Chapter 353
The silence that followed was deafening. Gigi stared at me, her mouth opening and closing. “What?” she whispered.
“It was a cyst, Grandmother,” I said, my voice devoid of emotion. “An ovarian cyst. That was why her stomach was swollen. That was why she was in pain. There was never a heartbeat. There was never an heir.”
“That’s impossible.” Gigi shook her head frantically. “Kaelen was devastated. He told me—”
“Kaelen paid the Pack Healer fifty thousand dollars to falsify the medical records,” I interrupted, delivering the final blow. “And he paid Seraphina two million dollars and the deed to the Silver Moon lands to keep her mouth shut and stage that fall. He didn’t send me away because I was a monster, Gigi. He sent me away because he was terrified of me, and he needed a reason the Council would accept.”
Gigi stumbled back, her legs hitting the edge of the heavy mahogany desk. She looked as though I had physically struck her. The narrative she had built her grief and her decisions upon for two decades was crumbling before her eyes.
“No,” she whimpered, looking at the portraits of my ancestors on the wall as if begging them to contradict me. “He wouldn’t — Kaelen was a man of honor.”
“Kaelen was a coward,” I said. “And you let him turn you into his accomplice.”
Adella reached up and covered my hand with hers. Her touch was warm — a stark contrast to the ice in my veins. She looked at Gigi, her expression shifting from anger to pity.
“You destroyed a child’s life for a lie,” Adella said softly to the older woman. “You chose a fake legacy over your own flesh and blood.”
Gigi sank into the chair behind the desk and buried her face in her hands. Sobs racked her small frame — the sound of a matriarch realizing she had been the villain in her own story.
I felt nothing for her tears. My pity had run dry years ago in that training camp.
“Come, Adella,” I said, turning away from the wreckage. “We are leaving.”
“Dallas,” Gigi called out, her voice weak and broken. “Wait—”
I didn’t stop. I guided my Mate out of the suffocating room, leaving the ghosts of the past where they belonged — in the dark.
But as we walked toward the exit, my mind was already racing. The lie about the stairs was over, but the truth about Seraphina was far more dangerous. She hadn’t just taken the money and disappeared. She had left something behind — a seed planted in the dark, waiting to bloom.
And I had to tell Adella before it was too late.
The heavy door of the black armored SUV slammed shut, sealing us inside a capsule of silence and leather. The driver pulled away from the curb without a word, merging smoothly into the dark artery of the highway leading back to the city.