All Chapters of The Awakening : Chapter 11 - Chapter 19

19 Chapters

Lia’s POV

The darkness is my only witness.It wraps around me like a shroud, cold and absolute, pressing against my swollen throat and my cracked ribs and the places inside me that stopped hurting hours ago because they've gone numb. I lie on the straw, filthy, lice-ridden, damp and I listen to my own breathing rattle in and out of lungs that still remember being denied air.His hands.I can still feel them. The weight of his palms. The steadiness of his fingers. The way he squeezed like he was wringing water from stone, methodical, almost bored, as if strangling me was just another task on his daily list.You should have said yes.The words echo in the dark. I hear them in his voice, that low, conversational tone that terrified me more than any scream ever could. Because screaming means feeling. Screaming means losing control. But Kai of the Bloodmoon Clan doesn't lose control.He chooses.Every squeeze of his fingers. Every breath I couldn't take. Every second of agony was a choice he made, d

June’s POV

The stone corridor is cold beneath my bare feet.I didn't bother with slippers when I left the tower. Didn't bother with a robe or a guard or any of the trappings my title as Luna is supposed to afford me. I just walked. Down the spiral stairs, through the great hall, past the guards who bowed and murmured words I didn't hear.Because I heard him.The dungeon entrance looms before me, dark and damp and reeking of misery. Kai forbade me from being here. Said it wasn't a place for his Luna, his mate, his wife. Said the things that lived in the darkness weren't fit for my eyes.But I heard him.Not his words, not clearly. The stone is too thick, the distance too great. But I heard his voice. The tone he uses when he's trying to control something he can't. The edge that creeps in when he's losing a battle he didn't know he was fighting.And I heard her.Lia.Laughing.Even now. Even chained and beaten and locked in a cell. Even with my husband's hands around her throat,I saw the bruises w

Kai’s POV

"How long?" Her voice is quiet. Controlled. The voice of someone who's been practicing this question for weeks and is only now finding the courage to ask."How long what?""How long have you been going down there?" She turns her head just enough that I can see the profile of her face. The sharp line of her jaw. The tension in her cheek. "How long have you been visiting her in the dark while I sleep alone in our bed?"I should lie. I should tell her it's only been a few times. That it doesn't mean anything. That Lia is just a prisoner, just an enemy, just a problem I'm trying to solve.But June knows me. Not all of me, no one knows all of me, but she knows when I'm lying."Since the beginning," I say. "Since the night I locked her in that cell."June's hand drops from the door handle.She turns to face me fully, and I see her clearly for the first time since we left the dungeon. Her eyes are red-rimmed. Her lips are pressed into a thin, bloodless line. And her face, her beautiful, ge

Lia’s POV

The darkness swallows my laughter.It bounces off the damp stone walls, echoes back at me in fragments, broken and ugly and nothing like the sound I used to make as a girl. That laugh was light. Free. The kind of laugh that made June smile and say, "There she is. There's my Lia."This laugh is different.This laugh is a weapon.I press my forehead against the cold wall and let it come, the laughter, the tears, the terrible shaking that started in my chest and has spread to my hands, my shoulders, my throat. They mix together until I can't tell one from the other. Until I'm just a mess of sounds and salt water and the raw, jagged edges of a woman who's been broken too many times to count.He bared his fangs at her.Kai's wolf. The beast he keeps chained somewhere deep inside himself. The part of him that chose me, that wanted me, that still aches for me despite everything he's done.It bared its fangs at June.At his wife.At his mate.And I watched it happen. I couldn't see through th

Kai’s POV

"You want to tell me what happened?" Dorian's voice is low. Careful. The voice he uses when he's trying to coax a confession out of me."No.""Good. Because I don't actually care what happened." He shifts, turning to face me, and I feel the weight of his gaze even though I'm staring straight ahead. "I care about what you're going to do about it.""Nothing.""Nothing." He repeats the word like it tastes bad. "You're going to do nothing. About your wife. About your prisoner. About the fact that you're sitting on the floor of a hallway at midnight like a pup who lost his first fight."I don't answer.Because what is there to say? He's right. I've done nothing. I've been doing nothing for months, reacting, destroying, lashing out at anyone who gets close. There's no strategy here. No plan. Just the slow, inexorable unraveling of a man who never learned how to hold onto anything good.Dorian stands. Walks a few paces away. Then turns back to face me, his arms crossed over his chest."You

June’s POV

I walk to the mirror, the tall one in the corner, the one I use to check my appearance before Kai comes to bed, the one where I've spent months practicing smiles I don't feel.The woman staring back at me is a stranger.Her eyes are red-rimmed. Her lips are pale, bloodless, pressed into a thin line that looks more like a scar than a smile. The bite mark on her throat, his bite, his claim, his brand, stands out against her skin like a bruise that never healed.And her hands are shaking.Not with fear.With rage."She stole everything," I whisper to my reflection. The words come out raw, shredded, nothing like the soft, patient voice I've been using for months. "My past. My present. My mate."The reflection doesn't answer. It just watches me with hollow eyes, waiting for me to say the thing I've been too afraid to admit.She's going to steal my future too.The thought lands like a blade between my ribs.I press my palm against the cold glass, and for a moment, I imagine it's Lia's face

Kai’s POV

“I’ll try to make things right Dorian, it might not be all successful but we can work around it.”Dorian looked at me, worry, ease, tension and fear all settling into his facial features. A slow, genuine smile broke through his rugged beard, softening the hard lines of a warrior’s face.“This, Kai, is the man I grew up with.”His words tasted like ash and hope all at once. He patted my shoulder, a heavy, grounding weight, before turning to leave the hallway. As his footsteps faded down the stone corridor, the silence of the pack house rushed in to suffocate me.‘The man he grew up with.’If only Dorian knew how hollow that man felt. For days, I had been a ghost driven by a singular, burning obsession: justice. I had built a fortress of ice around my heart, convinced that burning the world down was the only way to keep my people safe.And Lia and June had been the casualty of that war.June was my mate. The Moon Goddess’s perfect design, a gentle soul whose laughter used to have the

Lia’s POV

The silence that followed my threat was absolute. I watched the mighty Alpha Kai, the man who had frozen me out of his life for months, stand paralyzed before me. His hand hung in the air between us for a fraction of a second before dropping uselessly to his side. The raw agony in his eyes was almost beautiful.For the past few days, I had been the weak one. I had been the pathetic, arranged wife weeping in a massive, empty bed, praying that my fated-mate-rejected husband would see me as something more than a transactional merger. I had watched him pine after June, a ghost who didn't even want him, while he used my father’s wealth to rebuild his pack’s crumbling infrastructure.But the weeping girl was dead. Kai had killed her himself.Looking at him now, shattered, desperate, and pleading for a forgiveness he hadn't earned, a cold, brilliant realization washed over me. Pride was a dangerous thing. It had blinded Kai, and now, it was blinding him again. He thought I was just angry. H

Kai’s POV

The question hung in the humid air of the bedroom, heavy and vibrating with a fragile, heartbreaking weight. “Look at me and tell me the truth, do you really love me?”Her lower lip trembled, and those large, tear-filled obsidian eyes stared into mine, searching for a lifeline. I felt the breath leave my lungs. A brief pause stretched between us, a microsecond where the universe seemed to stop spinning, waiting on my answer. My wolf roared in agreement, a thunderous, undeniable affirmation that echoed through every fiber of my being. “Yes,” I breathed, the word torn from the deepest, most honest depths of my chest. “Yes, Lia. I love you. I am so sorry it took me getting broken to see that you are my entire world.”The moment the words left my lips, the last remaining distance between us vanished. I didn't wait for her to reply. I couldn't. I bent my head and captured her lips with mine.The kiss was instantaneous, explosive, and entirely consumed by a raw, desperate hunger. It wasn

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