"It reveals everything I’ve ignored about you," I said, my voice low but cutting. "Every shadow I explained away. Every doubt I silenced. I see them now—laid bare in the wreckage. The trust is shattered, Veronique. Irretrievable."
Her eyes widened, wet with sudden desperation. She shook her head, hair falling loose. "No. I am not working with them—I never could. They are monsters. They have slaughtered Marked Hybrids before; I know their history. You know I would never..."
"Would never?" I echoed, raising a brow.
Her lips trembled, and then she tried a different tack. "It was Lilith. She triggered me—insulted me. She told me that two Alphas wanted her. That you wanted her. Minutes after you carried her out of the wreckage—while you left me to bleed, weakened. In another life, you would have carried me."
My gaze sharpened, but I didn’t correct her. I let her speak. Let her dig deeper.
"I don’t know what came over me," she rushed on, tears streaking her face. "The rejection of my love for you, the terror of the bomb, it made my wolf snap. I wasn’t myself."
I tilted my head, studying her unravel.
Still, she pressed forward, weaving her lies with frantic hands. "Don’t you see? You broke me. My heart, my soul—it’s all shards now. I look in the mirror and I see a stranger. I don’t even know who I am anymore if I don’t have you."
Her sobs grew louder, her performance perfected, and then she played her final card. With trembling fingers, she tugged back her sleeve. Dark bruises circled her wrist. "Look at this. She grabbed me when she taunted me. Even lying there on the ground, she hurt me."
I stared at the mark, then back at her.
All I saw was calculation. She hadn’t let the Deltas heal it. A wound preserved, not endured. A tool in her deception.
But the flaw in her web of lies was glaring. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by novel~fire~net
The body I had carried from the wreckage had been broken, her breath shallow, her pulse fragile. Lilith had been on the knife’s edge of death—unconscious, unresponsive. No one in that state could have taunted, much less fought back with the strength to bruise.
Which meant Veronique wasn’t desperate. She was plotting. And she had underestimated me.
Her tears fell harder now, hot and fast, streaking down her cheeks as her body trembled with each sob. "Don’t you see, Vladi?" Her voice cracked, splintering like glass under pressure. "They’re trying to tear us apart. That’s what they want—The Order. They plant bombs, they poison, they whisper their lies until you start looking at me ."
She took a shuddering step forward, hands clutching at her chest as though her heart might tear free. "I’ve fought beside you, I’ve stood by you, and now they make you believe I could ever hurt you? Could ever betray you?!" Her voice pitched higher, wild with emotion, the performance sharpened to a blade.
Then she closed the distance in a rush. Her hands lifted to my face, trembling, desperate, wet with tears as she leaned up, pressing her lips toward mine.
I caught her wrists before she made contact.
Her sobs broke into something jagged, pleading. "Doesn’t this prove it? Doesn’t this show you I’m yours? That I’ve always been yours? You think I strangled her because I wanted her gone? No, Vladi—I did it because she was between us. She taunted me. She said you wanted her, that she had you. I snapped. But it wasn’t betrayal—it was heartbreak."
Her wrists quivered in my grip, and still she pushed forward, trying to close the space between us, her lips brushing air. "Look at me," she begged, voice raw. "See me. I am broken. You broke me. I don’t know who I am anymore if I don’t have you."
Her tears streaked her face as she whispered, "Don’t let them win. Don’t let them tear us apart."
I stared down at her, silent, letting her words crumble into the space between us. Her sobs, her plea, her touch—they weren’t healing anything. They were exposing it. The fracture wasn’t mine. It was hers.
And every word, every desperate kiss she tried to force on me, only revealed it clearer.
Her tears slowed, but her voice sharpened, breaking through the quiet like a knife. "If you will not see me for who I am now... then remember who I was to you then."
My grip on her wrists didn’t loosen, but her words burrowed deeper than her sobs ever could.
"The Outlands," she whispered, as if the very word could unmake me. "When you and your mother had nothing—no pack, no food, no roof. When your father’s blood was still wet in the dirt and your sister ripped from your mother’s arms—my father opened his gates. He gave you shelter. He fed you. He clothed you. He gave you the training that made you the Alpha you are now."
Her eyes searched mine desperately, as if the past itself was the weapon that would sway me. "Without him, you would not have survived exile. Without him, you would not have taken Wintercrest back. Without him—you would not be Vladimir Dragunov, High Alpha."
The name struck like an echo.
My jaw tightened. The memories came unbidden—blood soaking into earth, my father’s body torn to pulp before my eyes, my mother screaming as her newborn was wrenched from her arms. And then... years of ash and hunger, crouching beside her in the dark while the world forgot us.
Until a hand pulled me out of it. The stern hand of a man who had given us shelter, who had beaten strength into my small, shaking limbs, who had taught me to stand and fight until I could no longer fall. The man who had made me sharpen my grief into steel.
By sixteen, I had turned that steel into victory. I had won the Alpha Duel. I had spilled my uncle’s blood and reclaimed Wintercrest with my own hands. But it had been the foundation laid in exile—the lessons hammered into me in the Outlands—that had made me capable.
For the first time in this exchange, my grip on her faltered. Not much. Not enough for her to pull away. But enough for her to sense the shift.
Her lips curved, trembling, as if she had found the crack she had been clawing for. "You owe him. You owe us. You owe me. You promised him, you would care for me, you would love me..."
I cut her off. "Like a sister. He told me to love his daugther like a sister. I will do just that." My voice was sharpened ice. "I take care of you all your life. I have made a vow to my mentor, your father. And what is a wolf without honor." My face darkened. "Veronique Vargan, I hereby revoke your position as my Beta."