Chapter 86 CONFESSION TO THE STARS
DAMIEN’S POV
The night is wrong in a way I cannot explain without sounding mad.
It is not the quiet. I have lived with quiet my entire life. Silence has always been my companion, my discipline, my shield. This is something else. A stillness stretched too tight, like skin pulled over a wound that is about to split.
The moon hangs above the ridgeline, pale and trembling, its silver light thinned to a sickly glow. It flickers like a dying lantern, dimming and flaring as if something unseen is tugging at it from the inside.
And with every falter of its light, I feel Selene slipping further from me.
Not physically. Not yet.
Something deeper than distance. Something that does not care about walls or vows or hands clasped together in the dark.
I leave the keep alone.
No guards. No escort. No questions answered.
I do not want to be Alpha tonight. I do not want to be prophecy-bound, or the man everyone expects to hold the line when the world starts to bleed.
Tonight, I am only a man climbing a cliff with a breaking heart.
Stone shifts beneath my boots as I ascend the narrow path. Shadowfire trails at my heels, instinctive, restless, responding to the fracture spreading through my chest. The wind claws at my coat, cold and sharp, carrying the distant howls of wolves who do not understand why the moon no longer answers them.
Neither do I.
When I reach the edge, the world opens beneath me. Forest, river, scattered lights of the pack struggling to pretend nothing is wrong. Everything looks so small from here. So fragile.
I drop to my knees.
The stone is unforgiving, biting through fabric and skin, but I welcome the pain. It is something solid. Something real. My breath comes out in uneven clouds as I bow my head and stare at my hands, hands that have led armies, broken enemies, sworn oaths I cannot keep.
I tilt my face toward the sky.
“How,” I whisper, my voice shredded by the wind, “how do I kill the only thing I love?”
The words leave my mouth like broken glass.
The moment they exist in the world, something inside me gives way. Not all at once. Not cleanly. It is a slow tearing, the kind that cannot be stitched back together.
My fingers dig into the stone.
“Tell me,” I say hoarsely. “Tell me how to lift a dagger and drive it into her heart. Tell me how to watch the light leave her eyes and still wake up the next morning. Tell me how to live after that.”
The sky does not answer.
Of course it does not.
The Goddess stays silent. The stars dim. Fate watches without mercy as it tightens the noose around Selene’s future and places the rope in my hands.
“I cannot do it,” I breathe.
The sound that leaves me is ugly. Feral. Nothing an Alpha should make.
“I cannot kill her.”
I press my palm to my chest as if I can physically hold my heart together.
“She laughs like summer,” I whisper. “She burns like a storm. She looks at me like I am more than what I was made to be. She made me believe I could be something else. And I am supposed to end her?”
My voice breaks completely now.
“I am supposed to stab the woman who taught me what hope feels like.”
The wind rises, whipping my hair across my face. My shadows shudder with me, sensing the fracture in their master.
“Prophecy wants her dead. The Goddess wants her consumed. The moon wants her reclaimed. And I just want her alive.”
Silence answers.
And memory.
Her voice, hours ago, trembling but sharp.
“You look at me like you have already lost me.”
She was right.
I bow my head until my forehead rests against my fists.
“How do I choose?” I whisper. “How do I choose between her life and the world’s? How do I exist after?”
A presence shifts behind me.
Soft. Familiar.
I do not turn.
Garron.
He does not speak. He does not interrupt. He lets the wind carry my confession to him, lets me bleed words I never intended anyone to hear.
“If I do not kill her, she will lose herself,” I continue, hollow. “The third bleeding is coming. She will not survive it as Selene. She will become something else. Something divine. Something cruel.”
My throat tightens.
“I am supposed to end her suffering.”
The word tastes like poison.
“Mercy,” I whisper. “That is what the scrolls call it. A mercy killing. A duty.”
A tear escapes despite my will.
“But I cannot be the one to do it.”
The air feels heavier for the admission.
I sense Garron’s grief behind me, his quiet understanding. I hear the scrape of his boot as he turns away. He will not confront me tonight. He will carry this truth back with him like a loaded weapon.
I remain kneeling long after he leaves.
Until the wind shifts.
Until the shadows stir.
Until I sense her before I see her.
“Damien.”
Her voice reaches me softly, carried on the night.
I freeze.
I turn.
Selene stands several paces behind me, moonlight brushing her hair, her skin glowing faintly as if the dying moon has chosen her as its last refuge. She is wrapped in a cloak, but I can feel the heat of her power even from here, wild and aching.
“How long were you listening?” I ask quietly.
“Long enough,” she says.
She steps closer, and every instinct in me screams to move away. To protect her. To protect myself.
Instead, I stay where I am.
“You were not supposed to hear that,” I say.
Her eyes glisten. “I was not supposed to hear a lot of things. That never stopped the truth.”
She kneels in front of me, her hands warm as they cup my face. The moment she touches me, something inside me unravels completely.
“You think killing me would be mercy,” she whispers. “You think letting me go would save me.”
“I think losing you would end me,” I admit.
Her breath shudders. She leans forward, pressing her forehead to mine, her power brushing against my shadows in a way that makes my vision blur.
“Then stay,” she murmurs. “Just tonight. Do not think about prophecies. Do not think about fate. Stay with me.”
My restraint shatters.
I pull her into me, crushing her against my chest, breathing her in like air after drowning. Her fingers clutch at my coat. My mouth finds hers, desperate, unmeasured, as if we are both afraid the other will disappear if we pause.
The kiss is not gentle.
It is grief and need and love twisted together.
We stumble back toward the cliff wall, hands roaming, mouths colliding, breath mingling. Her power hums against my skin. My shadows curl around her instinctively, shielding, worshipping.
I press my forehead to hers, panting.
“If this is our last night,” I whisper, “I will not spend it pretending I can let you go.”
Her answer is to pull me down with her.
The world narrows to warmth, to skin, to the way she arches into me like she belongs nowhere else. Clothing is shed without care. Hands learn and relearn familiar truths. Her mouth finds my throat, my jaw, my lips again.
We do not rush.
We cannot afford to.
This is reverence. This is desperation. This is two people trying to carve eternity into a single night.