She Stole My Bloodline, My Alpha, And My Death Sentence Chapter 08

She Stole My Bloodline, My Alpha, And My Death Sentence Chapter 08

“Mom! Mom, come look!” Calla screamed as she burst out of the bathroom and collapsed into her mother’s arms, both of them sobbing.

The youth and beauty that should have been hers all along had finally returned.

At the same time, in the valley.

Elara’s younger sister, Ione Ashford, sat staring at the elegant harp in front of her, her face twisted with pain.

Those hands that had been born to play the harp would seize into violent spasms the moment they touched the strings.

Her family had given up on her. She had been crushed beneath the shadow of her sister’s stolen brilliance.

Tonight, she had planned to touch the strings one last time and then walk away from this stage forever.

But when her fingers descended, the spasm she had braced for never came.

The sensation of fingertips on strings was crisp, fluid, sure.

She played one chord, then another. Clear. Perfect. Not a single falter.

Ione Ashford sat motionless for a long moment. Then the tears broke free.

Her fingers flew across the strings, and a soaring, thundering rendition of the Moonlight Sonata rang through the valley.

The justice that belonged to her had arrived late. But it had never been absent.

As for Corvin, his body lurched violently. He dropped to his knees and vomited a wash of bright blood across the floor.

The pain of a severed mate bond finally crashed into him all at once.

The instant Elara died, the emotional distortion created by the exchange vanished completely.

He remembered at last who his true mate was.

He ran toward the wolf keep without a thought for anything else, his heart slamming against his ribs.

When morning came, I saw his silhouette outside the keep.

He had lost a great deal of weight. The proud, aristocratic air he once carried was gone. For a moment, when I looked at him, I froze. It was as though we had both been thrown back to those days when nothing stood between us.

But too much had changed.

My wolf did not react to his scent anymore. She lay inside me, lazy and indifferent, her tail swishing idly.

He pressed a hand to his chest and suddenly understood that the mate bond between us had shattered. He clenched his jaw, let out a low, broken whimper, but did not step closer. He turned and walked away.

After that, he watched me from a distance. He never intruded.

Until one day, the first heavy snow of winter fell across the forest.

I stepped out of the wolf keep, and he finally could not hold himself back any longer. He came toward me with quick strides, his hands red and raw from the cold, holding out a bouquet of moonbloom.

“Phoebe—” His voice was wrecked, and his eyes could not quite meet mine. “It’s cold out. I heard you’ve been attending the pack meetings. Do you need my help?”

Pain and regret filled his gaze, barely contained.

Once he started talking, he could not stop.

“I know I was wrong. I don’t know what happened to me back then. It was like something had taken over my mind. Can you forgive me? Can we start over? I swear I’ll protect you with my life from now on. I don’t understand how I forgot that you’re my mate. I don’t understand why I rejected you. That day outside the hospital room, I heard the truth, and I was furious. All I wanted was to storm in and make Elara pay. But the second I saw her, my wolf was pulled right back under her spell. I was wrong. We’ve lost so much time—”

I did not take the moonbloom. I just looked at him.

At this face that had once meant everything to me. And I felt nothing. Not a single ripple.

“Corvin, you didn’t do anything wrong. You were under a spell.” My voice was gentle, as if I were simply stating a fact. “I know that wasn’t who you really are.”

Corvin’s eyes lit up, bright and desperate, as if he had just been thrown a lifeline. “Then does that mean we can—”

“No.” I cut him off, my gaze clear and unflinching. “I’m not the Phoebe who needed your protection anymore. I’m healthy now, and I have my own path to walk.”

I pulled my coat tighter and stepped past him. “Go home. It’s too cold out here. Stop watching me walk away and start looking at your own road.”

Corvin stood frozen.

He looked down at the moonbloom in his hands and finally understood what I meant.

I did not hate him. I had simply flown toward a sky he could not yet reach.

If he kept clinging to the idea of being my knight, he would never be worthy of standing beside me.

His eyes red, Corvin called out to my retreating figure, his voice ringing through the falling snow. “Phoebe! I’ll catch up to you! I’ll become someone who deserves to stand at your side!”

And I kept walking through the snow, heading toward the first pack meeting of winter.

I was an Omega now. I needed to bundle up more to fight the cold. But the skills I had built over a lifetime had not gone anywhere. I had earned back the respect of the pack on my own terms.

As for Corvin and me, the road ahead was long.

Maybe one day, when we truly stood side by side at the summit, we could sit down in peace and reminisce about the silly things we did as

kids.

Or maybe we would simply become better versions of ourselves in
our own separate corners of this vast world.

Who knows?

It was no longer the most important thing in my life.

I pressed my hand against the left side of my chest. Beneath my
palm, a strong and vital heart beat steadily, not for anyone else, but
for me and for the wide-open future still waiting ahead.