My Sister Stole My Mate, And I Let Her - Chapter 224

Chapter 224: Chapter 224 MOON GODDESS
SERAPHINA’S POV

The darkness was weightless. Like drifting in warm water.

I vaguely remembered collapsing. Vaguely remembered rain and pain and Kieran’s ragged, panicked voice calling my name.

But I felt detached from those memories, from that life.

Floating. Free.

Then, suddenly, the darkness flickered, and memories began stitching themselves across the void like shards of stained glass catching light.

A laugh—Daniel’s, age four, chubby cheeks smeared with frosting as he proudly plunged his hand into his birthday cake.

The Snowfield Arena; the rush of adrenaline as I mounted Ashar’s majestic form.

The night my father died; the cold look in Kieran’s eyes as he said, “I want a divorce.”

The thunder of applause and cheers as a disembodied voice announced, “And the champions of the Latent Spark Trials are OTS Team One!”

The desperate plea in Kieran’s eyes that night on my porch as he held my hands. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

Scenes overlapped, fractured, replaying out of order—old hurts beside old joys, triumph beside agony. My life condensed into flashes of sound and color.

The montage shifted with an almost physical sense of movement.

Abruptly, I felt myself swept into a different current. I realized the memories weren’t mine anymore.

I stood above a small bed, and it took me a moment to recognize the fair-haired toddler sleeping soundly in the bed as myself.

Round-faced, impossibly small, tucked under a patchwork blanket I dimly remembered chewing on when I had nightmares.

The room smelled like lavender and fresh wood.

And my parents were there.

Not distant. Not cold. Not indifferent.

My mother knelt beside the bed, fingers trembling as she brushed a curl off my forehead. No disdain. No disappointment. Just a mother’s quiet ache.

My father stood behind her, one hand on her back, the other cupped over my tiny hand.

“Please,” my mother whispered, voice quivering. “Let her be spared.”

My father didn’t speak, but his thumb stroked over my knuckles with a gentleness I’d never associated with him in real life.

My chest tightened.

This had to be another cruel trick of my mind, right? Another desperate attempt to give myself the love I never received.

But before I could wallow in more heartache, the image dissolved like mist.

I blinked, taking in the training courtyard. Years later, but still years before now. I recognized the uniforms, the cracked pavement beneath the oak tree where I used to eat alone.

Two older students shoved a younger me against a wall. I winced, remembering the resulting injury on my shoulder that had me using my left hand for two weeks.

The memory followed the boys as they left, laughing among themselves, as I crumbled into a heap behind them, crying.

They turned a corner, and there was teenage Ethan, face carved in fury, jaw clenched hard enough to crack bone.

His hand shot out, grabbing one of the bullies by the collar and lifting him clean off his feet.

“Touch my sister again,” he threatened, voice low and lethal, “and I’ll fucking destroy you.”

With that, he threw the bully into his friend, and they both crashed to the floor in a pathetic heap.

Ethan didn’t wait to see their reactions. Just walked away with rigid shoulders, fists shaking.

I swallowed hard.

He…defended me? Why? Had he always?

The scene faded again, melting away before the ache that bloomed in my chest could settle.

And then I was in the Nightfang Alpha residence hallway. My old home.

Daniel’s bedroom door stood in front of me.

Somehow, inexplicably, I knew what day it was: Kieran’s and my first anniversary.

I knew that on the other side of the door, I was crying silently into a pillow, trying not to wake Daniel, only a baby then, cradled beside me as I wrote all my fantasies into a journal.

And outside the door…

Kieran.

Just standing there, frozen. He looked younger. Harder. His jaw tense, frustration furrowed into every line of his face.

He hesitated.

Lifted his hand.

Paused.

“Go in,” I called out, even though he couldn’t hear me. “I was waiting for you. Go in.”

He lowered his hand.

And walked away.

I felt the anguish of that night ignite inside me all over again.

“If you had come in,” I whispered to his retreating form, “would everything have changed?”

Kieran disappeared into the shadows, and the hallway dissolved with him.

Then came the battlefield. I had never been here, but I recognized it immediately: Frostbane boundary grounds.

Edward Lockwood’s last stand.

I was suddenly running, feet pounding into hard-packed earth, my breath ripping out of me as I chased after him. Wolves howled in the distance. War cries cracked the air like lightning.

My father marched forward, shoulders squared, sword strapped to his back, determination emanating off him like heat.

“Father, wait—stop!” I screamed.

He paused mid-step.

His head turned. Not fully, just slightly, as though he felt something tug at him. His brow wrinkled, his eyes narrowed like he was trying to see through a thick veil.

“Strange,” he murmured.

Then he faced forward and charged into the mist.

“No!” I lunged for him, reaching with everything I had.

My hands passed straight through his silhouette.

I fell to my knees, tears burning hot down my face as that world, too, dissolved around me.

When the mist cleared, I stood barefoot on moss.

The forest surrounding me was quiet, almost eerily so. Soft light filtered through endless canopies, and the air smelled like fresh rain and blooming moonflowers.

Leaves glowed faintly, branches humming with a magic that felt more like…presence than power.

And that presence was calling me forward—without words, without command. Just a pull. A knowing.

I walked.

My bare feet brushed dew-soaked ferns, every step lighter than the last. The forest welcomed me, parting soundlessly, trees arching as if in reverence.

The ground beneath shimmered like stars embedded in moss.

My heart thrummed with nervous uncertainty.

At the center of an open glade bathed in silver luminescence stood a woman in flowing midnight robes, hair long and pale as moonlight.

Her eyes were dark and bright at the same time, like they held galaxies. My knees nearly buckled under the weight of her presence that pressed against my very soul.

I didn’t need to be told who she was.

“Moon Goddess.”

Her answering smile was warm, gentle, serene.

“Finally, Seraphina,” she said, voice like a thousand distant bells, soft but resonant, “you found your way here like I knew you would.”

“Is this real?” My voice was barely above a whisper, quivering with awe.

“More real than the shadows that have haunted you,” she replied.

She extended a hand—open, inviting, maternal in a way that made every wound inside me ache.

“Come, child.”

I hesitated.

“What am I doing here?” I asked, shakily.

Her expression softened further, filled with something between pride and sympathy.

“I have watched you since the moment you took your first breath. You are one of my most luminous children, Seraphina.”

I blinked, stunned.

“That’s not…possible.”

Her hand fell to her side, every movement as if she were in slow motion. “Why would you say that?”

“My…my mother said I was destined to be ordinary,” I whispered. “It was prophesied.”

A breeze rustled through the glade—warm, but edged with sadness.

“Oh, child,” the Moon Goddess sighed. “I pour equal love and potential into every wolf I create. No worth is ever predetermined.”

My breath caught.

“So…I wasn’t born insignificant?”

“You were born possibility,” she said. “What others believed spoke only of their limits, not yours.”

My hands clenched into fists.

“Then…why did I suffer?” I asked in a broken voice, my throat tight. “Why was I different?”

Her eyes glimmered—not with pity, but sorrow.

“I know,” she murmured. “And for that, I am sorry. I never wished hardship upon you. But look at you, child. You overcame all those challenges; you fought through the prejudice and made something of yourself.”

I laughed, bitter and sharp.

“So that makes what I went through okay? You think a soldier who was injured at war would rather have a Purple Heart medal or his blown-off legs back?”

The goddess blinked—then laughed softly, a sound like wind through chimes.

“You truly are one of my fiercest daughters.”

The worst part is that she didn’t sound condescending or patronizing. She seemed genuinely proud of me.

I stared at her, a storm of emotion raging inside me—validation, anger, grief, relief, confusion, all colliding at once.

“What now?” I asked quietly. “Why bring me here?”

Her smile was like a thousand stars winking to life. “I have a gift for you. There’s someone I want you to meet. Properly.”

She stepped aside, and the trees behind her parted like curtains.

A wolf emerged.

Massive. Silver-furred. Eyes burning like bright amethyst. Her aura rolled off her like ancient tides—powerful, steady, familiar in a way that rooted straight into my marrow.

My breath stopped and quickened at the same time.

“Alina.”