenger seat, and he slammed the door before stalking around to the driver's side.
For a long moment after he got in, he just sat there, hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles went white, staring straight ahead through the windshield like the concrete wall in front of us held answers to questions he didn't know how to ask.
"Aurora's heart is in her body," he finally said, his voice rough and carefully controlled. "The transplant Celeste received when she was younger—it was Aurora's heart."
The words hit me like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs. I'd known Celeste resembled Aurora enough to become his obsession.
But this? This I hadn't seen coming.
"Aurora didn't die immediately when she jumped," Daemon continued when I didn't respond, his voice hollow. "They kept her alive for several days before declaring brain death. Her family chose to donate her organs. Celeste was the recipient."
I couldn't speak, couldn't process what he was telling me through the roaring in my ears. Two loves, sharing one heart. The cosmic cruelty of it would have been poetic if it weren't so devastating.
"So all this time," I finally managed, my voice coming out strangled, "you've been protecting her because she literally carries your dead girlfriend's heart in her chest?"
"I thought Aurora died instantly." He closed his eyes briefly, pain etching deeper lines around his mouth. "I didn't know about the donation until later. Linda told me."
Linda. Of course Linda would know—she'd been Aurora's sister, after all. The pieces were falling into place now, forming a picture I wasn't sure I wanted to see clearly.
"Does Celeste know?" The question came out sharper than I intended. "Does she know whose heart she's walking around with?"
"No," Daemon said firmly. "And Linda agreed not to tell her. It would be too much, too confusing for her to process."
But that was a lie, I realized with sudden clarity. Celeste knew exactly whose heart beat in her chest—Zane had mentioned it once, something about her saying "her heart" told her she loved Daemon. She'd known all along, had been using that knowledge to manipulate him, to secure his protection and devotion by playing the unwitting vessel for his greatest love.
She'd probably known in my previous life too, had used it to win him completely while I'd remained ignorant of the real reason I could never compete.
The silence stretched between us, heavy with revelations I was still trying to process. Daemon pulled out a cigarette, then seemed to remember I was there and put it back.
"What's the point of telling me all this, Daemon?" I turned to look at him directly, my voice surprisingly steady. "Do you want to reconcile?"
"Give me time to handle this situation," he said, his blood-red eyes fixed on mine. "Stop avoiding me."
I laughed, sharp and bitter. "Is there any point? The one you've always loved is Aurora. I'm not going to be anyone's backup anymore."
No matter what he said, I wasn't going back.
"I never knew you were capable of such devotion, Daemon. Aurora's heart—the only piece of her left in this world—that's enough to bind you forever." I reached for the door handle without looking at him. "You follow your heart. But don't expect to control what I do next."
I stepped out of the car before he could respond.
---
The next day at a restaurant, I asked Zane out and set the USB drive on the table between us. "Celeste is going back to Lupine Sovereign University for a donation ceremony. The student council is planning a welcome event."
Zane nodded slowly, waiting.
"This contains recordings of Celeste admitting what she's done," I said quietly. "I need your help making sure these get played at that ceremony."
I watched conflict wash over his features, knowing this was a gamble trusting someone who'd loved her.
Finally, he picked up the USB drive. "You've helped me so many times, Vi. You were there when I had nobody else." His voice was rough with emotion. "I know the world isn't black and white. I know sometimes doing the right thing means doing something that feels wrong."
He looked up at me, decision crystallizing in his eyes. "So yes. I'll help you."