CHAPTER 52: CHAPTER 52: THE TRUTH REVEALED

Author’s POV ~

Lucian let out a gurgled gasp, pain etched deep into his face as the silver hissed against his skin, burning straight through muscle and bone. Smoke curled from the wound, the scent of scorched flesh thick in the air. But none of the brothers dared to move.

They were too afraid—too stunned by the scene in front of them. Too terrified that she would really twist the dagger through Lucian’s heart. Even with an Alpha’s regenerative ability, healing from silver took time. It was a cruel burn—slow, searing, agonizing.

"Selene..." Aeron’s voice cracked, laced with panic and helplessness. "Leave the dagger... we can talk. Calmly."

His expression twisted in pain. His brother was bleeding before his eyes, and yet—across from him stood his mate. The one the moon had chosen. The woman whose scent stirred something primal in his soul. Torn. He was utterly torn. Aeron didn’t know whom to reach for—his brother, or his mate.

He could only try to ease her rage, but Selene... Selene looked like a woman who had already made up her mind.

"What’s there to talk about?" she asked, her voice drenched in bitterness, followed by a laugh so hollow it rang like a curse. "Aeron, everything is over."

She laughed at her own fate, laughed like it was the cruelest joke the gods ever played.

Mated.

Not to one—but to all of them.

All of them, who had taken turns ruining her life. All of them, who had marked her—branded her like a slave for a sin she had never even committed.

Now what was left to say? What was left to salvage? They were all equally vile in her eyes.

"No..." Luca stepped forward slightly, his voice soft, coaxing—far too gentle for the storm she carried inside her. "Selene, you are our mate. This is just the beginning... We can start again. We’ll forget the past. You should let go of Lucian."

His words were too calm. Too empty.

Forget?

Selene’s smile twisted with venom. Her grip on the dagger didn’t loosen—if anything, she dug it deeper, just to hear Lucian hiss again.

Forget everything?

She sneered. "You really are full of yourself, aren’t you?"

Her voice turned colder, sharper. "Now I wish it was you in his place, Luca. Maybe then I could knock some sense into your self-absorbed head."

Luca flinched, the corner of his mouth twitching with something unreadable.

"Are you not ashamed?" Her voice rose, shaking with fury. "How dare you even think I’d accept you after everything you’ve done?"

Those words were enough to freeze the room. Enough to silence even Kael.

The weight of her hate dropped heavy, filling every corner.

"Selene..." Aeron stepped forward, wounded, as if her every word sliced into him. "Mates are meant to be together. You can’t go against the Moon Goddess’s will."

Kael and Luca nodded slowly, lips pressed into tight lines. Lucian groaned beneath her, barely conscious but even he growled faintly at the sound of her rejection.

But Selene didn’t feel fate. She didn’t feel destiny.

She felt chains.

She felt betrayal.

"I don’t care about the Moon Goddess," she spat. "Where was she when I was crying for help? When I was being stripped of everything? When I was marked, humiliated, used like I was nothing?"

Her voice broke, each word cracked and frayed with pain. "And you... all of you pretend like nothing ever happened. Like I should just walk into your arms and say ’yes, my mates’? Is that what you want?!"

She was sobbing now, but she didn’t care. Her tears didn’t weaken her—if anything, they sharpened her.

"I’ve already decided," she whispered, breath hitching. "I’m not staying here."

And she meant it. Every word.

The moment she said it, they all growled in unison. A deep, guttural sound of resistance. Even Lucian, through the haze of pain, bared his teeth in fury.

They were rejecting the very idea of her leaving. The bond rebelled against it.

But Selene was done.

"I’m not some pathetic freak desperate to be loved by her abusers," she hissed. "I won’t play happy family with men who turned blind when I needed them the most. Men who couldn’t even tell right from wrong."

Kael’s eyes narrowed, voice rough with growing fury. "Selene... don’t forget, we’re already willing to forgive your past mistakes. But don’t you dare betray us again. We’re doing this because you are our mate."

Her head snapped toward him.

And then, she laughed. But it wasn’t the same bitter laugh as before—no, this one was cold. Hollow. Like something inside her had finally cracked beyond repair.

"I... betrayed you?" she echoed, her voice eerily calm. "You think I did something wrong? That I deserved the way you treated me?"

Her hands trembled now—not from fear, but from fury barely held back. The dagger shook in her grip, still pressed firm against Lucian’s bleeding chest.

"You punished me," she said, "because you thought I was his daughter that I carried his evilness."

She lifted her gaze, meeting each of their eyes—one by one. Letting the words soak in, letting the silence build. Letting it hurt.

"But here’s the truth," she whispered, her voice laced with venom and something heartbreakingly raw. "I’m not Eirik Moonveil’s daughter."

A silence fell so heavy it crushed the air from the room.

"What...?" Aeron’s voice was barely audible.

"I have no blood ties to that monster," Selene continued, each word like a blade. "Everything you did to me—every punishment, every scar, every humiliation—you did it because of a lie. Because of a name."

Her chest heaved. Her eyes glistened, not just with pain, but with something deeper—something shattered.

"I never carried his blood. Never shared his evil. And yet you made me bleed for his sins. You made me your target, your enemy... your slave... for something I never was."

Luca stepped back like her words had physically struck him. Kael’s jaw clenched, and even Lucian, beneath the dagger, opened his eyes wide in shock.

Aeron looked the most wrecked of all—like the ground beneath him had suddenly vanished.

"You wanted revenge for what he did to your pack and to your parents. " Selene whispered. "So you took it out on me, but what you did not know that I am his victim too. He killed my mother in front of my eyes, he is my sinner too."