Semua Bab Alpha's Regret: Mommy, Daddy, We Want to Be Together!: Bab 271 - Bab 280

NATHAN'S POV For the second time, I opened my eyes in her dream. But this time, I wasn’t just another version of myself conjured from Sophia’s memories. I was… me. Fully. The first time I’d entered this world, I’d gotten lost – lulled into the illusion, the peace of it, the dangerous perfection that felt so close to what we’d both wanted. I didn’t even remember when it started slipping. That was the thing about enchantments like this – they didn’t drag you under. They sang you to sleep. I heard the laughter. I’d seen the twins playing, their cheeks flushed with joy. I’d looked into her eyes and seen no trace of the pain I’d caused her. And for one blissful moment, I let myself believe it was real. But that version of me – the version she dreamed up – he was built to stay. To keep her locked in this golden cage. Not me. It had taken everything I had to claw my way back to awareness, to fight off the numbness that crept in like vines around my mind. Elara’s warning echoed in my

SOPHIA’S POVI didn’t sleep.Not because I didn’t try – I did. I lay next to him, heartbeat pressed to heartbeat, my fingers laced with his like they belonged there. And they did. But every time I closed my eyes, I’d see his – wide, wild, vulnerable that night – from the time before the spell retook him. The moment he was still in there.And now… he wasn’t.I knew it before I opened my eyes that morning. My heart fluttered slowly, still holding on to some ridiculous hope that he had won the battle again and was Nathan – My Nathan – again.But I was wrong. The silence had changed. It wasn’t stillness. It was hollow.Nathan was already moving around the room — dressed, cheerful, soft voiced again.“Morning.” He said, turning toward me with a smile that once would’ve made me melt. It was his – the version Victoria had designed. Tender. Polished. Completely unaware.And it broke something in me.“Sleep okay?” He asked, crossing to me with a mug of something warm. “You kept reaching for me

SOPHIA’S POV“Oh,” she purred, her voice thick like syrup. “There you are, love. I was starting to worry you’d gotten lost.”Nathan stiffened beside me.And just like that, the air dropped ten degrees.Victoria glided into the kitchen as if she owned it, the hem of her molten gold gown whispering across the tile. Behind her, the walls pulsed and flickered, revealing glimpses of decay beneath the dream – scorched wood, broken glass, things that had no place in a fucking memory. She was the only thing still fully formed — and that was what scared me most. She hadn’t cracked. She was still holding on.And her eyes — Goddess, those eyes — were fixed on Nathan like he belonged to her.“Don’t move.” I murmured to him without turning, feeling the rise and fall of his breath beside me. “She’ll try to pull you under again.”“I won’t go.” he said, voice low, trembling. “Not again.”Victoria’s smile grew — slow, indulgent and cruel. Oh so very cruel.“Oh Nathan,” she said, her tone dripping mock

NATHAN'S POVThe moon rose like a bruise – swollen, wrong, and casting light that didn’t comfort. It only made the shadows stretch longer.We’d moved from the clearing. Not because it felt safer, but because Sophia needed warmth, and I needed something to pace around that didn’t smell like smoke and dried blood.Elara’s cabin sat a bit further in the woods. Small, warded, and built like it had withstood every war time had ever thrown at it. Sophia curled on the couch now, a blanket pulled over her shoulders, eyes dull from too little rest and too much grief. She wasn’t asleep. Not really. But she wasn’t with us either – not entirely.I knew that look. I’d worn it for weeks when the mate bond had been severed. It was the expression of someone stuck in the past and terrified of the future.“She won’t keep them in one place,” Elara was saying as she laid down a new set of markers on the table, mapping symbols I didn’t recognize with swift, precise strokes. How does she even do it? Who wa

SOPHIA'S POV“Oh just have it!” The voice sounded uncharacteristically annoyed.The fire crackled low in Elara’s hearth, the only sound in the otherwise quiet cabin. Outside, the wind howled like some ancient creature mourning its dead, but it was the silence inside that unsettled me most.Everyone had gone still when Elara handed me the mirror. We all just froze.Not just any mirror – the mirror. No one had been expecting that move – I most certainly had not expected it. But I had a feeling Elara was the type of woman to deal with her problems head on. She handed it to me like it wasn't the mirror I hadn't wanted to touch since waking up from Victoria's twisted realities.My fingers curled tightly around it now. Cold. Heavier than I thought it would be. The edges dug into my palms like it knew what it was about to show me – and that I wasn’t ready.“You don’t have to do this tonight.” Nathan said quietly.His voice was warm, grounding. But I didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. I was too af