When The Moon Hides Her Crown novel Chapter 215

Chapter 215 The Flower That Never Withers

SERAPHINA

A part of me was honestly thrilled that he chose to share his past with me, a past the world probably had no knowledge of. Though another part of me was heavy with guilt. Guilt over my own curiosity. Because of me, the memories he might’ve been trying to bury were now ripped open, bleeding, raw, and hurting all over again.

Then again…what was this emotion I was sensing through our mate bond? It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t grief. It wasn’t even pain.

Was it…rage?

No, it was beyond rage.

Our eyes locked and what I saw inside them, what I felt inside him, was something no one should ever carry within.

The word lava was too small to describe it. The fury inside him burned so deep, so dangerous, that even sensing it made my own soul tremble. Just a taste of that emotion could scar someone for life.

“My dad isolated himself for weeks after my mother’s death,” he began suddenly, his voice low. I didn’t expect him to continue, part of me wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt.

“I started skipping school,” he continued, eyes distant. “I’d spend my time with friends my father didn’t even know about. He wasn’t answering calls, so the school couldn’t reach him anyway. But even that…didn’t help. I couldn’t erase her last words from my head. Every time I came home, every wall, every corner of that house screamed her presence.”

He exhaled sharply. “So I decided to leave. For good. I knew my father would never let me go, so I planned to run away in the middle of the night. Only before I left I wanted to take one thing with me, a small framed photo from my mother’s room. The picture was taken the day I was born. It always confused me how she hated me my whole life but never destroyed that photo.

“When I pulled the picture out intending to leave the frame behind something else fell out, a folded piece of paper tucked behind the photo. It was old and yellowed. When I unfolded it and saw the handwriting…”

He paused, his voice trembling just slightly.

“I realized it was my mother’s. A letter she had written for me on the day I was born. Forgotten all these years. A letter she wrote moments before she…realized she would no longer be herself.”

My heart thundered in my chest. “What was written in the letter?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Blood Petal.”

There was blood in his eyes when he uttered that name, a darkness so sharp it made my pulse stumble.

A strange feeling coiled in my chest, uneasy and cold. “What is it?”

“A kind of flower that never withers,” he quietly explained.

My eyes widened. “Is there such a thing?”

He nodded once, his jaw tight. “Not only does it never wither, but it doesn’t even need air to stay alive.” The hatred in his gaze when he spoke of it sent a shiver crawling down my spine.

“How did your mother even know about something like that?” I asked softly.

“I asked my father the same thing,” he said, voice dropping lower. “After reading her letter…where she apologized for ruining my life, for making me a monster.”

Chapter 215 The Flower That Never Withers

His expression hardened. “She had naively believed them when they told her the ritual would bless the baby in her womb, that it was a gift from the Goddess. When in reality, the ritual was something else entirely. They touched the Blood Petal to her bare stomach and…”

He paused, holding my gaze as if warning me that what came next would shatter everything.

“…she gave birth to me in the third week of her pregnancy.”

Every muscle in my body went still. A chill rippled through me, crawling down my spine. Three weeks? Clearly not three months? That was impossible. Yet there he was actually sitting in front of me now twenty five years old.

I stared at him, my breath caught in disbelief, but Ronan didn’t even blink. He was watching me closely as if testing whether I would flinch, whether I would see the monster his mother used to call him.

But I didn’t look away. I couldn’t. I did not want to.

“I learned all of this only after reading her letter,” he continued, his voice low and tight. “My dad had hidden not only the truth about my birth but everything that came after it. When I confronted him, he finally admitted it, every word in her letter was real. He told me that my mother’s condition worsened right after giving birth to me because of that ritual. No…” His jaw tightened, eyes burning. “It wasn’t the birth. It was the Blood Petal. The ritual and the people behind it, ruined her.”

My fingers curled into my clothes, the air around us growing heavy. “Who were those people? Who could do something so horrible to her?”

His answer came like a blade.

“The Lupine Academy.”

A dead silence fell between us.

My heart stopped. “This…Academy?” I whispered, my voice trembling.

It felt like sitting on burning coals, pain spreading slowly, suffocating.

“Yes,” he said darkly, “This very Academy where the Blood Petal once lived and destroyed my mother’s life.”

A bloodthirst flickered in his eyes, raw and untamed. “Dad made me promise not to drop out, to finish my studies. In exchange, I made him tell me everything he knew about the Blood Petal. All he could tell me was that it was a white flower, and that whatever happened to my mother took place during the annual festival Lupine Academy used to host to ‘bless‘ unborn Alpha bloodlines.” His lips twisted bitterly. “My parents attended that festival. That was the night they touched her belly with the Blood Petal.”

A cold panic curled through my soul. “But…why would they do that to her?”

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