Chapter 162
Claire’s POV
50%
A voroners
Without Ivan around, I had no distractions from my dark and lonely thoughts. I stared out the window for most of the day and night, not really seeing anything that was there in the present. Instead, I was replaying the past. My life with Nova. Being reunited with Leo. The fleeting but happy moments when I had both of them under the same roof, safe and happy.
The memories haunted me like ghosts, and there was no real espe from them. When the window became too much, too painful. I took to wandering through the hallways of the pack house. I wasn’t even really paying attention to where I was going, but the exercise was good. I’d been idle so long my joints ached.
Unfortunately, walking through the hallways did not help me escape my thoughts. They actually turned darker, especially as the light around me dimmed. I thought of the last moments I had seen my children, when I sent them off with Gideon, not realizing that I would never see them again.
If only I had been able to see into the future. Then I would have known. I would have been able to prepare.
Maybe I should have been able to tell even without a crystal ball
Maybe I had just been a bad mother, and an even worse protector.
I had trusted Gideon again. Like I hadn’t learned my lesson the first time. And he had used that trust to betray me. Again.
What a fool I was. I was older now. I should have been smarter, and I…
I…
I stopped. Blinked. Looked around.
Where was I?
I had been through most of the pack house, having lived here for the past six years, yet this small hallway was somewhere I had never been. Were these Ivan’s rooms? I had better turn around. I didn’t mean to intrude on his private space. Even engaged, I felt this barrier impossible to cross.
Yet as I turned around to walk out the way I had come, a flash of light gleamed over the glass of a picture frame hanging in one of the nearby rooms. The door to that room was opened only a few inches, but with that light, I could have sworn I saw…
Someone who looked just like me.
Like I was caught in a trance, I moved toward the door. I placed my hand flat on it, near the edge, and pushed it inward, allowing more light to enter the room.
There was a photo hanging there of a woman who looked like me. But this wasn’t the only photo. The entire room was filled with photos, all of this woman. Some smiling, some serious, some with other people.
The room looked something like a shrine, dedicated to Ivan’s devotion of this one particular woman.
A woman who just so happened to look almost–exactly like me.
Just as Gideon had tried to warn me about. This had to be the former Luna Queen.
Shock struck through me, and I was unable to do anything but stand there and take in what I was seeing, trying to process it.
Gideon had been right. He hadn’t been lying. He hadn’t been trying to break
Ivan was clearly still in love with this woman that he had loved and lost.
up Ivan and me.
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20:36 Fri, Feb 6
Chapter 162
50%
[34] 3#TB
Did that mean he had just been using me to try to fill the void she had left? Because we looked alike?
I didn’t fully know my feelings for Ivan. I had respect for him and some affection that was mostly friendly but possibly could have grown in time. Maybe.
But in this moment all that possibility shriveled up. My ambiguous feelings for Ivan totally shattered.
I was no longer sure we were even friends. Had the friendship, too, formed only as a means for Ivan to feel closer to his lost love?
As if the world could not feel anymore heavy. Now I had lost a dear friend as well as my children.
I felt so.. lost.
But one thing I knew for sure. I didn’t want to live under the same roof as Ivan anymore.
Ivan had previously offered me my own house in town. Gathering my things, I moved into it now. It was already furnished, the keys ready for me at any moment. Eventually, I would find my own place to buy and live, but for now, just being away from the pack house was a good start.
I didn’t sleep at all.
The day I was supposed to pick up Nova from the border came. I went there early.
In my heart, I knew Gideon wasn’t going to show up, but I needed to be there just in case. If Nova did happen to be returned, I wouldn’t keep her waiting.
The sky opened up around noon and rained hard for several hours.
I stood by the border road, waiting. Some of the warriors looked at me with concern, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
My daughter was supposed to be returned today.
Eventually, a familiar face came and stood at my side. He watched the road like I did, as if waiting for someone to come.
No one did.
“You should go home,” Peter said.
“I don’t have a home without Nova in it,” I told him.
“She wouldn’t want you to get sick or hurt, staying out here like this.”
“I’ll never see her again,” I replied, barely listening to him.
Peter was fresh out of the hospital. He stood with a cane. “You have to stay strong for those kids. Even if Gideon wins, they will eventually be adults, able to make their own choices. You’ll miss a lot, sure, but not everything. Don’t you want to be here for that?”
I didn’t like it. I would miss so much. But also, he was right. Maybe I could attend their weddings or meet my grandchildren.
I couldn’t give up as much as I wanted to in this moment.
“Your kids still need you,” Peter said.
I looked at him, glancing at his cane. “You should be inside.”
He lifted a brow.
20:36 Fri, Feb 6
Chapter 102
I cleared my throat. “Perhaps you would like to walk me home.”
Relief crossed his face. “I’d be happy to.”
Ivair’s POV
50%
27 53 vouchers
1 hated to return to Claire with nothing to show for myself, but maybe George was right. At least I could be there for her, giving her a shoulder to cry on. I could be her lighthouse in the form.
At least that was what I thought… until the head
ervant told me that Claire had moved out.
Now, I found myself knocking on the door to the house Claire had moved to. When she opened the door, she still looked pale and small, but there was life in her eyes again, if only a little spark.
Before that could put me at ease, before I could even say hello, she told me, “I saw your room.”
“Which room?”
“You know which room.”
I did. Despite the many years since her death, I had been unwilling to part with the many of Lena’s pictures that I had. Rather than keep them displayed throughout the pack house though, I had moved all of them into one of the sitting rooms near my bedroom. It was to be private. Claire was never supposed to have seen it.
“I can explain,” I said.
The ring I had given her was still on her finger. She reached for it now, and slid it off.
“My feelings for you are different from what I felt for her. I’m not trying to replace her.”
She didn’t listen. Instead she held out the ring for me to take. When I did, she said, “Our
engagement is off.”
AD
