Chapter 156: The Unfolding Truth XXXVI

Third Person POV

Then, the small room swallowed the sound.

The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating. It settled into the corners of the room, thick enough to make breathing feel like a chore.

Sonita stood flat against the far wall, her shoulder blades dug into the rough wood as if she needed the solid structure to keep herself upright.

Her arms were locked tight across her chest, her fingers gripping her own elbows so hard that her knuckles showed white under the flickering firelight.

Across from her, Helen sat frozen on the mattress edge. Her spine was curved, her shoulders rounded inward, drawing herself into the smallest possible space.

Her grey eyes were wide, fixed entirely on the scuffed floorboards beneath her bare feet, refusing to look up.

Sonita did not move a muscle, but the air around her seemed to drop in temperature.

"You mated with him, didn’t you?"

The question was flat, stripped of any warmth or sisterly softness. It dropped into the quiet space like a stone.

Helen did not pull her gaze from the floor. Her breath hitched, a tiny, jagged catch in her throat, but she kept her lips pressed tightly together.

Her hands lay in her lap, her fingers starting to move, twisting around one another, pulling at her own skin as if she could distract herself from the voice cutting through the room.

"I warned you," Sonita said, her voice rising, losing its flat edge and turning sharp, like a blade scraping against stone.

She took a half step forward, her shadow leaping across the ceiling. "I told you exactly what would happen. I warned you not to mate with someone who is not like you. But you never listened to me. You never once took a single thing I said to heart."

Helen’s thumbs dug into her own palms. Her voice came out as a fragile thread, barely louder than the crackle of the wood in the hearth.

"I wanted to feel loved."

Sonita’s eyes narrowed into thin, dark slits. The defensive posture she held broke apart as she stormed toward the edge of the bed, her boots clicking sharply against the floor.

"What do you mean, you wanted to feel loved?" Sonita stopped right in front of Helen, looming over her, her chest rising and falling with rapid, angry breaths.

"I was right there. I was always right there with you. I showed you what devotion meant. I gave you every single piece of myself. A sister’s love. A mother’s protection. A whole family wrapped into one person. What kind of stupid, fantasy love were you searching for out there that I could not provide for you?"

The raw accusation in Sonita’s voice finally forced Helen’s head up. Her chin trembled, and a pale flush crept up her neck, breaking through her usual ghostly calm.

"I wanted to experience what it actually feels like to be loved by a man," Helen said, her voice shaking so violently that the words almost clipped into one another.

She gripped her own knees to stop her arms from trembling. "I have seen couples my entire life, Sonita. I have spent years watching them from the shadows, peering out from the edges of the woods, always wondering what it would be like to have that for myself. And Kai... he was just... he was..."

The name choked her. She couldn’t force the rest of the sentence past her teeth, her throat tightening until she had to swallow hard just to get air.

Sonita let out a long, slow exhale through her nose. It was a weary, bitter sound, the noise of someone who had been carrying a crushing weight for years and was finally letting the anger spill over the sides.

"Now look at what your perfect, beautiful love has brought down on you," Sonita said, her tone dripping with a quiet, venomous sarcasm.

She turned her back for a second, pacing toward the fire before spinning around to face the bed again. "Now you have to put your own baby’s life in absolute danger. Every single piece of this mess is happening because you simply refused to listen to a word I said."

Helen pushed herself off the bed, her feet slamming onto the floorboards as she stood up to face her.

"Do you honestly think I wanted this to happen? Do you think I sat down and asked for any of this nightmare?" Tears finally spilled over her lower lids, tracing hot, shiny paths down her cheeks, but her voice grew louder, thick with frustration.

"I just wanted to be happy. I wanted to know what it meant to be loved by a partner. To build a home. To have a real family. I know you were there for me. I know you gave me everything you had in your heart. But I wanted to see the world in another way. Not just as a sister. Not just as a companion. I wanted to feel it from someone who looked into my eyes and saw something more than a burden to protect."

Sonita went entirely still. The anger seemed to drain out of her face for a split second, leaving behind a cold, blank mask. She studied Helen’s tear-stained face, the silence stretching out between them until the fire popped again.

"How is your baby in danger?" Sonita asked, her voice dropping into a low, cautious register.

Helen’s hands stopped their frantic twisting. She let her arms drop uselessly to her sides, the sudden drain of energy making her look smaller, deflated by the weight of the truth she was about to speak.

"The Alpha King wants me," Helen whispered, her eyes dulling as she stared at the floor between them. "But if he ever finds out that I have a daughter... he will want her too. He will come for her."

Sonita’s brow furrowed, a deep line carving itself between her eyes. "The Alpha King? How does someone like the Alpha King even know that you exist? Are you that famous now? How could rumors travel that far from a hidden cottage?"

Helen hesitated, the color completely leaving her face. She looked down at her bare toes, her shoulders hitching as she tried to find the words.

"Kai is an Alpha," Helen mumbled, the words tumbling out in a hurried, muffled rush. "And he made me his Luna."

Sonita looked as if she had been struck across the face. Her skin turned a sickly, asymmetric pale color under the orange firelight. She staggered back half a step, her hand rising to hover just over her heart.

"Oh my goodness," Sonita whispered, the words barely catching the air. "You mated with an Alpha."

Helen shrugged. It was a tiny, defensive movement. Her shoulders hitched up toward her ears in a small, childlike gesture, looking exactly like a little girl who was being scolded by her mother for breaking a precious dish she knew she never should have touched in the first place.

"I did not know he was an Alpha," Helen said, her voice dropping to a tiny, defensive plea. "I had no idea who he really was. Not until the soldiers actually came to my door."

Sonita just stared at her. Her mouth parted slightly as if she wanted to scream, then clamped shut. She shook her head, her lips parting a second time before she finally found her voice, the realization clicking into place behind her eyes.

"You mean to tell me," Sonita started, her voice coming out slow, deliberate, and dangerously quiet, "that after I personally directed those men to your cottage... You still chose to go with him? You actually left everything behind and went with him?"

Helen’s head snapped up, her grey eyes wide and completely blown out with shock. The grief on her face hardened into sudden, sharp confusion.

"Wait. What did you just say? You sent those men to my home?"

"I did not send them to hurt you," Sonita snapped, her posture instantly turning rigid and defensive as she threw her hands up.

"They were lost. They asked for directions in the village. You know how impossible it is to find that hidden place in the woods. I gave them the path. Did you seriously never wonder how a band of foreign soldiers managed to find your exact door?"

Helen’s face went completely still, every single muscle locking in place as the truth sank into her mind. The room felt like it was spinning around her.

"I never thought about it," Helen whispered, the words barely audible over the crackle of the hearth. "My mind was... There was so much happening all at once... I was just trying to survive the night..."

"I was trying to protect you from him!" Sonita cut her off, her voice cracking under the strain of her own rising panic.

She stepped closer, her face twisting with an intensity that made Helen take a step back. "That was the whole point of giving them the directions. I directed them there so they would take him away from you. I wanted him gone so your life could go back to normal. But instead of letting them have him, you went right along with him. You walked straight into his pack. You let him put a mark on you and make you his Luna. And now every single person in the territory knows exactly who you are."

Sonita stopped to catch her breath, her chest heaving as tears finally gathered in the corners of her own eyes.

"Rumors spread, Helen," Sonita said, her voice dropping to a quieter, broken register that trembled with years of hidden fear. "And those rumors eventually reached the ears of the Alpha King himself. Why do you think I did not want you to be with anyone? Why do you think I spent all those years keeping you hidden away from the village, away from regular people?"

A single tear slipped down Sonita’s cheek, but she brushed it away angrily with the back of her wrist, her breathing ragged.

"I know it sounded incredibly selfish to you," Sonita said, her head shaking back and forth as if she could physically reject the memory of their old arguments.

"I know you thought I was just a bitter woman trying to keep you all for myself. But I was doing every single bit of it to keep you safe from the world. Because the moment people get to know what you are... others will come for you. Dangerous people who only want to use your gifts and your existence for their own gain. Why could you never see that? Why did you have to run straight into the fire?"

Helen stood there, the tears falling freely now, dripping off her chin and soaking into the fabric of her collar. The anger she had felt a moment ago washed away, replaced by a hollow, crushing guilt that made her knees feel weak.

"I did not know," Helen sobbed, her voice breaking completely as she reached out a hand toward the wall to steady herself.

"I really thought... I thought you were just being selfish back then. That you did not want to share my time with anyone else. I thought you were just terrified of losing your only friend in the world."

Sonita just shook her head, a cold, tired sorrow settling into her eyes as she looked at the woman who was her best friend.

"Selfish," Sonita muttered, her voice dropping to a faint, exhausted whisper that seemed to echo in the small room.

"I had to act like a selfish monster just to keep you breathing. I truly thought if I was harsh enough with you, if I locked the doors tight enough, you would finally listen to me. But it did not work. None of it worked. And now... now your mistakes have put an innocent little girl’s life in danger."