Chapter 142: The Loser
SÉVERINE
The sting in my palm lingered from where it had struck his cheek, a sharp, honest pain I clung to, grateful for its clarity amid the chaos threatening to drown me.
"You betrayed me."
My words broke free, cracked and raw, shattering the careful composure I always wore like armor whenever he was near.
"Séverine—"
"You abandoned me." I sliced through his words before he could offer some empty comfort I refused to accept. "Just like every man who has ever crossed my path. My father vanished when I was a kid, never once looking back. No letters. No birthday calls. Nothing." My voice rose, wild and uncontained. "And you, you swore you would be different. You promised, Étienne. Do you even remember that promise?"
"I am not trying to abandon you."
"How could I have agreed to any of this?" I pressed my bandaged hand to my chest, the pain a faint echo compared to the ache flooding me like ice water. "You marry her for revenge. Fine. I convinced myself that it was fine. I convinced myself I understood. People warned me, you know. My own grandfather, before he finally gave up, sat me down and told me to guard my heart, because hearts like mine give too much and ask for too little." A jagged laugh escaped me. "And I believed, so foolishly, that my love would outweigh any warning."
I dragged myself toward him across the cot, shutting out the pain in my still-healing broken hand, driven only by the desperate, burning need for him to truly see what he was doing to me.
My fingers seized his shirt, twisting the fabric tight, as if I could anchor myself to him and keep from unraveling completely.
"Do not do this to me," I said. "Please, Étienne. Please."
He looked down, pain flickering across his face, but pain alone was not enough. I needed him to feel the full weight of what I carried, the sharp shape of it carving through my chest.
"I was supposed to have everything," I went on, my voice rising beyond my control. "After my father left, after my mother vanished, and the men who stared at me like I was nothing, I swore I would build something unbreakable. I would become indispensable. The kind of woman a man shapes his life around." My breath caught. "And if you do this, if you choose her over all we built, it proves him right. It proves my father right. It proves I was never worth staying for. It proves I am exactly what he decided I was the day he left."
"Séverine, that is not—"
"Everyone always leaves me." Tears ran unchecked down my face, and I made no effort to hide them, no longer pretending at a strength I did not have. "My father left. My mother was even the first. It feels like no one could bear to stick around for long. Not you too. Please, Étienne. I cannot survive losing you, too."
"I am not abandoning you," he said, his voice low and urgent, crouching closer. "I could never abandon you, Séverine. Not like that. Not the way they did."
"Where will I even stay?" A jagged, humiliating laugh escaped me, echoing off the infirmary walls. "I suppose I will have to leave Valcourt now. Gather up whatever scraps of dignity I have left, pack them into a single bag, and vanish somewhere no one knows what a fool I have been. This is so humiliating. Begging for love like some desperate, pathetic—"
"Stop." His hand hovered near mine, not quite touching. "You are allowed to be angry at me. I know this feels cruel."
"Then stop being cruel!"
"I do not want to lie to you," he said, steady despite everything churning between us. "Lying would be crueler than the truth, in the end. You can stay here as long as you need to. As long as you want. You are family to me, Séverine. That has not changed regardless of anything else."
I stared at him.
Family...
The word struck me like a softer slap, its gentleness somehow more wounding. I nodded, wiped my face with my good hand, and forced myself upright, though every part of me longed to collapse and vanish into the mattress.
"I will not be doing that," I said.
"Séverine—"
"I still have self-respect, no matter how it looks right now." I forced myself to meet his eyes, holding his gaze though it cost me everything. "I wish you the best, Étienne. Truly." The words tasted like ash, bitter and final. "Please go. I want to be alone."
He hesitated, studying my face like he was searching for some permission to stay despite what I had just told him plainly.
I gave him none.
He nodded at last and turned to the door, his shoulders bowed under a weight I nearly, almost pitied him for.
As soon as his back was turned, something cold and precise sliced through my grief, silencing it in an instant. My hand reached for him, fingers curling, my mind already weaving the path to slip into his thoughts, to unravel whatever fragile thing he had begun to build for her. I would tear it apart, thread by careful thread, until nothing remained worth choosing.
I was sick of this.
I had been patient. Endlessly, humiliatingly patient, enduring years of his coldness, his hatred for her, his slow, agonizing thaw that I convinced myself was for me. I told myself patience would earn me what I deserved. And now, when the reward should have been mine, he gave it all to someone else. Someone who had not waited. Someone who simply walked back into his life and claimed what I had spent years building. The same bitch who was half responsible for his predicament.
I was not losing to her.
Not now. Not ever. Not while breath still filled my lungs and magic still burned in my veins.
A hand clamped around my wrist before I could finish gathering the working, firm, and sudden enough to draw a hiss from between my teeth.
I spun, baring my teeth at whoever dared interrupt me, only to find my familiar staring back, his expression brooking no argument. He jerked his head toward the door, his meaning clear.
The head healer was approaching, his pace brisk and purposeful, a folder tucked under one arm.
A cold jolt of clarity sliced through my rage. I had been so consumed by Étienne and my unraveling plan that I noticed nothing else in the room. Not the healer moving between cots. Not the assistants finishing their work. Nothing but the desperate need to reclaim what I had lost, blind to the audience I had forgotten was even there.
"Alpha Theodore." The healer’s voice carried an urgency that pulled Étienne’s attention away from the door entirely, his hand already reaching for the handle, only to stop mid-motion. "We have results from the material Luna Margaux handed over. The DNA from the witch encounter." He held up the folder, his expression tight with something that looked uncomfortably close to alarm. "I think you need to see this immediately."