Chapter 100 100
Aurélie POV
I’m rooted to the spot, unable to move, the weight of his words freezing the blood in my veins.
“What did you just say?”
“She admitted everything.”
“And you have a witness?” My voice trembles despite my effort to steady it. “Someone else was there. Lucas?”
He studies me for a long moment before slowly shaking his head.
“No.”
“No?” The word rips from me. “Then why should I believe you? This could be another scheme another way to get close to the children. To take them from me.”
“No, Aurélie.” His voice is urgent, raw. “I would never do that. I’m telling you the truth. She confessed while holding a gun to my head.”
A gun.
My thoughts spiral violently. She’d held a weapon to him and he’d been shot? My mind can’t keep pace with the chaos of it. What in the goddess’s name had happened within the Bloodnight pack?
“Aurélie…” He steps toward me.
“Don’t.” I move quickly, circling the large round table, my palm lifted in warning. “Don’t come any closer.”
“If I’d known,” he says quietly, anguish breaking through, “if I’d had even the slightest idea that the hatred you carried for me was built on lies, I would have”
“You would have what, Damien?” I cut in, my voice rising sharply. “Fought for me? Told her to leave?” My laugh is brittle, unhinged. “Killed her?”
“But don’t you see?” His eyes ignite, almost hopeful. “This changes everything.”
Everything.
As if it could erase the past. As if it could undo what he’d done to me.
“Oh, my goddess, Damien…” My hands clutch at my hair, fingers tangling as frustration and grief tear through me. “My parents are still dead. Nothing will ever bring them back. My father’s head was severed.” My voice fractures, hot tears spilling freely. “No amount of therapy can erase that image. I dream of it. Over and over.”
But the words keep coming, unstoppable.
“And she’s won again, hasn’t she?” I choke out. “She stole the first four years of my children’s lives with their father. You’ll never get those years back. And what hurts the most is that you were with her playing happy mates.”
Maybe not so happy, not if she’d seduced a guard and put a gun to his head but he still chose her.
And I couldn’t undo that.
I couldn’t forgive it.
He moves toward me again. I try to step back, but his hand shoots out, gripping my arm. He pulls me into him, the sudden force sending me crashing against his solid, unyielding chest.
The tingles those cursed, traitorous tingles flare along my skin at his touch. His eyes bore into mine, searching, reading, as though he could unravel my thoughts if he looked hard enough.
This closeness this intensity was dangerous. For me. For us.
I wrench myself free and brace my hands against the back of a chair, forcing distance between us.
Four years.
Four years of rage. Of vengeance. All of it aimed in the wrong direction.
The things I could have said to Dominique and Delphine about their father things that would have been unforgivable flash through my mind. And yet, I hadn’t said them. I’d always believed they deserved to choose for themselves, to decide who he was when they were older.
But he hadn’t been there.
Not for their births. Not for the sleepless nights, the feedings, the stories whispered at bedtime.
Geneviève hadn’t just destroyed me she’d poisoned my children’s earliest years. They’d never known their grandparents because of her. Grandparents brutally, mercilessly murdered.
Something inside me shifts.
My wolf whines in my mind, aching but there’s no rage in her. That fury belongs entirely to me.
Heat floods my body, searing, unbearable just like it did during labor. I’m burning from the inside out, barely holding myself together.
“Aurélie…” Damien’s voice softens, alarm flickering across his face.
I’m trembling now, my head shaking.
She really is a she-devil.
And she needs to pay.
“Where is she?” I hiss, venom saturating every word.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “We’re searching. But so far, she’s disappeared.”
A familiar saying surfaces in my mind, sharp and undeniable.
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
I would find her.
I would make sure she was never a threat to my children or my pack again.
And I would not allow her to do to anyone else what she had done to me.