Chapter 265: Her Choice
Catherine hurriedly wiped the tears from her eyes, as though clearing her vision would somehow change what she was seeing.
It didn’t.
He was still there.
The guilt she had buried for two lifetimes tore through her chest with ruthless force.
She hadn’t protected him.
He had died because a power-hungry minister had plotted against the throne... and because his own father, blinded by pride and suspicion, had failed to protect the child who should have inherited everything.
She had arrived too late. By the time she found him, he had already been taken from her. She still remembered his tiny body, the blood, the desperate cries for his mother that had never been answered. He had been too young to understand betrayal, too young to understand politics, too young to understand why no one came.
He had died frightened.
Lonely.
Believing his mother had abandoned him.
The memory had haunted her through death itself.
And now...
Now he stood before her again, no longer the little boy who had barely spoke a few words, but a man. He had grown into the very age she herself had been when she lost him in that previous life.
Fate had returned him to her, yet it had stolen every year in between—the first words she never heard, the milestones she never witnessed, the man he had become without her ever being there to watch.
Her heart ached with a longing so profound she scarcely knew how to breathe.
"Are you happy... Cassian?" she asked softly, the old name slipping from her lips before she could stop it. "Has life been kind to you? Have you... found someone you love?"
They were the questions she had never been given the chance to ask.
Questions a mother should have watched answer themselves over decades instead of lifetimes.
Almost unconsciously, she stepped closer, her eyes drinking in every detail of his face as though afraid this, too, might vanish if she looked away.
Fitzgerald, however, found the entire situation increasingly incomprehensible. The calculating woman who had cornered him with a gun had disappeared. In her place stood someone who looked utterly lost, searching for something that couldn’t possibly be found in him.
She looked at him with unbearable tenderness, spoke to him as though she had known him forever, and cried as though every tear had waited years to be shed.
He didn’t understand it.
He didn’t understand why those questions pierced somewhere deep inside him either.
No one had ever asked him those things, simply... because they wanted to know.
A strange tightness formed in his throat. It wasn’t painful, yet it made swallowing unexpectedly difficult. Somewhere inside him, something wanted to answer those questions honestly, though he couldn’t understand why.
Instead, he gently but firmly bringing the conversation back to reality.
"As I told you," he said, his voice quieter than before, "Dorian Blackwood doesn’t know. Yet." His steel-grey eyes searched hers with renewed curiosity. "What are you planning to do next?"
The words snapped Catherine back to the present.
Right.
Maximilian.
Dorian.
The plan.
Reality crashed over her like cold water.
She turned away, pressing Fitzgerald’s handkerchief against her face as she fought to regain control. It still carried the faint scent of cedar and apples, strangely familiar despite belonging to a man she had only just met.
She drew several slow breaths, willing the trembling in her hands to subside, but it refused to obey.
This man...
He might truly be her son’s reincarnation, but he no longer existed.
The man standing behind her was Fitzgerald Rathbourne—a man older than Maximilian, shaped by an entirely different childhood, different parents, different joys and wounds. He had lived a lifetime she knew nothing about.
Whatever soul he carried, it belonged now to a stranger with his own choices, his own loyalties... and perhaps his own reasons to stand against her.
Another tear escaped despite her efforts.
Why...
Why was fate always this cruel?
Had he truly died believing she had abandoned him?
Had that loneliness followed his soul into this lifetime?
Was that why destiny had placed him on the opposite side of the battlefield, turning the son she had failed to protect into yet another man she might one day be forced to fight?
For the first time since entering the room, Catherine wasn’t afraid of Fitzgerald Rathbourne.
She was terrified of the answer.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and forced herself to breathe.
Whatever this was... whatever miracle or cruelty fate had placed before her... it would have to wait.
Her priority was still Maximilian.
Only Maximilian.
When she turned back to face Fitzgerald, she buried the mother who had lost her son beneath layer after layer of hard-earned composure. She could not afford to be that woman now.
She had to become Catherine Preston again—Maximilian Whitmore’s fiancée, the woman who had walked willingly into the lion’s den with Dorian Blackwood, the woman carrying a plan that could not fail because her heart had wavered.
The grief clawed at her chest, begging to be acknowledged, but she refused to let it rule her. She had spent too many years learning that emotions were a luxury she could seldom afford.
"I’ll give you one hour to leave Stonehaven," she said at last, her voice calm enough that no one would have guessed the storm raging beneath it. "After that, I’ll inform my brothers that you’re here. I’m certain they won’t be nearly as accommodating as I am."
Fitzgerald regarded her with quiet curiosity before a faint smile tugged at his lips.
"I don’t think the Prestons are foolish enough to start a war with the Rathbournes."
"Maybe not." Catherine shrugged lightly. "But that depends on what happens in the next hour."
He slowly brushed invisible creases from his jacket with the same meticulous precision he seemed to apply to everything else. Those steel-grey eyes settled on her again, studying her with the same relentless curiosity that had never left them since she’d walked into this room.
Catherine met his gaze without flinching.
"I understand why you’d be inclined to help Dorian," she said quietly.
In another life, Dorian had been his father.
Perhaps souls remembered more than minds did. Perhaps that inexplicable pull she had felt wasn’t hers alone. Perhaps somewhere inside him lingered echoes of a childhood stolen before it had truly begun.
Or perhaps she was simply clinging to hope.
Either way, she had to try.
"I’d advise you to stay as far away from this battle as you can, sweetheart."
The endearment escaped before she could stop it.
She lowered her eyes for the briefest moment before continuing.
"Find someone to love. Build a family. Have children. Live peacefully. Run your businesses honestly. Whatever you do..." She looked back into his eyes. "Stay away from Dorian."
For a fleeting instant, something unreadable crossed Fitzgerald’s face.
Catherine reached into her pocket, unlocked her phone, and started a countdown timer. Without a word, she turned the screen toward him.
00:59:59
"Your time starts now."
The corner of Fitzgerald’s mouth lifted. He gave a short, amused chuckle, as though she had said something absurdly entertaining.
Catherine merely raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t bluffing.
The realization slowly settled over him. The amusement faded, leaving only thoughtfulness.
"You’re going back to Dorian," he said. It wasn’t really a question.
Catherine nodded. "I still have accounts to settle with him."
The words were simple. Only she knew how much they carried.
Two lifetimes of debts.
Two lifetimes of grief.
Two lifetimes of blood.
Because of Dorian, the son standing before her no longer remembered the mother who had once loved him more fiercely than life itself. Because of Dorian, that little boy had died frightened, abandoned, and searching for her until his final breath.
How could she ever let Dorian Blackwood live peacefully after that?
Fitzgerald remained silent for several long moments, his gaze lingering on Catherine as though trying to decipher a language he had never learned.
Then, without another word, he turned and walked out of the consultation room.
Only after the door clicked shut behind him did Catherine allow herself one shaky breath before lifting her eyes toward the ceiling.
"Stay safe... Cassian."
The whisper never reached his ears. Only the silent room bore witness to a mother’s prayer.