Chapter Thirty Seven

Chapter Thirty Seven

Jhelani's POV

"Improvement?" I snapped, my voice sharper than I intended. "You tampered with my memories, Jace. That’s not some little spell you fumbled...it’s my life. My choices. My…my first kiss. You had no right to take that away from me!"

The humor drained from his face instantly. He ran a hand through his messy hair, his gaze dropping for the first time since this whole confrontation started.

"You think I don’t know that?" he muttered. "You think I haven’t hated myself every day since for what I did knowing fully well that it was your first and it should be fucking memorable? Damon’s right, I’m lazy, but not about you. Never about you. I only did it because I was told it would protect you. And if I had to choose again, I—"

"You’d do the same thing," I cut in bitterly, my throat tightening. "You’d take away pieces of me just to make yourself feel like you’re protecting me. You all are just the same. There's no difference among the three of you. What if you had ended up erasing all of my memories and I'm left with nothing? No, Jace. That was so damn wrong of you and I'm getting pissed off from just thinking about how much could have gone wrong if you hadn't done the magic a little bit correctly."

"Jhelani, leave all that argument for later, and let's get down to the big guns here. The main reason you were brought here." Damon’s voice came low, steady, but it made me freeze. He was still seated, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes fixed on me with a storm of guilt swirling in them.

I looked at him expectantly, calming the anger in me.

"So? Are you going to start speaking up?" I asked after a while of silence, my hands on my hips.

"We didn’t tell you the whole truth because the truth itself could have... killed you, Jhelani."

The room fell silent except for the faint ticking of the clock on the wall. My pulse drummed in my ears, refusing to slow. I swallowed, my hands that were on my hips falling to my sides.

"Kill me?" I repeated, my voice barely a whisper. "What the hell does that mean?"

Kian finally spoke, his usual smugness stripped away. He stepped forward, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, but there was no hiding the tremor in his jaw. "It means, that your dreams aren’t just dreams. They’re warnings. The blood, the wolves, the red dress…they all tie back to you. To what you are."

My heart lurched painfully against my ribs. I laughed dryly, shaking my head. "What I am? Don’t tell me you’re about to drop some supernatural bomb on me, because I swear—"

"You’re not just some girl who stumbled into our mess, Snowfire" Damon interrupted, rising slowly from the couch. The gravity in his voice sent chills crawling up my spine. "You are the mess, Jhelani. You’re the reason it all began."

My lips parted, but no words came out. Jace’s hand was still at my waist, steadying me, but it felt more like a cage now.

"The fuck do you mean by that?" I finally forced out, my voice trembling.

No one answered immediately. They just exchanged those loaded, silent glances again, as if deciding who would throw the first stone.

And then Damon said it.

"You’re the curse." He said, looking straight at me, something swirling in his eyes. "And if we aren't careful enough, you're also going to be the reason for our downfall and death. The one person who is capable of breaking the oath bond we made many years back to always stick together."

I couldn't breathe. I peeled off Jace's grip around my waist, walking far away from him—from them because I did not understand a thing he said.

It made absolutely no sense to me. How am I cursed? What the hell do I have to do with all this in the first place? Why is my fate tied to them in such a brute way? Out of everything I could possibly be, it turns out I'm cursed to be the reason for their death? No, no, no. That's bullshit. I argued in my head.

"I don't get all this you're saying to me, Damon. Are you lying to me?" I asked him. "Is he lying to me guys?" I asked the other two when Damon didn't respond.

After about two seconds, they began talking. Every secret they revealed left me stunned, my mouth wide open, my brows creasing with a frown then shock. Because this time they explained on a deeper level, like they were trying to make a kindergarten kid understand stuff that was out of the usual in this world.

I couldn't believe it. I found it hard to believe that I was the root of all this and that I was cursed to be their downfall. That's why they had to stay away from me all these years. Shit.

I had read in books about werewolves and their mates. About how a she-wolf would be fated and bound to her mate for a lifetime. But never have I read in a single book, not even in a paragraph by the slightest chance that three werewolves could be fated to a single mate. Like, what the hell is that? How is that even possible? And what the fuck did I ever do to deserve such a curse?

As if that's not enough, people were also dying because of it. They said whenever I get too close to them, there would always be chaos happening somewhere around.

I despise the sound of it. It made me feel like a bad omen to be around them. That's why they had to stay away.

" I-I am sorry. I had no idea...shit." I frustratedly ran my fingers through my hair, taking away the bangs hovering over my face, and taking a deep breath.

"No, it's fine. You're going to be late to work, by the way. I will just use some sprinkles of my magic to get you there in a blink," Jace interrupted, and when I looked at him, he had that smug look on his face. He knew what he did. He knew that we had not settled scores for messing with my memories, so now he wants to use that same magic that I was scolding him for to get me to work.

Anyway, at least I think he might be fairly good at materializing compared to wiping one's memories. He mus

t have done this a thousand times to have gotten it right.