Chapter 205
Kara
Their gazes were fixed on the two figures being helped through the door—my parents, supported by Dmitri and Jasper, looking like ghosts given flesh.
Oh god, I thought, stomach dropping. I forgot they'd see each other. I forgot Victoria hasn't seen Connor in ten years. I forgot—
When Victoria's eyes landed on Connor, something in her face cracked. The ice queen I'd known for a decade shattered like glass.
"Connor," she breathed. Ten years of grief compressed into one word.
My father's head lifted, tears already streaming down his hollow cheeks. "Victoria. I'm sorry. I'm so—"
She was moving before he finished, her usual grace abandoned for desperate speed, and then her arms wrapped around his thin frame with strength that looked like it hurt.
She buried her face in his shoulder and made a sound between a sob and a keen—raw and broken and utterly unlike the controlled Luna who'd raised me with ice instead of warmth.
"I thought you were dead," she choked out, words muffled against his shoulder. "I thought—when they found the bodies—when they said it was an overdose—I thought I'd lost you forever, and it was my fault, I should have protected you, I should have—"
"Shh." Connor's arms came around her, his own tears falling freely. "I'm here. I'm alive. Tori, I'm so sorry I left you—"
Tori, I thought, something twisting in my chest. He calls her Tori. Like they were close once. Like they loved each other.
"I hate you." Victoria's grip tightened even as she said it, contradicting her own words. "I hate you so much for leaving me. For choosing her over me. For making me think you were dead for ten years while I—" Her voice broke completely, dissolving into sobs.
I'd never seen Victoria cry. Never seen weakness or genuine emotion or anything approaching the vulnerability she was showing now.
Watching her break apart in my father's arms, I felt something shift inside me. Something I'd been holding onto for ten years—the certainty that she was just cruel, just cold, just someone who hated me for existing.
Not forgiveness. But understanding.
She'd been grieving all these years. Mourning the brother she thought she'd lost. And when she looked at me, she saw the woman who'd "taken" him away. The woman she blamed for his destruction.
She took that grief out on me, I thought, and it wasn't fair, it was never fair, but at least now I understood why.
Through our bond, Blake's rage spiked hot and violent. She hurt you. She made your childhood hell. I don't give a fuck if she was grieving—
I know, I sent back, quiet but firm. And I'm not saying it's okay. But I understand now. That's all.
Asher's calm authority pressed down through the bond—a wordless reminder this wasn't about revenge. This was about something more complicated.
My mother had gone very still beside Connor, face carefully blank as she stared at Victoria. Part fear, part defiance, part something that looked like understanding.
When Victoria finally pulled back from Connor, mascara streaked down her cheeks in dark rivers, her lily scent thick with grief and shame. Her gaze landed on Celeste, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
"You." Pure venom in that single word. "You did this. You destroyed him. You pulled him into your world of addiction and debt and—"
"Victoria, don't—" Connor started.
"Don't?" Victoria's voice rose, cracking on the word. "Don't blame the woman who turned my brother into a drug addict? Who dragged him away from his family? Who made him choose between us and her poison?"
"Stop." Connor's voice carried unexpected Alpha authority—surprising given how frail he looked. He stepped in front of Celeste, shielding her with his body. "Don't blame her for what we both chose. Don't make her carry your anger when she's already carried so much."
Victoria's face contorted with rage and grief. "She took you from me—"
"She loved me," Connor interrupted, voice breaking. "When I didn't deserve it. When I was destroying myself and everyone around me. Yes, we made terrible choices. Yes, we hurt people—hurt you, hurt Kara, hurt everyone who cared about us. But she didn't make me do anything, Victoria. I chose. We both chose. And we've paid for those choices in ways you can't begin to imagine."
The silence that followed was suffocating. I could smell the complex tangle of pheromones—grief and rage and desperate, hopeless love—thick enough to choke on.
This is my fault, I thought suddenly, irrationally. If I hadn't been born, they wouldn't have had to run. If I hadn't existed, none of this would have—
Don't. Asher's voice cut through my spiral, sharp and commanding. Don't you dare blame yourself for their choices. For any of this.
Then Celeste stepped forward, moving out from behind Connor with a dignity that seemed impossible given how frail she looked. She walked toward Victoria on unsteady legs, and I saw my mother's hands tremble as she stopped just out of arm's reach.
"You're right to hate me," Celeste said quietly, voice worn thin but carrying unexpected strength. "I know what I did. What we did. Connor was trying to be good, trying to be the brother you needed, and I pulled him into my chaos. I was selfish and desperate and so fucked up I couldn't see past my next fix."
A tear tracked down her hollow cheek, and I felt something crack in my chest. "I don't expect forgiveness. I don't think I deserve the chance to ask for it. But I need you to know—" Her voice cracked, and she had to force the words out. "Leaving Kara here was the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than withdrawal. Harder than ten years trapped in that... that thing's body, watching through eyes that weren't mine. Because I knew you'd hate her. I knew you'd look at her and see me, and I knew she'd pay for my sins."
Victoria's face went white, her pheromones spiking with something that smelled like shame mixed with fury. "You're damn right she paid," she said, but her voice had lost some of its venom. "She paid for ten years. She scrubbed floors and served food and slept in a storage closet because I couldn't stand to look at her and see your face staring back at me."
There it is, I thought, something bitter and painful twisting in my gut. Confirmation. She hated me because I looked like my mother. Because every time she saw me, she was reminded of the woman who "stole" her brother.
"I know." My mother's voice was barely a whisper now. "And I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry that my daughter—my beautiful, brilliant daughter—had to carry the weight of my failures. That she had to grow up knowing she wasn't wanted because of choices I made before she was even born."
The apology hung in the air, and I felt something crack wide open in my chest. This was what I'd needed to hear—not from my Alphas, not from anyone else, but from the woman who'd brought me into this world and then left me to survive it alone.
She's sorry, I thought, and I didn't know if that made it better or worse. She's sorry, but sorry doesn't give me back ten years. Sorry doesn't undo the nights I cried myself to sleep. Sorry doesn't—
But it's something, Cole's gentle voice whispered through our bond. It's a start.