Chapter 50
Indeed, years of pain had filled my eyes.
And I hated her for seeing it.
For recognizing it, for feeding off of it like she always had.
But I wouldn’t give her the victory.
So, I smiled. My lips stretched into a slow wide grin. Tears in my eyes, but I was grinning and that made me feel dangerous.
And I let my own words cut just as deep.
“You’re right, Amira.” My voice was light, almost sweet. “You were stronger. You were smarter. You were better.”
Her smirk faltered just a little.
“And yet… you were still nothing.”
I watched as the pain flickered across her face.
She hid it quickly, masking it behind amusement, but I had seen it.
I had seen the moment my words landed exactly where I wanted them to.
I stepped forward this time.
She didn’t move back.
She refused to.
“I had nothing, Amira,” I continued. “No love. No pack. No strength. And yet… I was the one they noticed. I was the one your mate noticed enough to punish me and use me for things that I never wanted. Tell me Amira, would you have loved to e in my shoes? Since that was the reason you hated me.”
I mockingly chuckled.
She exhaled sharply. “Liana—”
“I was the one that mattered yet I was the one with most suffering.”
Her lips pressed together.
A small victory.
A crack in her perfect, smug armor.
I smiled wider.
“And now?” I tilted my head. “Now, you’re nothing again. I am a luna, still alive and breathing and you want to take it away. The only thing that finally made my life look meaningful.”
She stiffened.
The amusement in her violet eyes flickered, struggling to stay.
I leaned in this time, lowering my voice just enough to be cruel.
“And it eats you alive, doesn’t it?”
Anura’s jaw clenched.
For the first time in my life, I had silenced her.
She looked at me, her expression twisting into something ugly. Something bitter.
And then, she did what she always did when she felt like she was latine,
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Chapter 50
She lashed out.
到
Her lips curled into a snarl, her voice sharp, bitter, laced with venom.
“Let me burst your little bubble, Liana.”
She took a step closer.
I held my ground.
She smiled, cruel and triumphant.
“You aren’t my blood sister.”
I froze.
The world around me seemed to stop.
Everything blurred–the corridor, the flickering torches on the walls, even the weight of my own breath in my chest.
I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t blink.
Couldn’t process the words that had just shattered everything I thought I knew.
Amira smirked.
Enjoying it.
Enjoying the way my lips parted slightly, how my fingers curled against my sides as if I could physically hold myself together.
“You ungrateful wretch.”
The words rang in my ears, mocking, cruel, triumphant.
But I wasn’t angry.
I was hollow and confused. Was I…adopted?
“I don’t-” My voice came out thin, unsure, wrong. “What do you mean?”
Amira sighed, tilting her head. “Come now, sister. You should have known something was off.”
Sister.
The word cut differently now.
I swallowed, struggling to find my voice. “You’re lying.”
Her smirk only deepened. “Am I?”
I couldn’t breathe.
No. This–this couldn’t be true. It didn’t make sense.
I had known Amira all my life. She was my sister.
Wasn’t she?
She must have seen the war on my face because her expression shifted.
And then-
She laughed.
A soft, bitter sound. Not her usual cruel amusement.
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Chapter 50
This one was different.
This one held something I had never heard from Amira before.
Something I never expected.
Pain.
It vanished as quickly as it came.
She straightened, brushing a stray curl behind her ear. “You were picked up from an orphanage.”
I stared at her.
Every
(muscle in my body went rigid.
“No,” I whispered..
But she only shrugged. “Oh, yes.”
Her viol
ler violet eyes gleamed with mockery and deceit. Her lips were still in that annoying smile of hers but her eyes, they were angry.
Like a wolf about to pounce.
“My real mother died, you see,” Amira continued, voice lighter than it should be. “And the nurse, my Mother’s friend—switched us at birth.”
My stomach twisted violently.
The ground tilted beneath me,
I couldn’t feel my hands.
“You’re lying,” I whispered again, but it was weaker this time.
Because she wasn’t.
I could see it now. I could hear it in her voice.
For the first time in my life–Amira wasn’t playing a game.
She meant it.
Every word.
The realization nearly knocked me over.
But then-
I saw it.
Just for a second.
A single crack in Amira’s perfect armor.
A shimmer of something raw.
Something hurt
And then–tears
Tears in her eyes.
I never thought I’d see it
That they were there.
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Chapter 50
Heavy.
Gone in an instant.
O
She sniffed, straightened, and rolled her shoulders. As if the weight of what she had just said wasn’t crushing her, too.
And then, with that perfect Amira smirk, she whispered-
“I am my mother’s daughter.”
I couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t move.
Amira leaned in, her breath warm against my ear.
“My hate stemmed from the day I found out,” she murmured, her voice sharp as a blade. “That you were the real child and I wasn’t. Meaning my love was fake. Everything was fake and if it had not been so, then you would be the one together all that I have and I would be the one with a dead mother. But now we both have dead parents. It .Ames me feel good somehow.”
I staggered back. “You…are sick.”
Every part of me screamed to deny everything she said.
We were the same age.
Same upbringing.
Same house.
Same parents.
How could this be true?
How could I not have known? Why could I not remember? I always thought I was the younger one. I took care of her after our parents died. But now it seems I wasn’t.
Amira chuckled, shaking her head.
She had won.
And she knew it.
“Mother had a witch alter your memory,” she said, tilting her head slightly, watching me with something eerily close to pity. “So you wouldn’t remember. Because she didn’t want to hurt you.”
A small pause.
“But you were too blinded by your own pathetic self pity to see the truth.”
And just like that-
She turned and walked away.
Leaving me there.
Shaking.
Falling.
The weight of it crushed me. I didn’t realize until I felt the impact on my knees. The stone floor was cold, unforgiving beneath me, but I barely noticed. My breath came in sharp, uneven gasps, and I couldn’t stop the tears.
Amira wasn’t my sister.
I had no family.
No jast
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Chapter 50
No truth.
Just lies.
A sob tore from my throat, raw and aching. I pressed my hands to my face, trying to block it out, trying to hold myself together, but it was impossible.
She had taken everything from me. My childhood, my parents, my place in this world. And I had let her.
But had there ever been a choice?
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing myself to remember them- not through the eyes of pity, not as the weak, unloved daughter, but as the girl who had always been on the outside, looking in.
And for the first time, I saw it.
The small hesitations in my mother’s touches, the way she would pause before saying my name, like she had to remind herself. The way my father never looked me in the eye unless it was to scold me.
The way they never held me the way they held Amira.
It had always been there. The truth. I had just never wanted to see it.
A fresh wave of pain tore through me, my shoulders shaking violently. I pressed my forehead against the floor, my fingers curling into fists, trying to anchor myself, trying to breathe through the unbearable weight of it all.
I didn’t hear the footsteps at first.
Not until he was right in front of me.
I didn’t look up, didn’t move, but I felt him.
Alaric.
He said nothing.
Just squatted beside me, silent.
For a moment, I thought he might say something cruel, something mocking, because wasn’t that what he did? Push me? Provoke me?
But he didn’t.
He just waited.
And somehow, that was worse.
I sucked in a sharp breath, my hands still trembling as I lifted my head. My throat burned, my face damp, my heart breaking.
“Amira isn’t my blood sister,” I whispered.
Alaric didn’t react. Didn’t move.
He was just there.
I let out a shuddering breath, trying to pull myself together, trying to stop the shaking in my hands.
And then, before I could stop myself–before I could think—I turned to him, my voice sharp and broken all at once.
“You are not going to say anything? Oh wait, why should you care? You are a king, no need to worry yourself with someone like me.”
His expression didn’t change, but I saw the flicker of something in his ice–blue eyes.
I clenched my jaw, pushing through the ache in my chest. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t put us together on this mission. This is something important to your pack, and you had to trust a demon.”
I swallowed hard, my voice breaking. “She is a demon, Alaric. A manipulator..”
Something in his gaze softened, just enough
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Chapter 50
for me to notice.
Then, slowly, he reached out. Fingertips brushing my face, wiping away a tear I hadn’t realized was still falling.
His touch was warm. Solid.
And for some reason, I let him.
“Her not being your biological sister makes things easier,” he murmured, his voice low, steady. “Don’t you want revenge anymore?”
