Chapter Eighty-nine

Chapter Eighty-nine
Chapter 89

Edgar’s POV

The mornings had become a blur of smoke and pain.

I woke with the taste of iron in my mouth, the ache in my chest so sharp I wondered if this would be the day my body finally betrayed me completely. The curse was gone, yes, Brie had stripped it from my spirit, but its shadow lingered. Weakness had sunk into my bones, and no matter how hard I trained, no matter how much I willed myself to stand tall, I knew I was a man burning at both ends.

I didn’t let anyone see. Not the pack, not even Lia. Especially not Lia.

Her eyes searched for me every day, eyes that demanded the truth I refused to give. She thought my silence was distance, maybe even coldness, but it was protection. If she knew the whole of what the elders had told me, if she knew the terms they had pressed into my hand, she would bleed with me. And I couldn’t allow that.

Better she hated my silence than bore the burden of my doom.

The elders summoned me again that morning. Their message was curt: personal audience. The kind that meant secrets too heavy for anyone else’s ears.

I walked into the council chamber slowly, forcing my stride into something steady. The room smelled of old cedar and parchment, lit by a thousand candles that threw shadows against the stone.

Elder Hawthorne sat at the head of the semicircle, his thin fingers clasped before him. Beside him, Elder Mireille kept his hawk-like eyes on me.

“Alpha Nolan,” Hawthorne greeted, his voice dry as sand. “You’ve kept your silence well. But time is pressing.”

I bowed my head slightly. “I’ve held my end of the bargain. The pack is stable. Lia is” I faltered, then forced the word. “Safe.”

Mireille’s lips curved into something too sharp to be called a smile. “Safe? You mean, unknowing. There’s a difference.”

I clenched my jaw. “She doesn’t need to know what price was demanded.”

Hawthorne leaned forward, his voice like gravel. “And yet, she is not blind. The woman carries your heir. Do you think she cannot feel the walls you’ve built around her? She will pry them down herself if you do not tell her.”

A flicker of panic burned in my chest. Had she already started?

“She won’t,” I said firmly, though my hands trembled behind my back. “Lia has endured enough. Her spirit deserves peace, not”

“Not truth?” Mireille cut in. “Do you think love thrives on silence, Alpha? Do you think bonds hold under half-knowledge?”

Their words scraped at the raw part of me I had tried to bury. I swallowed, my throat tight.

“She will hate me if she learns what I’ve agreed to,” I said quietly.

Hawthorne’s gaze sharpened. “Better she hate you alive than mourn you in ignorance.”

Their voices rang in my ears long after I left. I staggered through the corridor, pressing a hand to the wall when the weakness surged again. The stone was cool under my palm, grounding me, though my body screamed to crumble.

But it wasn’t their warnings that haunted me most, it was Hawthorne’s words. She will pry them down herself.

Had she begun already?

I thought of the way Lia had looked at me last night, the fire in her eyes dimmed but not dead. The kind of fire that refused to sit idle. I knew that look, I had seen it when she defied me to leave Duskwood, when she challenged fate itself to stand by my side.

And I realized, with a shiver, that if I didn’t move first, she would.

By dusk, I found her absence too loud to ignore. The chambers were empty, the corridors too quiet. Panic gnawed at me as I searched, each step heavier than the last.

When I finally caught sight of her near the council wing, cloak wrapped tight, her face set in grim determination, my heart clenched.

She had chosen her path. She was walking straight toward the truth I had tried so desperately to bury.

For the first time in months, I felt truly afraid. Not of my death. Not of the weakness consuming me.

But of losing her, not to another man, not to fate, but to the truth I’d thought I could shield her from.

I stood frozen in the shadowed corridor, watching her disappear through the carved doors of the elders’ hall. My body ached to follow, to stop her, to gather her against me and beg her not to do this.

But I couldn’t. Not yet.

Because if I walked in after her now, the elders would see my fear. Lia would see my weakness. And I wasn’t ready to let her look at me as a man undone.

So I stayed in the dark, silent, my chest tight, my mind screaming the words I could not voice aloud.

Forgive me, Lia. Forgive me for letting you find what I was too much a coward to give.