CHAPTER 62: CHAPTER 62: MAELA’S GRIEF AND RESENTMENT

Maela’s grief twisted inside her heart, full of resentment. It would be a lie to say she didn’t hate them.

Once, long ago, she might’ve pitied these Alphas, these boys ripped from their home, orphaned by Alpha Eirik’s cruelty, raised in the shadows of blood and vengeance. They have every right to take their revenge, but what was her misfault in this? Why was she the one who had to bear the brunt of this...? And yes, once, she might have whispered that it wasn’t their fault.

But not anymore. Not after what they did to her. Not after they turned her into nothing more than a thing to be tamed and discarded.

Her tears dripped silently onto her lap, her mouth pressed into a line so tight it hurt. She had made her decision the moment she heard Selene was gone. And this scene...this pitiful display of regret, only hardened it.

They didn’t deserve forgiveness.

Let them live with the weight of what they had done. Let regret choke them every time they closed their eyes. Let every echo of her name haunt them like a curse carved into their souls.

Because Selene deserved atonement. She deserved mourning. She deserved justice.

And if the goddess had any mercy, maybe once these Alphas had bled enough sorrow to match what they had inflicted, Selene’s soul could finally rest.

She would bury her grief quietly. She would mourn like a mother mourning her child.

***

Kael’s POV~

I didn’t move. Even as Lucian broke in front of us, sobbing like a man who’d been gutted, it was like the sound alone was tearing the floorboards apart...

My feet felt nailed to the ground. My heart... my heart was a storm with no sky. A storm that didn’t know where to go.

Lucian had collapsed into himself, and still—I stood frozen.

I couldn’t bring myself to touch him or to comfort him. Not when my own chest was a battlefield, not when Maela’s words still rang in my head like bells tolling for the dead.

Gods. Selene.

I closed my eyes, and the world twisted. The way Maela had spoken...shaking, like her grief had become bone-deep rage—it rooted in me like ice.

He hurt her... that bastard. He made her bleed long before we ever touched her. And when he died, we took the whip from his hand and didn’t even notice.

A shudder ran through me.

I didn’t even realize I was crying until the warmth trailed down my cheeks. Quiet and Bitter. My wolf howled inside me, not with fury, not even with guilt—but with the lost, agonized cry of a child who had lost everything.

He hadn’t spoken to me since that night. Since she fell from the cliff.

He blamed me. We blamed me.

Because he had felt it—he had known what she was, and I... I had pushed it down. Buried it under pride and vengeance and years of watching my family burn.

Selene. God, even thinking her name made something fracture in me.

I should have listened to my wolf.

But I was too angry. Too proud. Too... cruel. I couldn’t see past the shadows Eirik left behind. Every time I looked at her, I saw that night. I saw the blood. The lies that tore us apart.

I thought she was just as cruel as him—they are, after all, of the same bloodline. But the reason I hated her... was a lie. And now, what’s left of me?

And now... now I couldn’t even be sure that what I’d seen was real. That night—those moments etched into my memory—they felt like smoke now. Uncertain.

What if it was never her? What if it was all lies? What if I hated her for something she never did?

My hands shook. I opened my eyes and looked at Lucian again.

Lucian was on the floor, weeping like his soul had been torn in two. His body trembled, fists raw from pounding the stone, voice broken with grief and regret.

A strange pain tore through my chest, sharp and merciless. Watching my brother fall apart should have angered me, should have stirred something protective or fierce—but instead, it hollowed me out.

I hated that I thought it, but I did.

I wished it had been me. On that floor. On my knees. Ripped open by what I had done to her.

Because in the shadow of his guilt, something selfish rose in my heart—a feeling I hadn’t dared give a name until now.

It wasn’t just Lucian who had felt something for Selene on that night.

I had too.

From the very beginning. From the moment she stepped into this house, wild-eyed and defiant, with those strange bursts of fire in her gaze that no one could tame. But I’d dismissed it.

Mocked it. Crushed it under my heel with snark and scorn. Every time my heart stirred, I pushed it down and told myself it meant nothing. She was too young, too stubborn, and just a young girl.

She was just a pup, I had told myself. Just a child with a sharp tongue and too much fire.

And I had treated her like one. Like she didn’t matter. I thought I was justified in doing so—because I could not accept that I was actually attracted by a pup.

But Lucian...

Lucian hadn’t held back.

He had been softer and more forward. He had danced with her. Talked with her. Laughed with her. They had shared hours I never knew about. Days of smiles, of quiet company. I had laughed at him then, calling it foolish. Weak.

But now?

Now I would have given anything to go back and steal those moments for myself.

If I had spoken to her more or listened instead of barked...would she have ever...?

Would she have looked at me with those eyes? The ones that made Lucian melt? Would she have ever whispered to someone about him, "What if he’s my mate?"

Gods.

That question haunted me now.

Because that night... that stupid, childish dream of hers... she had asked it about Lucian.

Not me.

And I suddenly hated how their names sounded together. How Selene and Lucian fit like a story waiting to be written. While mine...Kael sounded like a stranger in her world. Like a side character who never got a second look.