Chapter 89: SHE WASN’T MOVING
Chapter 90
Ren
I stood in the driveway with my hand on the handle of the car door, every instinct in my body screaming that she wasn’t here.
I pulled the door open, ready to slide into the driver’s seat and tear up the surrounding roads.
Then I froze.
A sharp, unexplainable pull tugged at the center of my chest. It wasn’t logic. Logic said she’d left hours ago, maybe days.
But my wolf snarled low under my skin, digging its claws into my ribs, demanding that I double-check.
Something inside me refused to let me put this house in my rearview mirror without going deep into its bones.
I slammed the car door shut.
I turned back toward the rusted gates and walked straight into the house.
The heavy oak front door swung open with a groan. Inside, the foyer was drowning in shadow.
I stepped onto the dusty floorboards, my eyes scanning the ground. Most of the floor had been wiped down or disturbed, but near the dark hallway leading toward the study, I saw it...a single, distinct footprint belonging to Lumi’s shoe, half-smudged by someone else’s clumsy attempt to obscure it.
I knelt, touching the edge of the print. She had definitely stood here. But she hadn’t been alone.
The secondary stride beside it was larger, heavier, dragging slightly. Someone had walked beside her...or behind her.
As I straightened up, a pale square of paper caught my eye. It was resting on the dark wood of table near the staircase, weighed down by a small, rusted key.
My phone buzzed violently in my hand, shattering the quiet. I snapped it open and brought it to my ear.
"Alpha," Darren’s voice came through, fast and strained.
"We found something. We traced a vehicle registration linked to the area. A sedan was found off the road, parked in a far corner right at the edge of the water. It was driven straight into the sea. It belonged to her, Alpha." Everything in me froze.
What does it mean that it belonged to her? What...what...was...
"Inside the sea? What the hell are you talking about, Darren? Why is her car in the water?"
"We don’t know, Alpha." Darren said, the sound of wind and crashing waves bleeding through the line.
"The tide pulled it down before locals spotted the frame. The doors were unlocked, but the cabin is empty. She isn’t in it."
"Search the water," I commanded, my voice cracking with a sudden, suffocating panic.
"Get divers out there. Search every inch of that shoreline right now! I’m... I’m at her mother’s place. She was here. She was definitely here, but the place is empty. I just stepped back inside to check a few things before heading your way."
"Understood. We’re setting up a perimeter along the coast," he said, and the line went dead.
My hands were shaking. I looked down at the table, my chest heaving as I reached out and picked up the piece of paper.
I unfolded it slowly, the crisp sound echoing in the empty hall.
It was Lumi’s handwriting. Slanted, hurried, and broken.
*If you are reading this, I am sorry.
I tried. The universe knows I tried so hard to fight it, to build something real, to pretend that I could break the cycle.
But destiny will always be destiny. I thought I could outrun what happened to my family, but I am my mother’s daughter after all. I was always going to end up just like her.
I lost Callum...the man I thought was the love of my life, the man I believed I’d spend forever with.
I love him with everything in me and I lost something when I lost him. He didn’t just cheat on me, he destroyed everything we built, breaking me the exact same way my father cheated and broke on my mother. History didn’t just repeat itself; it humiliated me.
And now I’ve lost Neve. I’ve lost my best friend, the only sister I had. I’ve lost everyone who ever looked at me with an ounce of care. I am completely alone.
How am I supposed to take care of my child like this? How do I give Theo a life when I am hollowed out inside? How do I protect him when I can barely survive my own mind? I can’t let him watch me fall apart the way I watched her.*
The paper burned not just my heart but my soul, I wanted nothing but to split it.
My hands were trembling uncontrollably. But I kept reading, because whatever this was, I owed her that much...to know every word of it before I let myself do something thick or act.
*I came back here because this is where it all started. My father. My mother. Everything that broke in this family broke inside these walls first, and I think some part of me always knew I’d end up back here eventually, that I’d never really gotten away from it no matter how far I ran or how much money I made or how many times I told myself I was different.
If misery has to end somewhere, let it end where it began.
For whoever finds this, please just know... it was not an easy decision to make.*
I stood there in the dusty hallway with the paper still trembling in my grip.
Every word of it felt wrong in a way.
I couldn’t have explained to anyone who hadn’t known her the way I’d come to know her these past months.
Wrong in its rhythm. Wrong in the things it didn’t say. She’d fought too hard for Theo, bled for that company, stood in front of me with her chin up even when her whole world was collapsing around her, and none of that added up to a woman who folded this easily.
Something wasn’t right. I could feel it.
I needed to be sure I wasn’t just refusing to believe it because I couldn’t bear to.
So I did the one thing that made sense... I called the person who knew her better than almost anyone alive, even after everything, even after the ugliness between them.
Neve picked up on the third ring, sounding tired rather than sharp this time.
"What now, Ren."
"I need to ask you something," I said, keeping my voice level even though nothing in me felt level.
"And I need you to actually answer it, not deflect." I thought she wouldn’t reply but she did.
"Fine."
"Do you think Lumi could kill herself?" The laugh that came down the line was short, disbelieving, almost genuine.
"Are you serious right now? Lumi?" Another laugh, harder this time.
"God, no. She could never hurt herself, Ren. She loves herself far too much for that. She might cry about it, might make everyone else feel sorry for her about it, but actually hurt herself? No. She’s too selfish for that. A woman like her doesn’t destroy the one thing she’s spent her whole life protecting." I said nothing. I let her keep going.
"Honestly, if you ask me, this is probably some new act. Attention, sympathy, whatever she thinks she needs from you." Neve’s voice softened, shifting entirely, reaching for something warmer, something aimed at me now instead of at Lumi.
"You should really think about this, Ren. She’s older than you. She’s got baggage you don’t need. I know things have been hard between us but I’m only saying this because I care about you, I don’t want to watch you throw yourself away on someone who’s never going to..."
"Thank you," I said, cutting her off. "I have to go."
"Ren..."
I ended the call before she could finish, and stood there in the silence that followed, my heart going harder than it should have been.
Because that was the thing. Neve didn’t like her for now. She had spent the last few days tearing her apart in every way a person could tear someone apart, and even Neve, even with all that venom behind her words, hadn’t been able to picture Lumi hurting herself.
If the one person with every reason to believe the worst of her couldn’t believe this, then this letter wasn’t the truth. It was written to look like the truth.
Someone had done this to her.
The thought settled into me cold and absolute, and underneath it came the next one, worse.
Who. Who would know enough about her, about us, about the exact shape of her pain to write something this precise, this cruel, this tailored to sound like her own voice breaking.
Someone who knew about Callum. Someone who knew about Neve, knew there’d been a rift bad enough to use as a weapon.
That wasn’t a stranger. That was someone who’d been close enough to watch, close enough to listen, close enough to know exactly which wounds would make a letter like this convincing.
Callum. The name came up before I could stop it. Could he have found her here, done this, walked her into my own territory without me knowing.
No. I dismissed it almost as fast as it had come. Nobody crossed into pack land unnoticed, not for this long, not this cleanly.
My people would have caught the scent of an outsider within hours, would have reported it before he’d gotten within a mile of her.
Whoever this was, they’d either been careful enough to avoid every sentry I had, which felt impossible, or they belonged here. Which felt worse.
Please, I thought, and it wasn’t a prayer I’d said in years, not since I was young enough to still believe prayers changed anything.
Please let her be alive. Whatever this is. Whoever did this. Just let her be alive.
I will tear this city apart with my own hands to find them.
I thought of the river, of Darren’s men wading through cold water looking for a body that might not even be there, and something in my chest twisted so hard I had to brace a hand against the wall.
Or she might be there. Did they harm her and tried to make it look like she did it herself?
If she’d written this letter here, in this house, then driven to the sea... why hadn’t anyone found her in the car. Why was the car empty.
None of it lined up, and every piece that didn’t line up was one more reason to believe someone had staged all of it, badly enough that the cracks were showing if you knew where to look.
I turned toward the door, meaning to drive straight to that stretch of coast myself. My legs wouldn’t move.
Something held me there, rooted to the hallway floor, a pull I recognised even though I hated how much of it wasn’t rational.
My wolf. He was awake fully now, pacing under my skin with a violence I hadn’t felt from him in years, and he wasn’t pointing toward the road. He was pointing up. Into the house.
*She’s not here,* I told him, even as my feet were already carrying me toward the staircase against my own better judgment.
*We checked. We felt the trail leading out. She’s gone, we need to go to the river...*
He didn’t listen. He never listened when it mattered like this.
I felt him clawing at the edges of my control, wanting out, wanting teeth and claws and blood, wanting to tear this house apart board by board until he found whoever had dared put their hands on what belonged to us.
I held him down with everything I had, because I knew, even through the haze of it, that losing myself to him now would cost us time we didn’t have.
If she was somewhere in this house, hurt, dying, whatever this was, I couldn’t afford to be an animal right now.
I needed to think. I needed my hands steady and my mind clear, because a wolf tearing through rooms wouldn’t save her... a man who could actually find her might.
So I climbed the stairs on two legs, forcing every breath to stay even, checking room after room, empty bedroom after empty bedroom, dust sheets over furniture that hadn’t been touched in years, and every closed door I opened I told myself,
She’s not here, we’re wasting time, go to the river
And every time, my wolf shoved back just as hard, insisting, dragging my feet toward the next door instead of back toward the stairs.
*She’s still here,* he said, in the only way he knew how to say anything, a pressure behind my sternum that wouldn’t ease no matter how many empty rooms I cleared. *Search. All of it. Every room.*
I reached the end of the hallway. One door left, half-ajar, darker inside than the rest, curtains drawn against a window that hadn’t seen daylight in years.
I pushed it open.
And there, on the floor beside an old four-poster bed, in a plain white nightgown that wasn’t hers, was Lumi...still, silent, one hand curled loosely open beside her, a small orange pill bottle lying empty on the floorboards inches from her fingers.
She wasn’t moving.