Chapter 91 The Last Alpha’s Last Decision
The afternoon sun slanted through the living room windows, casting long, golden fingers across the floor.
Today was different. Today was their anniversary—a simple, human milestone that meant the world to her.
She had stopped at the small bookstore downtown and picked up a weathered copy of a book she knew he had once mentioned wanting to read again. She had a bottle of wine in her other hand, and a heart full of nervous, excited hope. Maybe, just maybe, the normalcy of their life was starting to take hold. Maybe the ghosts were finally settling down.
"Yeseus?" she called out, her voice bright, echoing softly against the wood panels of their cottage. "I'm home early. I thought we could—"
She paused in the hallway. A faint sound drifted from the direction of the bedroom. A rhythmic, wooden creaking. Creak. Thump. Creak.
Klishei frowned, her smile faltering. It was a familiar sound, but not one she expected to hear at two in the afternoon. She set the groceries down on the foyer table, the wine bottle clinking softly against the mahogany.
“Mmm-ah.”
The sound was distinct, feminine, and breathless. It was a low, undulating moan that seemed to vibrate through the walls.
Her breath hitched. A cold, sharp needle of confusion pierced her chest. She took a step toward the bedroom door, which stood slightly ajar.
“Oh... yes... Yeseus…”
The voice wasn't hers. It was deeper, smoother, and completely alien. Klishei’s hand trembled as it hovered over the doorframe. Her heart, which had been light only moments ago, suddenly turned into a heavy stone in her stomach.
She pushed the door open, just an inch.
The sight behind the door burned itself into her retinas. The room was bathed in the dim, amber light of the late afternoon. Yeseus was there, his back to the door, his muscles coiled and straining. Beneath him, thrashing against the sheets, was a woman—beautiful, ethereal, with hair the color of midnight. Their movements were desperate, frantic.
“Ah! Yeseus, harder!” the woman cried, her voice a sharp, guttural sound that tore through the air.
“Hmm,” Yeseus grunted, a low, guttural growl that sounded like a beast in pain. “More.”
The sound of flesh striking flesh, the wet, rhythmic friction of it, filled the room.
Klishei felt the world tilt on its axis. The floor seemed to dissolve beneath her feet. Her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a small, sharp gasp. The book slipped from her fingers, hitting the floor with a dull, heavy thud that went unnoticed by the two people on the bed.
"Yeseus?" The word was a shattered whisper.
The movement on the bed didn't stop. Yeseus didn't turn around. He merely paused, his posture rigid, his breathing jagged and loud.
"Get out, Klishei," he said, his voice cold, devoid of the warmth she had grown to rely on. It was the voice of a stranger. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
The woman beneath him laughed—a soft, mocking sound. “Is this her?” she purred, looking past Yeseus’s shoulder directly at Klishei. Her eyes were voids of shadow, devoid of life.
Klishei stood frozen. The agony that surged through her was absolute. It wasn't just a breakup; it was the collapse of her entire reality. Every sacrifice she had made, every moment of fear she had conquered, every ounce of love she had poured into him—it all curdled into poison.
"I..." Klishei couldn't finish the sentence. The room blurred. Tears, hot and stinging, welled in her eyes, spilling over her cheeks in thick, burning tracks.
Yeseus thrust again, his jaw clenched, his eyes squeezed shut so tightly that white lines formed at the corners. He was in agony, his entire being screaming for him to stop, to turn around, to fall to his knees and beg for her forgiveness. But he couldn't. The magic of the illusion required his absolute commitment to the lie. He had to be the villain. He had to be the heartbreak.
"I said get out!" Yeseus roared, his voice cracking with a raw, desperate frustration that Klishei mistook for malice.
The woman beneath him groaned, a long, drawn-out “Aaahhh,” and arched her back, mocking the intimacy Klishei thought was hers alone.
Klishei retreated, stumbling back as if she had been physically struck. Her soul felt like it was fracturing, the connections—the cosmic threads she had worked so hard to maintain—fraying under the weight of this catastrophic betrayal.
"I hate you," she sobbed, the words ripped from the deepest, darkest part of her heart. "I wish I had never met you!"
At the sound of those words, the air in the house seemed to shimmer and warp. The spell began to take hold.
Klishei turned and fled. She didn't look back at the room. She ran, her footsteps thundering against the floorboards, out the front door and into the cooling afternoon air. She screamed, a ragged, piercing sound that tore through the quiet neighborhood, a visceral release of everything she was losing.
Inside the bedroom, the illusion shattered.
The woman vanished into swirling motes of light, leaving Yeseus alone on the bed, panting, his skin slick with cold sweat. He collapsed backward, his body shaking violently. He let out a long, shuddering moan, not of pleasure, but of utter, soul-crushing desolation.
He stared at the ceiling, his hands trembling as he reached out into the empty air, grasping at ghosts. The silence that filled the house was heavy, suffocating.
Outside, Klishei sat on the grass, clutching her head, rocking back and forth. The memories were flooding out of her—the cosmic palace, the dragon, the Phoenix, and Yeseus. They were dissolving like ink in a rushing river. She felt a numbness creep over her, a blank space expanding in her mind where his name used to be etched in gold.
She looked up at the sky, her eyes vacant, the light in them dimming.
"Who..." she whispered to the wind, her voice trembling. "Who was I looking for?"
Deep within the cosmos, the Phoenix watched, a silent tear of starlight falling from her eye. "It had to be done, my dear. The request should come from you."
And in the darkness of the room, Yeseus lay still, the curse of his immortality suddenly feeling like a prison sentence that had just begun. The door to his redemption had closed, and he was left in the wreckage of a life he had just destroyed to save her.
He stood up, his legs feeling like lead. He walked to the window and watched her through the glass, sitting alone on the lawn, staring at the horizon with eyes that no longer knew him. He had succeeded. She was safe. She was human.
But as the first star appeared in the twilight, Yeseus let out a low, mournful howl—the last cry of a wolf who had lost his moon. And somewhere, deep in the fabric of the universe, the Council of the Cosmos began to stir, sensing the shift in the balance, waiting to see if destiny would dare to pull these two broken threads together again.