CHAPTER 4. The Last Time He Saw Her 

Since that harrowing afternoon, the lavish confines of Owen’s bedroom transformed into a suffocating prison.

Paralyzed by the agonizing fire in his veins, Owen could do nothing but lie against the silk pillows, his once-imposing body wasting away by the hour. Yet, through the blinding pain, only one thought consumed his feverish mind. 

He begged his mother to bring Leah to him. He wanted nothing more than to drag himself out of that bed, to shift into his beast and run until he found her, but his limbs were essentially dead weight. He couldn't even lift himself upright without his vision swimming in black spots.

Naturally, the Alpha and Rowena fiercely opposed the idea.

"Why are you still bothering with that girl?" his father demanded, pacing the floorboards with a heavy, intimidating gait. "She was a scentless, wolfless nobody. Or..." The Alpha stopped, his amber eyes narrowing with dangerous suspicion. 

"Is she the one who did this to you? Did that little Omega somehow hire a witch to curse my heir?"

"No!" Owen croaked, his voice a raw, desperate rasp that tore at his throat. He forced himself to meet his father's furious gaze. "She wouldn't do this. Leah... she doesn't have a vicious bone in her body. It wasn't her."

The old, blind healer, who had remained silently in the corner of the room, slowly nodded his cloaked head. 

"The boy speaks the truth, Alpha. This curse... it was not cast by a single witch in a dark forest. It is an accumulation."

The room fell into a tense, heavy silence as the healer stepped closer to the bed, his milky eyes staring at something only he could see. 

"This dark magic is a manifestation of profound, collective hatred. It is the weight of countless broken souls, of tears shed in the dark, of curses whispered by those you have brutally wronged. The malice festered in the shadows for years, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike and crush his body entirely."

The healer turned his blind gaze toward Owen. "If you wish to survive this, young Alpha, there is no potion I can brew. You must untangle the knots of hatred yourself. You must seek out those you have broken and offer genuine atonement. You must apologize. If this... Leah... is the heaviest of your guilt, then seeing her is precisely what you must do."

"Preposterous!" The Alpha’s roar violently shook the crystal chandelier above them. "An Alpha Heir does not bow! He does not beg for forgiveness from the weak, especially not from an Omega who failed to present! It goes against every instinct, against the very laws of nature!"

But Owen tuned out his father's booming rage. Because beyond the desperate need to find a cure, beyond the terrifying reality of his impending death, he simply wanted to apologize to Leah.

For the past three years, not a single day had gone by where the guilt hadn't been eating him alive from the inside out. Staring at the ornate ceiling, Owen finally stripped away the suffocating pride of his rank and forced himself to look at the ugly truth. During high school, he had been a complete, unapologetic brat. 

When Leah had kissed him, when she had bared her vulnerable heart and confessed her love, it had terrified him. He had been so hopelessly comfortable in their dynamic, so selfishly reliant on her undivided attention, that her desire for something real had shattered his fragile control.

Instead of dealing with his own complex feelings, he had lashed out. He had used his Alpha heir authority to crush her into the dirt, discarding her to the wolves just to prove to himself that he didn't need her. He had disappointed her, betrayed her, and destroyed the only person who had ever truly loved the boy beneath the monster.

Now, realizing his life might be violently cut short, he needed to see her face one last time. He didn't even know where to begin apologizing to the rest of the pack; he had ruthlessly bullied, intimidated, and scarred so many people to maintain his iron grip on the hierarchy. 

Leah used to warn him. She used to sit with him on the bleachers, gently bandaging his knuckles after a fight, her soft voice telling him to be kinder, to be a better Alpha. He had never listened.

Rowena, unable to watch her beloved son wither away in agony, finally caved to his desperate pleas. The next afternoon, the heavy bedroom doors opened, and she ushered a young woman into the room.

It was Lexy. She had been one of Owen’s classmates, a Beta girl who had been somewhat close to Leah before the bullying had reached its absolute peak.

"I found her in the city," Jenna whispered, hovering anxiously near Owen's bedside. She turned to the young woman with pleading, tear-filled eyes. 

"Lexy, please. Look at what has happened to my son. He is dying. It is his absolute final wish to speak with Leah. You were her friend. Please, you must contact her and tell her to come."

Lexy stood near the foot of the massive four-poster bed. She looked down at the once-fearsome Alpha Heir, taking in his pale, sunken face, his trembling hands, and the unmistakable scent of decay rolling off his skin.

For a moment, the room was perfectly silent. Then, Lexy’s shoulders began to shake.

She didn't cry. Instead, a cold, hollow laugh slipped past her lips. The sound was incredibly jarring, entirely devoid of warmth or sympathy as it echoed off the high walls.

"Contact her?" Lexy asked, her voice dripping with a bitter, cynical venom that made Rowena flinch. 

She crossed her arms, staring directly into Owen’s wide, desperate blue eyes.

"I can't call her, Luna," Lexy said flatly, the amusement instantly dropping from her face to reveal a mask of pure ice. "No one can. Leah died three years ago."

The words slammed into Owen’s chest with the force of a speeding freight train. His heart violently stuttered in its cage. The remaining breath vanished from his lungs as the world around him completely shattered into absolute, blinding white noise.

Dead?

Leah is dead?