Chapter 257 257
Sabine POV
All I want is to lock myself away. To hide inside the quiet sanctuary of the bedroom. For someone who has spent so long craving freedom, I can’t ignore the irony in wanting nothing more than isolation again.
I return to the room I was sharing with Maurice, and his scent hits me the moment I step inside. It’s grown stronger over the past few days rich coffee and warm cinnamon, comforting in a way that makes my chest ache. It reminds me of festive drinks Mum used to buy when we wandered through the city at Christmas, window-shopping beneath extravagant department-store displays. Every year there were lights and colour and magic, and every year we walked with nowhere to be, just soaking it all in.
This very morning, I’d woken wrapped tightly in Maurice’s arms.
Now he couldn’t even look at me.
None of them could.
I had betrayed them.
No matter how many times I tried to explain how I thought Stéphane would disappear, how I wasn’t raised in their brutal world, how I didn’t understand their rules it wouldn’t matter. They would never accept me again. I knew it deep down.
I was alone again.
But… wasn’t that what I wanted?
I lie back on the bed, staring at the ceiling only to remember too late that Damien slammed my head into the wall. I sit up abruptly, the room spinning, and turn to see the bedsheet beneath me stained with blood where my head had been resting.
Right.
No magical werewolf healing.
Guess I’ll be doing this the human way.
I stand in front of the mirror, trying and failing to see the back of my head. I’m not an owl, after all, so I settle for feeling blindly for the wound instead. The sting is sharp as my fingers touch it, blood still warm and sticky as it seeps and coats my hands.
It’s as though my body has only just realised it’s injured.
Pain crashes through me all at once my head throbbing violently. My back aches too, and when I pull my top off, I find it mottled with deep bruises from where the largest Alpha around threw me into a wall.
So my hearing and eyesight have improved… but no special healing abilities.
Fantastic.
Even my supposed wolf must be angry with me.
I stare at my reflection the young woman staring back and the question cuts deep.
How could you have been so stupid?
He was in the cells for a reason.
But I couldn’t let him die. Not when there was something I could do.
Silent tears slip free again, heavy with guilt over what I’ve caused… over the danger I may have put the children in.
I need ice for my head but I can’t go downstairs. I can’t face the looks in their eyes again. I’ll have to make do with the en-suite. A cold shower. Something to slow the bleeding.
“Then what?”
That voice slips into my mind again, and for once, I have no answer.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “Leave. They won’t want us here now. I’ve ruined everything.”
I don’t even make it to the bathroom. Instead, I perch on the edge of the bed, staring at my reflection in the mirror.
Except… I’m not really seeing myself.
It’s as though my vision has switched off, my thoughts swallowing me whole.
Something claws inside my chest raw and desperate, like a beast trying to tear its way free. I’ve never felt this before. I’ve never disappointed people like this. Never hurt them.
It was always just me before.
But my thoughts won’t leave the twins. The danger I put them in. And no matter how loudly Damien screamed at me to leave, I know one thing with absolute certainty.
I need to put this right for them.
To make sure they are safe from Stéphane and Geneviève.
Then I’ll go.
Maurice POV
How could she be so naïve?
How could she put everyone in danger like that?
Rage burned through me, my emotions torn violently between storming upstairs to mark her something I should have done from the very beginning and storming up those same stairs to drag Damien back down them for daring to put his hands on my mate.
I’d been on edge since the moment we arrived here. This… this only intensified everything.
The urge to take her to claim her without her consent clawed at me harder than ever, and I hated myself for it. I never should have brought her here. I should have taken her back to my pack from the start.
And now even my wolf was questioning her.
Questioning whether she was truly meant to be our Luna.
Would she do what it takes to protect the pack?
Right now… I didn’t think so.