CHAPTER 61: CHAPTER 61: LUCIAN BROKE DOWN

Lucian couldn’t breathe.

The weight of it came crashing down like a tidal wave of knives. His hands clutched at his face, trying to smother the sound, trying to hold himself together—but it was no use.

He sobbed. Not the silent, restrained kind of weeping a warrior is taught to master.

No. He completely broke down.

Right there on the floor, in front of his brothers, in front of Maela and their beta, in front of the ghosts of every sin he had ever committed—Lucian wept like a man who had lost his soul.

His broad shoulders shook. His fingers tangled in his hair as if trying to rip the guilt from his skull. His breath hitched again and again and then came out as a raw cry, full of everything he had buried for years.

He didn’t care how he looked.

He didn’t care that he was supposed to be an Alpha.

Because right now—he wasn’t. He was just a broken man. A man who had shattered something irreplaceable.

His mate. His Selene.

And not just her body—not just her trust. No. He had crushed something even more fragile.

Her hope.

Her love.

Her first, innocent dream was of a boy she had believed was meant for her.

"Mammy... What if he’s my mate?"

Lucian clawed at his chest like he could rip those words out of his heart.

If he could just go back... Gods, if he could only go back—

"I should’ve protected her," he choked out, his voice hoarse and cracked. "I should’ve trusted her...should’ve seen her..."

None of the others moved.

Even Aeron’s face had twisted into something unreadable, his fists clenched at his sides, eyes blazing with pain.

But Lucian couldn’t see them.

He was trapped in the prison of his own memory, his own failure.

"If it weren’t for him..." Lucian growled through gritted teeth, lifting his head just enough to let the next words out. "If that bastard hadn’t—if he hadn’t poisoned everything and manipulated..."

He slammed his fist into the floor. The echo rang out sharp and violent, but he didn’t stop.

"I’d drag him from his grave," Lucian spat, voice trembling with fury. "I’d bring him back just to torture him again and again and again—until he felt even a fraction of what she went through. What we all went through."

His chest heaved with every ragged breath, but all his rage was useless. Because deep down, he knew it was too late. He knew he had already lost her in the worst way a man could lose someone—by being the reason she broke.

And now... now he was hollow. Hopeless. Because everything that mattered was already gone, already destroyed, and there was no undoing it. No turning back. Now he was just a fool who was clinging to hope...

"And maybe..." his voice dropped to a whisper, "maybe if he’d never touched our lives... she would’ve still looked at me like that. Like I was someone worth loving."

He swallowed hard. His eyes were wet and empty all at once.

"We could’ve been something pure," he said brokenly. "Like the way she saw me that night. Like the way she dreamed."

He bowed his head again.

"My Selene..." the words barely escaped. "What haven’t you endured...?"

He saw her again—laughing under moonlight, cheeks flushed, voice soft as petals as she whispered his name like it was magic. That night. That moment. When everything had still been innocent.

Before her father’s lies. before his pack was destroyed. Before their hate.

Before he had become everything she feared.

"First her father ruined her," Lucian whispered. "And then... when he was dead, we just picked up where he left off. We turned her into a caged bird in a bigger, colder cage."

His hands curled into fists again.

"I’m no better than him," he hissed. "No... I’m worse."

A sob caught in his throat.

"At least she knew her father was a monster. She expected nothing from him. But me..."

His voice shattered.

"She loved me."

"She looked at me with a pure heart, and I crushed it under my boot like it was nothing. Like she was nothing."

His vision blurred. His voice dropped into a broken whisper, more breath than sound.

"I was supposed to be her mate..."

"I became her nightmare instead."

And then he sobbed again—harder this time—because there was no escaping that truth. Not even death would cleanse it.

On the other side of the room, Maela was crying too.

Her chest ached with every breath, but she didn’t make a sound—because if she did, she knew the scream would never end.

Her hands trembled as she clutched the shawl around her shoulders like a shield, as if it could protect her from the truth unraveling before her eyes.

Lucian sobs. His torment. His guilt. It didn’t move her. Not the way it once might have.

Because all she could see was her—that little girl with wide eyes, who used to trail behind her in the kitchen, who once asked if stars could be plucked and kept in jars. That girl who had known nothing but cruelty from the moment she was born, and yet still found the strength to love, to trust... to dream.

And now—now she was gone.

Lost to the cliffside where nobody was ever found. Disappeared into a silence so final it made Maela feel like her lungs were filling with stone.

When the report first came—the word that Selene had fallen while escaping with a rogue—Maela had refused to believe it. She had screamed, scoured every inch of forest, and begged trackers and wolves alike to keep searching. But weeks had passed. Then a month. And still, no word. No sighting or any trail.

It would be a lie to say hope hadn’t begun to die inside her.

And maybe that was why it hurt so much now. Because she knew. Selene was gone. Her missy was dead.

Because if she had survived, why did she not come back? She has no one in the world aside from her. Her throat closed.

"You had no one in this world. Only me. And if you’re not here... it must mean I’ve lost you too." Maela thought.

She turned her face away as another sob broke loose.

And the ones who had driven her to it... were right here, sobbing into the floor like they were the victims.