Chapter 48: Sense

Chapter 48: Sense

🌙𝐋𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐡

Bile raced up my throat in an instant. I slammed my hand against my mouth but the guard paid no mind to my reaction.

I tried to steady myself, my chest already heaving.

His mother?

But she was dead, that was what he... told... me...

It sank in. Of course, he lied. Like he lied about everything else. His identity, who he was, where he was from...

I had to learn to catch up or I would end up with another hand around my throat.

I pushed down the little breakfast I had managed to keep down despite my nerves.

The guard continued. "But the Alpha said that you are well within your rights not to entertain them. They will be sent back if that is what you would prefer."

Without waiting for my reply, he pivoted on his heel and left me there. Still reeling.

I closed the door with shaking hands. My only thought was what he wanted, bringing his mother here to see me. My neck began to itch again, the feeling of entrapment and helplessness came unbidden even though I had the option of not coming down to see them.

Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?

First, he trampled on my heart, then he accused me of being desperate enough to come looking for him in a world I didn’t even know existed. I made my stance clear and gave him his ring—and my finger. Still, he refused to leave me be.

I just found out that I might die at the hands of Vladimir’s scorned lover, and now my former one was knocking at my door wanting an audience with me.

"And here I was thinking my life was a disaster before," I found myself muttering to Kaia.

"It was," Kaia replied dryly. "It just had fewer supernatural complications."

I almost laughed, but it came out more like a strangled sob. I pressed my forehead against the cool wood of the door, trying to breathe through the panic clawing at my chest.

"What do I do?" I whispered.

"What do you want to do?"

"Run. Hide. Pretend none of this is happening."

"But you won’t."

She was right. I wouldn’t. Because running hadn’t saved me before, and it wouldn’t save me now. And some twisted part of me—the part that had spent months wondering what I’d done wrong, why he’d hurt me so horribly—needed to know why he was here.

I pushed away from the door and looked at myself in the mirror across the room. The iridescent dress still clung to me from this morning’s disaster of a wedding attempt. My hip throbbed just a little. The crescent moon tiara sat crooked in my hair.

I looked like a bride who’d been left at the altar.

How fitting.

"Fine," I said aloud, straightening my spine. "If he wants to see me, he can."

I didn’t bother changing. Let him see the wedding dress. Let him see what Vladimir had tried to give me—protection, however cold and transactional. Let him see that I’d moved on, even if "moving on" meant accepting a death match.

"That’s my girl," Kaia murmured approvingly.

I grabbed my mother’s urn from where I’d set it on the dresser, cradling it against my chest like armor before putting it back. Then I opened the door and headed downstairs.

To face another man who’d lied to me.

---

I descended the stairs slowly, each step echoing in the cavernous space. My heart hammered against my ribs, the iridescent fabric of my dress catching the light and shifting from silver to blue with every movement.

They were all waiting in the sitting room.

Caesar stood near the fireplace, still dressed in the same dark formal attire he’d worn to the disastrous wedding ceremony. He looked composed, unruffled, as if his careful manipulation hadn’t just unraveled hours ago. Beside him stood a woman—older, but beautiful in that timeless, untouchable way that spoke of generations of noble breeding. Her clothes were simple, elegant, nothing ostentatious, yet somehow they screamed royalty louder than any crown could.

His mother.

And then there was Vladimir, seated on the leather sofa, arms crossed over his chest, his glacier eyes tracking my every step down the stairs. His expression was unreadable, but frost clung to the edges of the furniture near him.

All three of them watched me.

The weight of their gazes made my knees buckle for just a moment. I grabbed the banister to steady myself, heat flooding my cheeks.

Then Vladimir moved. A simple gesture—he patted the seat beside him once, almost imperceptibly.

Relief washed through me so suddenly I nearly stumbled again. I made my way to him and sat, the cold emanating from his body oddly comforting. I was beside him. Opposite Caesar and his lies.

I lifted my chin, forcing myself to meet Caesar’s dark eyes.

"What do you want?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.

Caesar’s mother studied me with an intensity that made my skin prickle, but it was Caesar who spoke first.

"What do you want?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.

Caesar’s expression shifted, his composure cracking to reveal something harder underneath. "What do I think I’m doing?" His tone was chiding, sharp with frustration. "What do *you* think *you’re* doing, Lilith? Accepting a duel with a Beta?"

I flinched at the bite in his voice.

"To what? To prove a point?" He took a step forward, his authority rolling off him in waves. "Use your sense. You should have yielded. Gone with your father. At least then you’d be alive to—" His jaw clenched. "But no. You had to prove something. And all you proved was how stupi—"

"Warn yourself."

Vladimir’s voice cut through the room like a blade of ice. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t uncrossed his arms, but the temperature dropped so suddenly I could see my breath misting in the air.

Caesar’s mouth snapped shut, his eyes flickering to Vladimir with barely concealed anger.

"You will watch your tongue in my house," Vladimir continued, his voice dangerously soft. "And you will not speak to her that way."

The two men stared at each other, the air crackling with tension. Caesar’s mother placed a delicate hand on her son’s arm, a subtle warning.

Vladimir’s glacier eyes remained locked on Caesar. "I am allowing this... intervention... solely out of respect for your mother and the favors I owe her." His tone made it clear how thin that thread of tolerance was. "You may attempt to sway Lilith’s decision. But you will do so without disparaging her intelligence or courage. It will not bode well for you if you are not careful."

Caesar’s jaw worked, anger flashing across his features before he swallowed it down. When he spoke again, his voice had shifted—softer, more personal.

"Lilith." He said my name like a plea. "I knew you before you were anybody. Before all of this." He gestured at the room, at Vladimir, at the supernatural world we stood in. "That has to count for something."

My chest tightened.

"I understand that you were purchased by the High Alpha—"

"Careful," Vladimir warned, ice creeping across the floor toward Caesar’s feet.

Caesar pressed on. "—but your father is an Alpha himself. You have a choice. You don’t have to put your life on the line for political maneuvering. You can refuse this duel. Come to Nightshade. Live."

"Live under Kustav’s control," I said quietly. "That’s not living. You know that."

"And duel is?" Caesar shot back. "A duel is suicide, Lilith. Veronique will kill you."

"Maybe." My voice didn’t waver. "But it will be my choice. Not Kustav’s. Not yours. Mine."

Caesar’s expression crumbled into something between frustration and almost genuine pain, tainted with anger. "You’ve always done this," he said, and the words hit like a physical blow. "You’ve always set yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm. I shouldn’t be surprised that even in a new realm, you haven’t changed."

The observation landed exactly where he intended. Because he was right. How many times had I sacrificed my own comfort, my own safety, my own happiness for others? For my mother, for my ’family’, for him when we were together.

"At least this time," I said, my voice tight, "I’m choosing which fire to walk into."

Caesar’s composure shattered. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, his face flushing with frustration. "Is that what this is about? Choice?" His voice rose. "Because let’s be honest about what you’re really doing here, Lilith."

I felt Vladimir stiffen beside me.

"You don’t have to marry the High Alpha just because you’re trying to force yourself into a rebound," Caesar said, the words sharp and cutting. "To the point that you would rather die than not marry him? You think I don’t see what this is?"

My breath caught.

"I get it," he continued, taking another step forward. "Marrying the High Alpha of the realm probably makes you feel like you’re more than you are—especially after our breakup. But this realm has stakes higher than your need to show you’ve moved on. Marrying your *purchaser* is absurd."

The word *purchaser* hung in the air like poison. Beside me, frost spread rapidly across the floor, climbing up the walls.

"That’s enough," Vladimir said, his voice deadly quiet.

But Caesar swallowed, knowing he was crossing a line but his eyes locked on mine. "If you don’t want to go to Kustav that badly, then let me give you another choice. For old time’s sake."

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small velvet box.

My heart stopped.

Kaia took the words out of my mouth. "What the fuck?"

"Marry me instead," Caesar said, opening the box to reveal a ring—elegant, traditional, nothing like the supernatural binding I’d almost completed with Vladimir. "Come to my pack as my wife, not your father’s prisoner. You’ll have protection, status, and you won’t have to die proving a point to anyone. I will accept you. The things you said in the human realm mean nothing here. Our break up? Never happened, we will move past it all."