Chapter 5: Nothing but a debt

FABIAN’S POV

I slammed the door hard behind me and leaned against the wooden frame for a moment.

My blood was still boiling, and my jaw hadn’t unclenched in hours. However, the stiffness of my muscles barely registered with me.

All I could think about was the sight of Avionna sitting on that bed, looking at me with wide, frightened eyes, and the way her body had trembled beneath my fingers.

For years, I had imagined what it would be like to finally meet with Elara Vale’s daughter. I had imagined that the first thing I would do was put a knife to her throat or rip my claws through her heart.

A lot of inhuman ideas had crossed my mind, different ways I wanted to make her understand what it felt like to lose everything.

What I never imagined was that the Moon Goddess would make her my mate.

Mate.

I despised that word with every fiber of my being, and it was even more ludicrous that it was a word I now had to use for a woman I completely abhorred.

Ten years ago, I’d buried that word with Hillary and my child, the child I never got to meet because the healer that was meant to save him had killed him instead.

Many times, I wondered if I would have felt differently if I’d only lost the child and not Hillary but each time, I realised that I would have lost her either way.

Before her death, Hillary had spoken so much about our family, about how much she anticipated the birth of our child. She had even had me running around fixing up a room for him as early as her first trimester.

Surviving alone would have broken her, and I would have been left with merely her shell.

And that was why I could never forgive Elara Vale. She had taken everything from me, and decimated my entire existence.

But now, the Moon Goddess had handed me her daughter. Perhaps this was fate’s idea of retribution. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.

I had accepted Avionna for one sole reason even though I’d wanted to kill her on sight and it was to make her suffer. Immediate death was an early release I could never offer her.

If I killed her, she would never know what it felt to wake up every morning with an emptiness that would never be filled. She would never know how it felt to live with a wound that would never heal no matter how it was stitched.

Maybe that was why she had dared to look at me with that tiny flicker of hope in her eyes tonight. I had seen it. Especially when Martha welcomed her.

It had almost made me laugh, and even now, a bitter smile crossed my lips as I pushed off the wall, beginning to walk down the hallway.

Just now, I told her but I didn’t think she fully understood that she was nothing but a debt to me.

A debt I absolutely intended to collect.

The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps ascending the stairs reached me before I even got to it. Seconds later, Cicero appeared in front of me.

My Beta had a wild look on his face, chest panting as though he’d run the entire way here.

“Have you lost your mind?” He demanded. “Why would you bring her here?”

“No, forget that,” he shook his head vehemently in the same breath, eyes flashing as he looked behind me. “Where is she?”

Without waiting for my response, he marched forward, crossing the space between us in seconds. “I’m going to kill that bitch.”

I grabbed him before he could walk past me, forcefully yanking him back when he tried to resist my hold.

“Don’t you dare,” I growled.

Cicero’s eyes flashed with fury. “She is Elara Vale’s daughter!”

“I know exactly who she is.”

“Then why is she here?” His voice cracked, the anger giving way to something far more painful. “You should have killed her, Fabian. You should have killed her the moment you realized she was your mate.”

My grip tightened around his arm.

“Enough.”

“No.” He ripped his arm from my hold. “Hillary was my sister.”

The words silenced me.

Cicero’s chest rose and fell rapidly, his eyes glistening with an emotion he would rather die than show.

“She was my family long before she became your Luna. We grew up together. I knew her before you did. I knew every stupid dream she had, every little thing that made her happy. I was there when she met you. I watched her fall in love with you.”

His voice broke. “…I watched you bury her.”

My jaw clenched. I wished he’d stop talking, but Cicero wasn’t done.

“I watched you become a different man after that night, and I stayed because I knew you were hurting. But this…” He shook his head, disbelief written all over his face. “This is madness.”

“Why else would you accept the daughter of the woman who killed Hillary and your child?”

For a long moment, I stared at him without speaking. Cicero’s gaze didn’t waver. It took another minute before I responded.

“I accepted her because I needed her here.”

He stared at me, brows pulling together. “What could you possibly need her for?”

I clamped my lips together, saying nothing.

His expression hardened. “If you don’t intend to make her your Luna, then why is she here? You should kill her!”

“No.” I cut in sharply and his frown deepened. “No?”

I held his stare, enunciating my words carefully. “I will never kill Avionna.”

Cicero’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “Fabian…”

“She’ll live.” I interrupted him again, my expression unmoving.

There was no anger left in me, no grief, no mercy. After ten years, I had learned how to bury every emotion beneath the same cold emptiness that had settled in my eyes the night Hillary died.

“She’ll live long enough to lose everything she thinks she has found here,” I continued, my voice frighteningly calm.

Cicero’s brows lifted, surprise emerging in his eyes while I stepped closer. For the first time since he arrived, the fury in his eyes seemed to falter.

“And when I’m finished with her…” I paused, watching the realization dawn in his eyes. “She’ll understand why death would have been the kinder fate.”