Chapter 212: Her Vengeful Ghost

Della stared at him for a very long time.

She’d succumbed. She’d let herself give in to the part of her heart that was still alive, and it had brought her peace. Peace in knowing Malachi actually cared about her this much. Enough peace for her to think and actually smile like a normal person.

And then…her mind said to her: Really?!

And that was it for Della’s heart. All that twitching, all those feelings, all that nagging…it all simply died.

Finally.

It’d been looking for a way out to express itself, and it finally did in the arms of the man it loved. Now, she felt much better. So much more better.

For once, she had allowed herself to feel everything she had been trying so hard to bury. She had cried. She had held him. She had listened to his heartbeat and allowed herself to relish in what it felt like to be loved by him.

And now that she had gotten it out of her system…

There was nothing left.

The peace she had felt moments ago wasn’t enough to make her forgive him. It wasn’t enough to erase the past. If anything, it had simply given her heart the final thing it had been searching for.

Closure.

And then, she slowly shook her head.

The warmth that caressed her eyes a second ago turned into dust, and was once again flooded by that terrifying cold that looked like a ghost’s eyes.

Malachi watched it happen…and the hope in his heart vanished into dust too.

He knew that look.

He had seen it before.

That was the look Della wore when she had stopped feeling, when there was no argument left to have, and when there was no emotion left to appeal to.

Nothing he could say that would reach her anymore.

“Anything?” Her voice was calm. Empty again. “Alright then. Let us start with this. I reject you, Malachi Astridge,”

The mate bond instantly shattered.

They both felt the pain. No, Della felt absolutely nothing. She couldn’t compare it to the pain she felt when Annelise had died in her arms, or her cub had been crushed inside her abdomen…or carrying Lian’s dead body and burying him with these hands that have suffered.

Malachi groaned immediately, clutching his chest tightly as he fell to one knee. His eyes blurred from the pain, and tears pricked the back of his eyes.

He’d seen it coming again. This time, he didn’t stop her. After all, he said he would bear anything.

The pain tore through him so violently that for a moment, he couldn’t even breathe properly. His entire body trembled as though something had reached inside his chest and ripped the bond apart with its bare hands. And somehow, the worst part wasn’t the pain.

It was looking up and seeing that Della wasn’t hurting.

She was just standing there, watching him.

Completely untouched.

“I hope you enjoyed that little hugging session of ours,” She continued, “Because that’s the last you are ever getting from me,”

Malachi slowly looked up at her, tears running down his face.

“You can give up a thousand crowns. You can burn every throne in this world. You can throw yourself into Moonfire every morning until your body turns to ash, and it still won’t change what you did to me.”

He knelt there and took every word.

“You’re pathetic,” She whispered. “Do you know that? You threw away everything because you couldn’t accept that the woman you hurt doesn’t want you anymore, thinking it would make her want you again.”

She watched his tears fall even more. She could literally feel the regret tearing his heart apart all over again, and God…it was fucking satisfying!

She was the one standing above him now.

The one watching him break.

The one deciding how much pain he deserved.

And there was a horrible satisfaction in it.

Not because she wanted him dead.

No.

Death was too easy.

She wanted him alive.

She wanted him to wake up every morning without his crown, without his territory, without the respect that had followed his name for centuries, and remember that he had thrown it all away for a woman who had rejected him.

She wanted him to understand what it meant to lose everything and still have to keep breathing.

“I do have to thank you for the session.” She said and looked down at her left arm, “It helped me get rid of the anomaly in my heart that still yearned to be good. You helped me let out all those trapped emotions, and now I can fully become the bad bitch I was meant to be. So,” She bent down, till her face was levelled with his.

Till he could see the full extent of the hatred she carried for him in his eyes.

For this damned world.

“So, thank you from the bottom of my dead heart, Malachi. You really do love me,” She added and chuckled. It sounded like someone was beating an empty can.

Malachi’s lips parted, and it looked like he wanted to say something.

Anything.

But what could he possibly say?

“Moonfire…”

“Stay away from me, Malachi,” She warned this time, “I fully assure you that I will kill you if we cross paths again. Nothing is holding me back now,”

No, she wouldn’t kill him even though she wanted to. If anything, she would like to protect him instead. So that he can live very long and regret every single second of his long, pathetic life as a lone wolf now scorned by every single person in the werewolf realm.

That’s how it feels like.

That’s how it feels like…to be a rotblood.

Too bad, really.

“I’m sorry,” He whispered.

“Start feeling sorry for yourself,” She said instead, and pulled up to her full length again, “Life is gonna get so difficult for you. You are about to experience the other side of the coin,”

He was still trying to recover from the pain of her rejection. So, it was this painful. Even for the strongest Alpha alive. He couldn’t even start to imagine how painful it must have been for her when he had rejected her.

Then, Della turned around and started to walk away.

That was probably the first time since she was walking away from him that he didn’t bother to follow her. That he simply had to close his eyes…and accept it.

He wanted to call her name.

Every instinct inside him screamed at him to get up, run after her and beg her one more time.

But he stayed where he was.

If this was what she wanted, then he had no right to take that choice away from her again.

As he watched her go, he sighed painfully.

Adelaide Barrett was dead.

The woman in her body…was her ghost.

Her vengeful ghost.

“Oh, one more thing,”

He looked up at her.

Della glanced back and whispered, “Your Ex is still alive.”

Malachi froze, and he felt the pain in his chest seemed to disappear beneath something far colder, “Katherine?” He asked.

Della didn’t answer. She simply laughed…and was gone.