Chapter 15 The Night The Hope Died
I spent the rest of the day inside my room.
The walls felt too close, too pale, too polished. The sunlight shifted across the floorboards, crawling slowly toward me like a reminder of how long I’d been sitting there. Hours passed in a blur, or maybe it was minutes. I couldn’t tell.
I kept hearing his voice in my head.
Explain.
Tell the truth.
Don’t lie to me again.
I curled my arms around myself, fingers digging into my elbows until the skin stung. I didn’t cry. Not because I wasn’t hurting, but because crying felt too fragile, too pointless.
Grayson didn’t want my tears.
He wanted my guilt.
A soft knock came just as the sun began its descent.
“Evie?”
Luna Helena’s voice drifted through the crack of the door, gentle and warm.
She stepped inside without waiting for permission, carrying a small tray of herbal tea and sliced fruit. Her eyes softened the moment she saw me sitting on the edge of the bed like something abandoned.
“Oh, sweetheart…” she whispered.
For a moment, I almost broke. Helena had always been kind, a quiet, constant kindness that didn’t demand anything in return. But even her presence felt drowned beneath the weight of everything crushing me.
She sat beside me, her hand brushing a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “Today was… unkind.”
Unkind. Such a small word for the violence of humiliation I endured at that table.
“I didn’t do it,” I whispered. My voice sounded like someone else’s. “I didn’t hurt Chloe.”
“I know.” Helena squeezed my hand.
But her words weren’t enough.
Not anymore.
“I...” My breath hitched. “Can I see my mother?”
Helena paused.
A shadow flickered behind her eyes.
“I’ll ask Marcus,” she said softly.
And I knew what that meant.
Even Luna Helena, the most compassionate woman in this house had limits. She was powerless to counter Isabelle’s claws or Grayson’s conviction.
She stayed with me a little longer, murmuring gentle things, offering tea I couldn’t drink, touching my hand when words failed her.
But the bruises on my body weren’t half as painful as the ones blooming inside me, the ones no healer could mend.
When she finally left, the room felt darker than before.
Evening melted into night.
Shadows gathered.
And then the door opened.
I didn’t need to look to know who it was.
His presence filled the room like a storm front, cold, electric, suffocating.
Grayson.
He stepped inside slowly, his posture too composed, too controlled. The mask he wore at the breakfast table had returned, polished, emotionless, carved from stone.
He closed the door behind him.
The click echoed like a lock on a cell.
I stood automatically, spine straightening out of instinct more than respect. My pulse quickened as he approached.
He stopped in front of me, close enough for the space between us to vibrate with tension.
“Evie.”
My name left his mouth like a reprimand.
I clenched my jaw.
He studied me for a long moment, eyes flicking over my face, my posture, the barely-hidden tremors in my hands. His expression didn’t change but I could tell.
He saw everything.
He saw how afraid I was.
And he didn’t care.
“If you confess,” he said quietly, “this could all end.”
My stomach dropped.
“Confess to what?” I whispered.
“To what you did to Chloe.”
I flinched at the name, he caught it.
His jaw tightened.
“Evie,” he said, voice low and sharp, “stop lying.”
My chest constricted.
“You’ve always done this,” he continued. “Twisted stories, played innocent, acted like the victim.”
My breath hitched.
“You’ve been jealous of Chloe since we were children. Vindictive. Scheming.”
The words felt like knives because they weren’t his.
They were Chloe’s.
Every accusation she whispered in his ear.
Every lie she told him during his heir training.
Every story she fed him about “poor Evie Hart.”
He believed her. Completely.
“Grayson…” My voice broke. “You’re only seeing what you want to see. No matter what I say, you won’t listen.”
His eyes hardened.
“Because your words mean nothing when your actions speak louder.”
My heart splintered, a deep, agonizing crack that tore through every bit of foolish hope I’d held onto. Every memory of us. Every soft moment. Every childhood day.
None of it mattered to him.
None of me mattered to him.
“You used to be better than this,” I whispered.
He stepped closer.
Too close.
“You used to hide your true nature better,” he replied coldly.
My breath seized.
“Chloe tried to warn me about you,” he continued, voice dipped in ice. “She told me how you treated her when I wasn’t looking. How you couldn’t stand her. How you pushed her. How you mocked her.”
“That’s a lie,” I whispered.
“A lie Chloe took to her grave?” he snapped.
His grief, twisted and poisoned, clung to his words.
“Do you know what she wrote in her last letter?” he muttered, eyes darkening. “That she feared you’d hurt her one day.”
The room tilted.
He believed her so absolutely that nothing I said now could undo it.
“I never wanted to hurt her,” I whispered. “Or you.”
He looked at me like the words offended him.
“You already did.”
My knees weakened.
And then his voice dropped lower, something hungry, something crueler than anything he’d said before.
“Evie,” he said, “who are you to me?”
His hand lifted, fingers brushing my jaw, a mockery of tenderness.
I swallowed. “Your… mate.”
“Again.”
A shiver ran through me.
“Your mate,” I whispered.
His eyes darkened further.
“And who do you belong to?”
I shook my head.
“Say it,” he demanded.
My heart pounded.
My wolf whimpered.
My soul bent under his command.
“You,” I said quietly. “I belong to you.”
He smiled then, not with warmth.
With triumph.
“That’s right.”
His hand slid to my waist.
His grip tightened.
“Remember that.”
The cruelty that came after wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t rushed.
It wasn’t fueled by passion.
It was controlled.
Measured.
Punishment, not desire.
A repetition of the wedding night...
but colder, darker, without even the pretense of wanting me.
He used me like I was something owed to him.
Something disposable.
Something less than human.
When he finished, he straightened his clothes, breath steady, face unbothered.
He didn’t look at the bruises he’d reopened.
He didn’t look at my tears, the ones I tried, and failed, to hide.
Before leaving, he murmured:
“There won’t be a next time if you just tell the truth.”
The truth.
Something he never wanted from me.
He left my room with the same quiet steps he came in with, leaving the broken pieces of me scattered behind him.
And as the door clicked shut…
I sank to the floor, breath shaking, heart bleeding into nothing.
This was the night hope died.