Chapter 517: Confront.

Anabel.

My feet felt like lead as I backed away from Noah and Maria on the freezing gravel.

"Wait," Noah had said, his deep Alpha voice cutting through the cold night air like a heavy blade.

I stopped in my tracks, my shoulders tensing up to my ears. I didn’t dare look him in the eye again. I couldn’t bear to see the remnant of disappointment in his face, or the quiet pity in Maria’s exhausted eyes. Every second I stood there under the moonlight felt like a hot iron pressing against my chest.

"Noah... please," I choked out, my voice barely a raspy whisper as I kept my gaze fixed on my muddy boots. "I... I just need a moment. Please."

Before he could use his Alpha voice to command me again, I turned on my heel and moved away from them, my cloak billowing in the freezing wind as I rushed down the garden path.

I didn’t stop until I reached the shadowed side archway of the estate, leaning my back against the cold stone wall, clutching my throat as ragged, gasping sobs finally tore out of my chest.

Remorse hit me in violent, agonizing waves, drowning out the bite of the night air. I sank against the rough stone until my knees touched the damp dirt, burying my face in my hands.

How had I let myself become such a coward?

I had run away. While my quadruplet brothers were bleeding on the front lines, fighting to protect our bloodline and our home, I was picking up my skirts and sneaking off into the woods like a thief in the night. I had prioritized my own comfort, my own silly wish for a quiet, peaceful life, while they stood in the gap against Vincent’s monsters.

And what did my cowardice cost us?

Adrein.

A fresh sob ripped through my lungs, so heavy and painful it made my ribs ache. The blood link—that warm, constant thread that had lived inside my chest since the moment the four of us were born together—was completely severed on one end. Where Adrein’s light used to pulse, there was only a cold, dark, hollow cavern.

Adrein was gone. My gentle, infuriating, protective brother had dissolved into golden dust on a cold floorboard, taking four arrows meant for Maria and Noah. He was dead, and I hadn’t even been there to hold his hand. I hadn’t been there to fight at his back. I had been miles away, crossing a border track, pretending the world wasn’t burning behind me.

How was I supposed to live without him?

How were any of us supposed to wake up tomorrow, look across the table, and see an empty seat where Adrein was supposed to be?

For nineteen years, we had breathed the same air, fought the same battles, and shared the same soul. Now, the circle was broken forever.

"I’m so sorry, Adrein..." I whimpered into the dark, my tears soaking through my sleeves. "I’m so, so sorry..."

I pressed my forehead against my knees, clutching my hair in absolute despair. And how was I going to face Aidan and Davian now?

Aidan’s eyes would be cold, hardened by the weight of leading a broken family. Davian’s hands would be raw and bloody from tearing through Vincent’s guards. How could I walk into the medical wing, look at Damien lying there with a hole in his chest, and ask for their forgiveness? They had bled for this pack while I had abandoned them.

’You saved Davian’s life tonight,’ Maria’s voice echoed in my head.

I looked up at the dark sky, wiping my nose with the rough wool of my cloak. I had tackled Galen. I had stopped her from putting a black arrow through Davian’s heart. But it didn’t erase the stain on my soul. It didn’t bring Adrein back from the dust.

A slow, terrifying shift began to happen inside my chest.

The paralyzing grief and self-hatred didn’t vanish, but beneath the tears, a sudden, white-hot spark of pure, unadulterated fury ignited in my blood.

The Lycan prince.

He had brought his elite guards into our home under the cover of a cowardly siege. He had poisoned Maria, hunted our people, and ordered the volley that put four iron shafts into Adrein’s chest. He had treated my family like animals to be slaughtered for his own sick ambition.

And his sister, Galen, had stood on that high beam with a smirk on her face, aiming for my surviving brothers as if their lives were nothing more than target practice.

They thought they could tear the quadruplets apart. They thought because Adrein was dead and Damien was wounded, the rest of us would simply crumble into quiet submission.

I slowly pushed myself up from the damp ground, my muscles trembling, my hands clenching into tight, hard fists at my sides.

I wasn’t going to hide in the shadows anymore. I wasn’t going to cower in a corner, weeping over my guilt while the monsters who destroyed my family sat in our dungeon cells waiting for a formal trial.

"No more running," I whispered into the wind, my voice hardening, the tremolo slipping away completely.

My jaw set into a cold, ruthless line that felt entirely foreign on my face, yet entirely necessary. If I was going to carry the guilt of abandoning my brothers, I was going to make sure the man who murdered Adrein paid for every single drop of blood he had spilled tonight.

Before the pack gathered in the main square, before Aidan and Davian carried out their public judgment, I needed to see him. I needed to look Vincent in his arrogant, miserable eyes while he was chained in the dark.

I wiped the remaining tears from my face with a harsh pull of my sleeve, turning my back on the garden path. I adjusted my cloak, set my shoulders, and began marching down the dark stone stairs leading straight into the heart of the estate’s dungeons.

I was going to confront the him who dared to touch my brothers.