Chapter 18 Sable #2
“Others?” Eve looked at Astrid and then back to me.
I met her gaze.
“Explain yourself,” she said, her wolf rising to the surface and glowing through her eyes. The power of the Crux alpha washed over me, and I shuddered. My wolf, still quiet within me, reacted to the sensation by lying down and bowing her head.
With hands folded in my lap, I began.
“The first moment I saw you, there was fear in her eyes—your mother’s eyes. You were so little, weak, and entirely unaware of your wolf. I wasn’t much older than you, but I knew more than you did about how our world worked.”
Eve leaned forward, hungry for answers she’d been denied her whole life. “Tell me about that first day.”
I told her about how I’d followed her wherever she went. She was constantly in the company of her mother, and at that time, I didn’t know who her mother was. But even at my young age, I understood Eve’s mother was someone important, someone special. I scented it on her and found myself in a trance.
“I was hiding in the front garden,” I continued, “watching you sitting on the front step while your mother and Grayson argued inside.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“Protection. An alliance. And threats to reveal a secret.” I paused, remembering my mother’s hand yanking me from that bush. “My mother found me eavesdropping. She was terrified—not because I’d been caught, but because of what I’d discovered.”
Eve’s breathing had quickened. “What had you discovered?”
“Alpha Grayson may have been the Heraclid alpha, but he wasn’t alpha to my mother and I.
Your mother was—Alpha Nerys of the Crux pack.
” The words hung in the air between us. “My mother made me understand that you—that little girl sitting on those steps—were the reason we could live free. Your mother had given up everything for us. Power and land, the ability to rule independently. We’d always have been a target, and she knew that.
So she turned us into a nomad pack, knowing the Shadow Moon Goddess would one day give back to us all we needed. We had to believe in our alpha.”
I watched Eve process this, saw the moment when things clicked into place in her mind.
“That’s when I understood I would have a role to play in your future,” I said. “In the future of all Crux. My wolf felt it, and our true nature was called to serve.”
Eve was quiet. When she finally spoke, her voice was hushed. “You became the enforcer.”
“The guardian of Crux. The pillar that would ensure our alpha and our pack would not be wiped out.” I paused, another wave of Rhys’s pain making me grip the edge of the bed.
I didn’t tell her that being the enforcer was how I could use my hybrid nature for good. The air in the room grew colder still.
Eve listened as I finished the story. She was unreadable, as if she were revisiting each memory of our shared history and trying to fit it together with this new truth.
Finally, she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped to anchor herself.
“I always wondered why you hated me,” she said quietly, not looking at me. “Why you looked at me like I was something broken. I thought maybe you saw something in my future that I didn’t. Or you hated what I represented.”
She glanced up, and in her stare was a strange, mournful clarity.
“But you knew.”
My throat tightened. “Not everything.”
“You knew I wasn’t supposed to be Heraclid. You knew I was Crux.”
She didn’t ask. She stated it as truth.
I hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”
Her jaw clenched, and she looked away again. “Do you have any idea how many nights I spent wondering if the pain I felt was normal? Wondering if the visions were madness or some punishment for existing?”
“I did what I had to,” I said softly.
“You’re going to say it was to protect me?” she asked sharply.
“I wasn’t sure I could protect you among your enemies if you knew what you were. And if you had known, I wouldn’t have been able to continue protecting the other Crux. I’d have to be exclusively focused on protecting you.”
She flinched. An alpha didn’t like being a pawn. Especially not in her own prophecy.
“Keeping you at arm’s length meant you’d be shielded from anything that happened to me,” I added.
Eve rose, walked a few paces, then turned. “Why would anything happen to you, Sable?”
“Because—”
Because I’m half-vampire. I did not let her hear it through the bond. I couldn’t. My mother’s fear was still alive in my veins.
Her brows lifted, but she didn’t speak.
“My father wasn’t an ally to Crux,” I said, staring at my hands. “He was—” I broke off, the words dragging jagged across my tongue, despite everything inside me wanting to share my true self with my alpha.
“I know,” Eve said, not letting me finish.
My head snapped up.
“I don’t know everything yet, Sable. I’ve seen glimpses.”
I felt dizzy. She’d seen me in a vision.
“I know you have your own secrets, and I know this bond with Rhys doesn’t fit into what you understood of the world.
But as one who has lived through it, I can tell you with total certainty—this bond goes beyond your ability to undo.
The connection you’re still feeling? The phantom pain? That’s the bond trying to heal itself.”
My breath caught. “That’s not possible. He rejected me.”
“Rejection can sever a normal mate bond. But what you two have…” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Even broken, it’s fighting to survive.”
The cold in the room intensified, and I realized it was coming from me—a physical manifestation of the chaos inside.
“Sable, I can’t undo what’s happened with Rhys. With this rejection. Only the two of you can find a way to navigate it. But I need to know about something else you’re hiding. What you saw about Rhys. About his brothers. Because I don’t believe for one second you killed the twins.”
My hand drifted to my silver ring. I cleared my throat and spoke through a clenched jaw, a weariness and deep internal pain threatening to take me over.
“Well, Eve, you’re not the only one who sees things.”