BOOK II: Dawn of Aetheria(G!P)

Ch 44: Riven bonds

A few days had passed. Ada stood just outside Elo’s room, the soft whimpers coming from within wrapping around her heart like barbed wire. Her hand hovered over the door, wanting so badly to reach out and comfort her, but she knew that no words would touch the agony Elo was drowning in. Rosaline, Shanika and Emrys stood beside her, silent, but the weight of their shared grief filled the air between them.

"It makes sense now," Ada whispered, her voice barely audible, as if speaking the truth aloud would make it all the more unbearable.

Rosaline turned to her, eyes heavy with confusion. "What do you mean?"

Ada swallowed hard, her throat tightening as the pieces fell together in her mind. "Elo… before Denise came back, she got sick suddenly. I assumed it was because something had happened to Denise since, at that time, there was no other reason. But, it was because of her second mate…" Her voice wavered, the next words impossible to say. “…because she was killed by-.”

Rosaline’s breath caught in her throat, the revelation crashing into her like a wave. She stared at Ada, torn between horror and disbelief. The weight of it pressed down on her chest, knowing that the perpetrator was her best friend’s daughter, while the victim was the second mate of her own daughter.

"A mate killing another mate…” Rosaline’s voice broke, shaking her head as if she couldn’t quite grasp the cruelty of it. “How could that even happen?"

Shanika, who had been standing nearby, let out a heavy sigh, the sorrow etched into her features. "Denise… she’s been distant for so long. She barely let me touch her. I thought it was just stress, but…" Her voice trailed off, her mind playing back all the little signs she had ignored, the red flags buried in love and denial. No one had wanted to believe that Denise was capable of something so monstrous.

Meanwhile, Naza remained at the palace with Dion who was desperately trying to make sense of the chaos. Denise had been confined to her room under strict orders. Even though she had confessed to drugging Emrys and killing the girl, Dion, her own mother, couldn’t bring herself to fully accept it. She was waiting for proof, for something to tell her that her daughter didn't really kill an innocent person out of jealousy and rage.

Leila had fallen into a suffocating silence. She had been shattered by Denise’s confession, refusing to accept that her daughter, the child she had raised, was capable of such darkness.

It was as though she was suspended in a dream she couldn’t wake from, the walls of the palace closing in around her. Even Fiore, still too young to understand the magnitude of what had happened, sensed the tension.

The once vibrant halls of the palace were now ghostly and hollow, populated only by a few trusted guards and servants, each step echoing through the cold, lifeless air.

Inside Elo’s room, her sickness had returned with a vengeance, each breath labored, each heartbeat a painful reminder of the piece of her soul that had been ripped away.

The same gnawing emptiness that had once overtaken her when Denise was gone had returned, but now there was no hope, no thread of comfort to cling to. She knew why this time, she knew with a clarity that broke her.

Her second mate, the one meant to complete their bond, had been stolen from her before she could even meet her. And it had been Denise, her first mate, her love, who had done it. The betrayal twisted deep inside her like a knife.

Elo’s breath hitched as the memory of the dream washed over her, the one she’d had two years ago, the nightmare that had haunted her when she had fallen ill. Finally, it all made sense.

It wasn't Denise lying limp and lifeless in her arms as she had always believed.

No.

It was her second mate. The one whose soul had been torn away before their bond could ever bloom. Her other half.

And the shadow that had loomed over them, the wailing, twisted monster that had haunted the edges of her dream, that darkness was Denise. The woman she loved. The woman she thought she knew.

The truth hit her like a tidal wave, devastating and undeniable. Denise had been the monster all along.

Denise’s guilt throbbed through their bond, but it wasn’t enough to extinguish the anger that consumed Elo. How could she? How could the one who was meant to cherish and protect her soul have taken the other half of it away?

Tears streamed down Elo’s face, her breaths shallow and labored. Her body, weakened by grief and the refusal to feed, was crumbling under the weight of loss. Her once-lustrous azure eyes were now bloodshot, hollow, devoid of the light they once carried.

She had always been strong, but this? This was too much. The pain wasn’t just emotional; it was physical, embedded in her very bones. Her soul, fractured beyond repair, felt like it was disintegrating.

Emrys was also wracked with worry, his heart breaking at the thought of losing his twin. She was all he had left of their birth parents. He had heard the stories of their mother, how she had succumbed to the same kind of grief when her mate and his mother, Jacklyn died, and he feared the same fate awaited Elo. That she would slip into the same endless sleep, never to wake again. And he didn’t know if he was strong enough to bring her back.

Inside, Elo wept silently, her body curled up on the bed, her heart a shattered mess of emotions. Love and hate. Grief and fury. Desire and disgust. It was all tangled together, suffocating her.

Denise was still her mate, still the woman she had loved and bonded with but she was also a murderer, the one who had killed the only other person who could have made her whole.

There was no going back from this. No healing that could repair the rift in her soul.

In the quiet of the night, the only sound that filled the room was the soft, broken cries of a woman whose heart had been torn in two, and the heavy, suffocating silence of a love that had been destroyed.

A/N Lawd I remember being so mentally exhausted while writing these few  chapters.