CHAPTER 97: CHAPTER 97: A BOND WITHOUT DESTINY

Aeron’s POV~

The room was dark. Only a faint light filtered in from the window, enough to show the two of us. I sat beside the bed, my eyes fixed on my brother, who had not woken for a whole day and night. My expression was heavy, worry etched across my face.

On the bed lay Luca. His chest rose and fell steadily, but he had not opened his eyes once since yesterday. There was no wound on him, no blood, not even a scratch that could explain what had happened. I had called doctor after doctor, every one of them giving the same answer: He is fine. His body is perfectly normal. But I knew this was not normal.

It would have been fine if Luca was just sleeping peacefully. But he was not. Time after time, his body reacted like he was trapped in a nightmare. His hands clenched into fists, his head twisted from side to side.

Sometimes he thrashed against the bed with harsh and uneven breathing, sweat pouring down his temple. His face twisted in pain, as if he was fighting something only he could see.

The worst was when tears slipped from his closed eyes. My chest tightened every time I saw it. Luca never cried, not even when he was young. To see my strong brother like this made something inside me burn with helplessness.

I reached out and pressed a hand to Luca’s shoulder, as if that alone could steady him. "What happened to you, brother..." I whispered in a low voice, almost afraid to disturb the silence.

But Luca did not answer, leaving me to sit in the dim light with nothing but questions and fear.

I sat there, my hand still on Luca’s shoulder, but my heart was filled with dread.

First, I had lost her again—my mate. After finally finding her, after finally being so close, she had refused us. She didn’t even want to see our faces. The memory of her words still cuts through me like a blade. And now, my brother was lying here, broken in his sleep, suffering without a reason.

Just what was happening to us? What had we done to deserve so much unhappiness in our lives?

I closed my eyes, and my past came rushing back. The screams, the smell of blood, our parents butchered right in front of us. My brothers and I had just reached our adulthood, but from that day on, our lives turned into hell.

We had lived worse than dogs, always hiding, always running, barely surviving from one day to the next.

There were nights when we had no food and no shelter. We shifted into our wolves, living like wild beasts in the forest, just to stay alive.

We had grown savage, our fangs and claws our only hope of survival. Sometimes, we went days without eating anything except raw animals we hunted. Our life had been torn away from us, replaced only with pain and survival.

There were many days during those four years when I cradled my brother like this, always fearing whether he would survive to see the next day, living in constant fear.

And after four long years of suffering, we finally rose strong enough to fight back. We finally had the strength to tear Alpha Eirik apart and watch him die for what he had done. We had avenged our parents. We had taken back what was stolen from us.

But still, happiness never came. Killing him had not healed the wound in our hearts. It had not erased the pain.

And then... our eyes had landed on her.

Selene.

The white moonlight in our dark world. The one person who lit a fire in us, who stirred both our hatred and our love at the same time. There was never a day in those four years when we had not heard something about her. She was everywhere, the most dazzling she-wolf, the one everyone called the future Luna of the Lycan King.

She was untouchable, shining in a world far above us, while we had been crawling through dirt and blood. And yet, our hearts had never forgotten her.

And we never realized when our love turned into hatred for her. We could not see it clearly then, but after she betrayed us, forgot everything, and went on to live the most dazzling life, our feelings twisted.

We hated her every single day in those past four years. At the time, we only thought she was cruel because she was his daughter. After all, an apple cannot fall far from the tree.

But after finding out the truth—that she was not even his daughter—I felt like there was something more, something hidden. There are still so many things we need to clarify, and I want to directly ask her why she did that in the past, why she called all of us brothers that night, only to betray us in the cruelest way.

Now, after everything, she was back in our lives. But she had turned her back on us, and Luca lay broken beside me. I could not help but ask myself a question: Is it only our fault and not hers? Can she not feel the pull of the mate bond that was slowly consuming us?

If we could give her a chance, then why couldn’t she? I knew we were wrong, but she was wrong too, yet we could not simply forget her betrayal. We had wanted to kill her the very day we conquered her pack—but we couldn’t.

None of us could bear to do that. So instead, we decided to bring her back to our pack to make her pay for her betrayal. But the cruel irony of fate was that she was our fated mate, and we only found out after both sides wanted each other’s downfall. How cruel was that?

It felt as if the heavens had made us mates but forgot to give us a destiny.