Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Bride They Sacrificed: Reborn To Love And Kill: Kabanata 181 - Kabanata 190

For several long seconds after Lucian stopped and looked at Adrian, nobody in the room moved. Nobody seemed capable of it. The atmosphere had changed too suddenly and too completely. One moment, the villa had been filled with laughter and pointless arguments over card games. The next, it felt as though all the air had been sucked from the room. Adrian remained exactly where he stood, frozen. His eyes never left Lucian's face. He kept waiting for something for a joke or a sarcastic comment. Or perhaps even a smirk. Some indication that this was all a misunderstanding. That Lucian was simply in a terrible mood. That there was a logical explanation. But there wasn't. Because Lucian wasn't looking at him the way friends looked at each other. He wasn't even looking at him the way enemies looked at each other. There was no fire in his eyes. Nothing that personal. Just empty. The emptiness was what frightened Adrian. The complete absence of warmth. As though someone had taken

The silence that followed Alex's apology settled over the villa like a suffocating weight. Nobody seemed capable of moving, speaking, or even thinking clearly. Angela sat curled against her mother, her earlier breakdown reduced to quiet, exhausted tears. She had cried so much that there was little energy left in her body, yet the pain remained visible in every trembling breath and every tear that continued to slip down her cheeks. Her eyes were distant and hollow, fixed on nothing at all, as though part of her mind had retreated somewhere far away to escape the reality unfolding around her. The sight disturbed everyone in the room. Robert Blackwood could barely recognize his daughter. Alex looked consumed by guilt, unable to meet anyone's eyes for long. Lucian had locked himself away upstairs, carrying a cold emptiness that frightened even those who knew him best. Somehow all three were connected by the same unseen disaster, yet nobody could explain what had happen

The next morning, the villa no longer felt like the paradise it had been only days earlier. The transformation was impossible to miss. Even the ocean beyond the windows seemed different. The waves still rolled toward the shore in their endless rhythm, the morning sun still scattered gold across the water, and the familiar scent of salt still drifted through the open windows with the breeze. Yet none of it carried the same warmth. The villa that had once echoed with laughter, teasing, and playful chaos now felt strangely hollow. Only a few days ago, the halls had been filled with running footsteps, exaggerated arguments, and adults pretending to scold the younger generation while secretly smiling at their antics. Now, an oppressive silence ruled the house. It sat heavily in everyone's chest, impossible to ignore and impossible to escape. Nobody fully understood what had happened, but they all knew something had broken. Whatever it was, it had taken a piece of Lucian with i

TWO DAYS LATER! The villa remained beautiful, sunlight poured through enormous windows, the ocean shimmered in the distance, and the scent of flowers drifted through the air, but none of it mattered. The place felt less like a luxury retreat and more like a cage filled with people who no longer knew how to act around one another. Even Felix and Lisa, whose combined talent for creating chaos could usually survive any disaster, had finally run out of distractions. Sitting together in one of the living rooms, they watched Lucian through the open terrace doors where he sat with a book in his hands. At this point, neither of them knew whether he had actually finished dozens of books over the past two days or whether he had been staring at the same page for hours. Lisa folded her arms and sighed. "This is bad." Felix nodded with unusual seriousness. "This is apocalypse-level bad." She glanced at him. "Zombie apocalypse?" He pointed dramatically toward Lucian. "Worse. He hasn

Angela's heart hammered so violently against her ribs that she was certain everyone on the beach could hear it. The distance between her and Lucian wasn't far at all. A minute. Maybe less. Yet every step felt like crossing an entire ocean. The sand shifted beneath her feet as she walked, forcing her to slow down, and somehow that only made everything worse. It gave her too much time to think. For the first time in her life, Angela understood what true regret felt like. Not guilt or embarrassment. Not the temporary remorse people felt after making bad choices. This was different. This was the kind of regret that settled deep inside your chest and stayed there. The kind that followed every breath. The kind that made you wish you could turn back time even when you knew it was impossible. The ocean breeze lifted strands of her hair as she continued walking, her trembling fingers curling into fists at her sides. "Please," she whispered to herself. She wasn't even sure what s