Liam’s POV

​The walk to the study was the longest of my life. The silence in the hallway was heavy, broken only by the sound of our shoes against the floor. Our fathers, our mother—the woman I had wept for—and Scarlett’s parents walked ahead of us like nothing was wrong.

​I felt like I was walking through a nightmare. My skin felt too tight, and my wolf was pacing inside me, snarling at the back of my teeth. We stepped into the study, and the heavy oak doors clicked shut, locking us in with the people who had built a kingdom on top of a mountain of lies.

​"Sit down, sons," Father Louis said, gesturing to the leather chairs.

​"I’m not sitting," I snapped. My voice was raspy, vibrating with a rage I could barely contain. "I want answers. Now."

​Mother sat behind the desk, looking at us with eyes that were supposed to be comforting, but all I saw was a stranger. "We had to do it, Liam. We received prophecies, sons. I saw it countless times in my dreams, and we visited seers. Numerous ones. We traveled across the borders in secret, and they all kept saying one thing..."

​"And what did they fucking say?" I roared, slamming my fist into the doorframe. The wood cracked under my strength. "What could possibly be worth five years of mourning? What could be worth the lives of the people we thought were hanged?"

​I looked at Scarlett’s parents. They stood by the window, looking guilty but remaining silent. Every time I looked at them, I saw Scarlett’s face the morning she watched them being executed. I saw the way her eyes went dead when she watched the hanging.

​"My relationship with Scarlett is ruined because of this lie!" I yelled, my chest heaving. "She spent years being the pack’s punching bag. She was mocked, abused, and humiliated because everyone thought her parents killed the Luna. And now... now she’s dead! She’s dead because she couldn’t handle the pain you created!"

​I felt a sting in my eyes, but I refused to cry. The guilt was eating me alive. If I had known, I would have protected her. I would have held her. Instead, I had been the one to push her away the hardest.

​Mother looked down at her hands, her voice dropping to a whisper. "The prophecy stated that the three of you—the triplet Alphas—would fight and eventually kill each other over Scarlett."

​The silence that followed was suffocating.

​"The seers said her bloodline was too strong, and your desire for her was too chaotic," she continued, looking up at us with tears in her eyes. "They said the jealousy and the power struggle between the three of you would lead to a civil war that would destroy the entire pack. We staged the deaths to separate you. We needed her to be hated so none of you would want to be with her."

​The room went dead silent again. The air felt like it was made of smoke, pressing down on my lungs until every breath was a struggle.

​"Come again?" Leo’s voice was dangerously low, vibrating with a coldness that made the temperature in the study drop. "What did you just say?"

​Father Louis stepped forward, his face etched with a grim kind of certainty. "Yes, son. The prophecy was clear. It said you three were becoming so possessive of Scarlett that the obsession would turn into a bloodbath. It said you would fight and eventually kill each other because of her."

​I let out a harsh, dry scoff, shaking my head in total disbelief. "This is a joke. You destroyed lives over a fairy tale from a bunch of old seers?"

​"It isn’t a joke, Liam," Mother said, her voice trembling but firm. "We started noticing it when you were all just children. Do you remember? The way you would argue over who got to sit next to her, who got to walk her home, who got her attention. You hardly ever wanted to share her. Even as pups, you were territorial over that girl."

​"That’s because we didn’t want to share!" Leo snapped, stepping into the center of the room like a predator cornering its prey. "Why would we have to share her? That’s just how we were."

​"See?" Mother whispered, pointing at Leo with a shaky hand. "That is the problem. That intensity. That refusal to give an inch. It was only going to get worse as your Alpha instincts fully matured."

​"That is none of your fucking business!" I yelled, my voice booming against the walls. The rage was so hot in my throat I felt like I was choking. "That was not your place to decide! You should have told us! You should have laid the truth out and let us decide our own lives, our own futures. Instead, you played God with our lives!"

​The room fell into a heavy, suffocating stillness. Leonard, who had been eerily quiet this whole time, slowly turned his gaze toward Scarlett’s parents. They were standing near the corner, shadows clinging to them.

​"And you," Leonard said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "You call yourselves her parents? How could you? You were alive this whole time. From the sidelines, you watched your only daughter go through years of pure agony. You watched her get mocked. You watched her get beaten down and humiliated. And for what? She died, Zane. She died in pain, thinking you were rotting in the ground."

​Scarlett’s father, Zane, looked up, his eyes weary and hollow. "We had to do it for her, Alpha Leonard. The prophecy didn’t just say the triplets would kill each other. It stated that if the war broke out, Scarlett would die too. It said she would be so broken by the violence between the three of you that she would eventually kill herself to make it stop."

​"Fucking nonsense!" Leonard roared, finally breaking his calm. He kicked a heavy wooden chair, sending it flying across the room until it shattered against the bookshelf. "Yes, my brothers and I... we all loved Scarlett. We wanted her more than anything. But killing ourselves? Killing each other? That is rubbish! We are brothers! We are triplets!"

​"You say that now," Father Levi added softly, "but we saw the darkness growing. We saw the way you looked at her—like she was the only thing in the world that mattered. We couldn’t risk the future of this pack on the hope that you would learn to be selfless."

​I let out a loud, bitter laugh. My wolf was clawing at my insides, wanting to tear the walls down. I looked around the room—at my mother who had faked her death, and Scarlett’s parents who had watched her suffer from the sidelines.

​"Really?" I spat, the word dripping with anger. "So why are you all back from the dead now? Is it because Scarlett is finally gone? Did you wait until she was in the ground before you decided it was safe to show your faces again?"

​The room went eerily still. My fathers exchanged a look that made my blood run cold. It wasn’t a look of grief; it was a look of calculation.

​A horrifying thought struck me, hitting me like a physical blow to the chest. I looked at the three men who raised me, then at the woman who had birthed me. My breathing became fast and shallow as the pieces started to fit together in a way that made me want to scream.

​"Wait," I whispered, my voice trembling as I turned to my fathers. "You said you did all of this to stop the prophecy. You said you needed us to hate her so we wouldn’t fight over her."

​I took a step forward, my eyes searching theirs for any sign of a lie, but all I found was a terrifying silence.

​"Did you guys kill Scarlett?"