The Lunar Curse: A Second Chance With Alpha Draven - Chapter 509

Chapter 509: From Her Lips
[Draven].

Meredith didn’t answer right away.

She lowered her head, her silver hair slipping forward to hide her face. I didn’t rush her. I let the silence breathe, even when I heard the faint hitch in her breath—one soft sniff she probably hoped I wouldn’t notice.

I noticed everything.

Rhovan stirred within me, alert but quiet. “Let her speak,” he urged. “She is already bleeding.”

I stayed where I was, hands resting on my knees, forcing myself not to reach for her. I had a weakness for her tears. I always had. And if I let myself move now, I knew I would soften too quickly.

After a moment, she lifted her head. Her eyes were glassy, but steady.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, but this time she didn’t stop there. “I’m sorry for not telling you the things that happened to me recently… and instead letting you find out on your own.”

I kept my expression neutral, even as something tight shifted in my chest.

“I’m sorry,” she continued, her voice quieter now, more careful, “for making you feel less. And unimportant. For not letting you celebrate the wins with me.”

The words landed. Every single one of them. And yet, they weren’t what I wanted.

I didn’t need apologies. I didn’t need guilt dressed up as remorse. What I needed was understanding.

I needed to know why she had chosen silence when she had always told me everything else.

I stayed quiet.

Rhovan nudged again, gentler this time. “Listen. Don’t interrupt.”

Meredith seemed to take my silence as permission.

“There is more to me being able to wolf out,” she said slowly. “My plan was to wait until we returned home, then explain everything to you properly. Because there is a lot.”

The word ‘home’ settled something uneasy inside me. She meant the Oatrun estate. She meant us.

She went on before I could respond.

“But knowing you had seen Valmora, knowing the betrayal you must have felt,” she swallowed, “I thought it was wiser to come clean now. Even if it’s hard.”

She met my eyes then, fully. “I’ve been keeping this secret my entire life.”

I already knew what she was about to tell me.

I had pieced it together in fragments—through scent, through power, through the way the land itself responded to her.

Still, hearing it from her mattered more than any conclusion I had drawn on my own. So I remained silent and waited.

Her words landed slowly, one after another, like blows I didn’t brace for. “I’m not a full werewolf.”

The world seemed to narrow to the sound of her voice.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, impatient with herself, then forced herself to continue.

I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I let her have the space she needed, even as the mate bond carried every sharp edge of her pain straight into my chest.

“I have fae blood in my veins,” she said. “I’ve known for years since the time I lived with my grandmother.”

Her voice trembled, but it didn’t break.

“My grandma told me. She told me she was a fae too.” Meredith sniffed, eyes glistening. “Back then, I didn’t understand it. I barely accepted it myself. But she made me promise never to tell anyone.”

She paused, swallowing hard. “It wasn’t difficult to keep the secret,” she went on, quieter now, “because I had nothing to prove it. No powers. No signs. Nothing.”

I stayed still. I stayed silent. I could feel the weight of what she was saying settling into place—pieces aligning that had never fit before.

She blinked rapidly, forcing back another wave of tears.

“I’m the only one among my siblings with silver hair,” she said. “Just like my grandma. I’m the only one with fae blood.”

That explained it.

Silver hair wasn’t unheard of among wolves, but it was rare. Rare enough to be admired, not questioned. Rare enough to hide a truth no one thought to look for. I felt a strange, hollow understanding settle in my chest.

Even now, I didn’t interrupt her.

“Even my father doesn’t know,” she added softly. “He doesn’t know his own mother is fae. Grandma hid it well. That’s why she lives here. With the others who are left.”

The word left carried more grief than she said aloud.

She looked down, shoulders drawing in on themselves, then lifted her gaze to me again.

“I know you’re angry,” she said. “When you talked about needing the faes—about the Great Wall, the runes, the war—I still didn’t say anything.”

Her voice wavered, but her eyes held mine.

“I couldn’t,” she said. “The faes are in hiding for a reason. And that truth… it wasn’t mine to give. I wouldn’t dare speak of them without my grandmother’s permission.”

She exhaled shakily. “That’s why I never told you then.”

I absorbed every word.

I felt the ache in my chest deepen—not sharp, not explosive, but heavy, complicated, human. I understood her reasoning far more than she realized, and that understanding only made everything harder.

I didn’t stop her. I didn’t forgive her yet either. I waited because I knew she wasn’t finished.

“Back to me,” she said, sniffing again. “You already know my wolf’s name, Valmora, and her connection to Serena, the Wolf Queen.”

The words settled heavily in my chest.

Valmora.

I already knew what that name meant. I had always known.

She went on, unaware, or perhaps fully aware, of the storm unravelling inside me. But my mind drifted backwards, dragged into memory whether I wanted it to or not.

I remembered the night in my study at Duskmoor—her asking casually, almost innocently, about Valmora. About Serena.

I had told her the story myself.

I had told her Valmora was the Wolf Queen’s wolf, long destroyed along with her mistress. I had spoken with certainty. With finality. And she had listened—quiet, attentive—never once correcting me.

Then she had asked about the faes. “Are there any left?”