My Sister Stole My Mate And I Let Her (Seraphina) novel Chapter 224

Chapter 224: Chapter 224 MOON GODDESS

SERAPHINA’S POV

The darkness was weightless. Like drifting in warm water.

I vaguely remembered collapsing. Vaguely remembered rain and pain and Kieran’s ragged, panicked voice calling my name.

But I felt detached from those memories, from that life.

Floating. Free.

Then, suddenly, the darkness flickered, and memories began stitching themselves across the void like shards of stained glass catching light.

A laugh—Daniel’s, age four, chubby cheeks smeared with frosting as he proudly plunged his hand into his birthday cake.

The Snowfield Arena; the rush of adrenaline as I mounted Ashar’s majestic form.

The night my father died; the cold look in Kieran’s eyes as he said, “I want a divorce.”

The thunder of applause and cheers as a disembodied voice announced, “And the champions of the Latent Spark Trials are OTS Team One!”

The desperate plea in Kieran’s eyes that night on my porch as he held my hands. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

Scenes overlapped, fractured, replaying out of order—old hurts beside old joys, triumph beside agony. My life condensed into flashes of sound and color.

The montage shifted with an almost physical sense of movement.

Abruptly, I felt myself swept into a different current. I realized the memories weren’t mine anymore.

I stood above a small bed, and it took me a moment to recognize the fair-haired toddler sleeping soundly in the bed as myself.

Round-faced, impossibly small, tucked under a patchwork blanket I dimly remembered chewing on when I had nightmares.

The room smelled like lavender and fresh wood.

And my parents were there.

Not distant. Not cold. Not indifferent.

My mother knelt beside the bed, fingers trembling as she brushed a curl off my forehead. No disdain. No disappointment. Just a mother’s quiet ache.

My father stood behind her, one hand on her back, the other cupped over my tiny hand.

“Please,” my mother whispered, voice quivering. “Let her be spared.”

My father didn’t speak, but his thumb stroked over my knuckles with a gentleness I’d never associated with him in real life.

My chest tightened.

This had to be another cruel trick of my mind, right? Another desperate attempt to give myself the love I never received.

But before I could wallow in more heartache, the image dissolved like mist.

I blinked, taking in the training courtyard. Years later, but still years before now. I recognized the uniforms, the cracked pavement beneath the oak tree where I used to eat alone.

Two older students shoved a younger me against a wall. I winced, remembering the resulting injury on my shoulder that had me using my left hand for two weeks.

The memory followed the boys as they left, laughing among themselves, as I crumbled into a heap behind them, crying.

They turned a corner, and there was teenage Ethan, face carved in fury, jaw clenched hard enough to crack bone.

His hand shot out, grabbing one of the bullies by the collar and lifting him clean off his feet.

“Touch my sister again,” he threatened, voice low and lethal, “and I’ll fucking destroy you.”

With that, he threw the bully into his friend, and they both crashed to the floor in a pathetic heap.

Ethan didn’t wait to see their reactions. Just walked away with rigid shoulders, fists shaking.

I swallowed hard.

He...defended me? Why? Had he always?

The scene faded again, melting away before the ache that bloomed in my chest could settle.

And then I was in the Nightfang Alpha residence hallway. My old home.

Daniel’s bedroom door stood in front of me.

Somehow, inexplicably, I knew what day it was: Kieran’s and my first anniversary.

I knew that on the other side of the door, I was crying silently into a pillow, trying not to wake Daniel, only a baby then, cradled beside me as I wrote all my fantasies into a journal.

And outside the door...

Kieran.

Just standing there, frozen. He looked younger. Harder. His jaw tense, frustration furrowed into every line of his face.

He hesitated.

Lifted his hand.

Paused.

“Go in,” I called out, even though he couldn’t hear me. “I was waiting for you. Go in.”

He lowered his hand.

And walked away.

I felt the anguish of that night ignite inside me all over again.

“If you had come in,” I whispered to his retreating form, “would everything have changed?”

Kieran disappeared into the shadows, and the hallway dissolved with him.

Then came the battlefield. I had never been here, but I recognized it immediately: Frostbane boundary grounds.

Edward Lockwood’s last stand.

I was suddenly running, feet pounding into hard-packed earth, my breath ripping out of me as I chased after him. Wolves howled in the distance. War cries cracked the air like lightning.

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