Chapter 26 #2
For a moment, we stare at each other in tense silence. Then, Gareth throws back his head and laughs—a sound so full of cruel pleasure that it makes my blood run cold.
“You want the truth?” he asks, his eyes bright with malicious glee. “Fine. Here’s your truth, Your Highness.”
He leans forward, his voice dropping to an almost conversational level, like he’s sharing gossip over dinner.
“Elena tried to run away. Can you believe that? After years of learning her place, after understanding what happened to people who defied me, she actually tried to run away with her little bastard daughter.”
My hands clench into fists at my sides. “What did you do?”
“What I had to do.” He shrugs. “She was my property, after all. My personal whore who’d forgotten her place. When she tried to run, I had to remind the entire pack what happens to people who disobey their alpha.”
I’m struggling to control my rage now. “What…did…you…do?”
Gareth’s smile is the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen. Pure, unfiltered evil wrapped in shifter skin.
“I had the entire pack rip her to pieces in front of her daughter,” he says, his voice filled with sick satisfaction. “Every single member. Men, women, even children who were old enough to understand what defiance meant. We made it a pack bonding experience.”
The world goes completely silent. Not the kind of quiet that comes from lack of sound, but the kind that comes when your brain simply can’t process what you’ve just heard. When the horror is so complete that everything else just...stops.
“It took hours,” Gareth continues, his voice dreamy with the memory. “She was strong, Elena. Always was. She lasted much longer than I expected. The screaming was... unforgettable.”
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t do anything but stand here and let the full weight of his words sink into my veins like poison.
He had an entire pack—including children—tear Astra’s mother apart while she watched. Eight-year-old Astra witnessed her mother dying in the most brutal way imaginable.
“And her little girl?” Gareth is chatty now, like he’s reminiscing fondly. “Oh, she tried to help. Tried to run to her mother. But I held her back, made sure she saw every single moment. She had to learn what happened to people who thought they could disobey me.”
Something breaks inside me. Something fundamental and irreversible.
The man I was five minutes ago—the one who believed in mercy, in justice, in the possibility of redemption—that man is gone.
In his place is someone darker, someone who understands perfectly why some people need to suffer before they die.
“Afterward,” Gareth continues, completely oblivious to the fact that he’s ensuring his own slow, painful torture with every word, “I made sure everyone in the pack understood that Elena’s death was a lesson.
That her daughter would live only as long as she remembered her place.
As long as she served the pack without complaint and never, ever tried to leave. ”
My voice, when I finally find it, doesn’t sound like my own. It’s colder, deadlier, the voice of a man who’s looking at a corpse that doesn’t know it’s dead yet.
“What is Eclipse Born?”
Gareth’s monologue stops abruptly. He frowns as if I’ve just asked him to pull from the deepest recesses of his mind.
“Eclipse Born?” He sits back, nodding. “Now, that’s a term I haven’t heard in...oh, decades.”
Then he chuckles to himself, a sound that makes my skin crawl.
“Elena’s little secret. Astra’s shameful bloodline.” His eyes brighten with renewed malice. “You see, Your Highness, Elena didn’t elope with just any rogue. She eloped with an Eclipse Born. That’s why her father let the bastard child live instead of drowning her at birth like he should have.”
“What does it mean?”
“Eclipse Born was an old bloodline. Very old, very powerful, and very dead.” Gareth seems to be enjoying himself now, like he has finally found a way to twist the knife deeper.
“Elena’s father wanted to preserve whatever was left of that bloodline.
Thought maybe little Astra would manifest some of their old power. ”
“What had happened to that bloodline?”
“Went extinct. Was hunted down and eliminated generations ago.” Gareth shrugs.
“I looked into it when Elena first told me about her little secret. Spent months researching Eclipse Born, trying to hit upon anything useful. Found nothing. No records, no survivors, no trace of whatever power they supposedly had.”
“Why didn’t you let Elena leave with Astra?”
The question seems to surprise him. For a moment, his mask of cruel satisfaction slips, and I see something else underneath. Something bitter and obsessive and pathetic.
“Because she made the wrong choice,” he says, his voice suddenly cold. “All she had to do was choose the right child.”
“What do you mean?”
But Gareth shakes his head, his lips twisting into that nasty smile again. “That’s all you’re getting, Your Highness. I’ve answered your questions. Our deal is done.”
“Tell me what you meant.”
“No,” he says with finality. “Kill me if you want. I’ve said plenty to save my daughter.”
I study him for a full minute, noting the way his hands shake slightly despite his bravado, the way his eyes can’t quite meet mine anymore. He has told me more than he intended, revealed more than he meant to. But there are still secrets here, still pieces of the puzzle he is keeping locked away.
And that’s fine. I have enough.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “Our deal is done.”
I turn to leave, then pause at the bottom of the stairs.
“Oh, Gareth?” I look back at him, and what he sees in my expression makes him go pale. “Remember how you killed Elena? How you made her death slow and painful and public?”
“What about it?”
“That’s exactly how you’re going to die.” I let that sink in for a moment. “But first, I’m going to make you suffer the way she suffered. Every indignity, every violation, every moment of helpless terror—you’re going to experience all of it.”
The color drains from his face completely. “You can’t. The law—”
“I am the law.” My voice booms through the dungeon with all the power of the crown. “And you’re going to discover exactly what that means.”
I start up the stairs, leaving him alone in the darkness with nothing but his memories and the knowledge of what’s coming for him. Behind me, I hear him call out, his voice cracking with the first real fear he has shown.
“Wait! Your Highness, wait! I can tell you more! About the Eclipse Born, about Astra’s bloodline! There’s more to the story!”
But I don’t stop. I don’t turn around. I don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he has gotten under my skin.
I have everything I need for now. The rest—the missing pieces, the hidden secrets, the full truth about what Astra really is—all of that will come out eventually. It always does when you know how to apply the right pressure.
And Gareth? Gareth is going to have plenty of time to think about everything he has done while I arrange for his very special execution. Plenty of time to remember Elena’s screams and wonder if his own will sound the same.
The stone steps echo under my feet as I climb back toward the light, leaving the past buried in darkness where it belongs. But not forgotten. Never forgotten.
Some things are too important to forget.
Some people are too evil to forgive.
And some deaths are too merciful to allow.
My father’s study is exactly as I expect to find it—dimly lit by the fire crackling in the massive stone hearth, papers scattered across his desk, and the familiar scent of old leather and parchment hanging in the air.
What I don’t expect to find is Luna perched on his shoulders like some sort of feline scarf, her black fur stark against his silver hair.
She opens one amber eye as I enter, acknowledging my presence with the kind of regal indifference that only cats can master, then settles back into her nap. My father doesn’t look up from the document he’s examining, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.
“Father.”
“Lucian.” He sets the paper aside and removes his glasses, careful not to disturb Luna’s comfortable position. “I take it your visit to the dungeons was...enlightening?”
I don’t even bother asking how he knows where I’ve been. My father has eyes and ears everywhere in this palace; nothing happens without him being informed within the hour.
“In a manner of speaking.” I close the door behind me and move to stand before his desk. “I need to ask you about a bloodline called Eclipse Born.”
The change in my father’s expression is immediate and dramatic. The casual authority he always carries shifts into something sharper, more alert. His pale eyes stare at me with sudden intensity, and I see his jaw tighten almost imperceptibly.
“Eclipse Born,” he repeats slowly, like he’s testing the words. “Well, that’s a term I haven’t heard in ages. Where did you encounter it?”
“Came up during my questioning of Gareth.”
The King leans back in his chair, disturbing Luna enough that she opens both eyes and fixes him with an annoyed glare. He absently reaches up to scratch behind her ears, his expression growing distant and troubled.
“Eclipse Born was an ancient bloodline,” he says finally, his voice careful and measured. “An old lineage with tremendous power, completely exterminated by the Umbra Council long before I took the throne.”
“Why?”
“Because they possessed a dangerous ability. Something that threatened the established order.” My father’s expression grows grimmer.
“The Council hunted them down methodically, eliminating them one by one over the course of several generations. Back then, the Council was far more zealous about purity. Anything that wasn’t pure wolf shifter was considered an abomination to be eradicated. ”
I move closer to his desk, my mind racing. “What kind of ability?”