Chapter 187

The steam from the soup had begun to dissipate by the time Clara deemed the meal finished. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Lunch was served with the same efficiency Clara applied to everything else. The three of them were now seated on high stools around the marble island.

Clara sat in the center, a barrier between the two souls from the South. Isabella and Alaric had claimed the far edges of the long counter, keeping as much distance between them as the stone would allow.

Isabella looked down at her bowl. The broth was rich and fragrant, but her appetite remained a distant second to the restlessness vibrating in her bones.

Across the expanse of marble, she could feel Alaric’s presence. He wasn’t eating; he was staring at his reflection in the polished surface, his large hands curled loosely around the base of his bowl.

The air was still thick with the things they weren’t saying. Isabella took a slow sip of the broth, the heat grounding her.

She could feel Alaric’s eyes flick up to her every few seconds, then dart away the moment she moved. It was a bizarre reversal of the years she had spent trying to make herself invisible whenever he walked into a room.

"The silence is indigestible," Clara stated suddenly, her spoon clicking against her bowl. She didn’t look at either of them, her white eyes fixed on the steam rising before her.

"I believe both of you know each other from before," Clara said, her voice cutting through the heavy atmosphere.

She finally set her spoon down, "There is a history here, one that smells of old blood and unwashed shame. I think it is time I heard it."

Clara remained perfectly still, her white eyes fixed on a point between them. Internally, her mind was far more active.

She had felt the edges of their shared silence from the moment they stood on opposite sides of her kitchen.

It was a peculiar, poisonous tension. She knew Lucian well enough to know that he would have separated Alaric’s head from his shoulders the moment the boy arrived if there weren’t a compelling reason to stay his hand.

The Sovereign was many things, but patient with shifter was not one of them. The only reason the boy was still breathing—the only reason he was allowed to sit at this table instead of rotting in a cell—was Isabella.

Lucian was clearly holding back for her sake, which meant the debt or the damage between these two ran deeper than a simple childhood rivalry.

Clara didn’t know the specifics of their life in the South, but she was blunt enough to know that a wound left to fester would eventually rot the whole house.

If they were to survive this house, the air needed to be cleared. Aleric flinched at Clara’s directness, his grip tightening on his bowl until his knuckles turned a ghostly white.

He looked toward Isabella, his eyes pleading for a lead, but she remained focused on her broth, her expression unreadable.

"Well?" Clara prompted, her tone brook no argument. "Don’t tell me the great Alpha heir of the South has lost his tongue in the Northern cold. What is it that makes the air turn to ice when you look at her?"

Isabella finally set her spoon down, the metal clinking softly. She didn’t look at Clara, but her gaze shifted toward Alaric.

The power humming in her veins made the old memories feel distant, like a story she had read about someone else, yet the sting was still there.

"Well Alaric?" Isabella prompted softly, her voice carrying a weight that made Alaric’s head hang lower.

"Why don’t you tell us how my life was terrible

"Why don’t you tell us how my life was made into a living hell?" Isabella prompted, her voice deceptively calm, yet sharp enough to draw blood.

She leaned back, her golden-red pupils tracking the

way his broad shoulders tensed. "Since you’re finding your conscience now, why don’t you explain to Clara what it was like for the ’defective’ girl in your pack?"

Aleric didn’t look up. "Tell her about the pack’s training," Isabella continued, the memories surfacing with a clarity that surprised her.

"Tell her how your dear Selena would call me a blemish on the pack’s reputation while you stood just a few feet away, listening to every word. Tell her how she called me a mistake for many years while you—the great Alpha heir everyone looked up to—simply remained silent."

The kitchen was so quiet that the bubbling of the pot on the stove sounded like a roar. Clara didn’t move, soaking in the confession.

"I was a ghost to you," Isabella whispered, her voice hardening. "I spent a decade being made to feel like I shouldn’t exist, all while I carried a pathetic crush on a boy who treated me like I was part of the furniture. You didn’t have to lay a hand on me, Alaric. Your silence was enough to suffocate me."

Alaric finally looked up, his eyes were a mixture of shame and raw emotion. "Isabella, I was... I would never....."

"Hold the excuse, Alaric," Isabella snapped, the edge in her voice cutting through his stuttering defense. "In fact, hold all your bullshit excuses. I don’t really give a shit about what you have to say anymore, because there isn’t a single word in the human or wolf tongue that could justify why you all treated me like garbage for eighteen years."

She leaned forward, her golden-red eyes flaring with an intense heat that made Alaric instinctively recoil from the strange and pressurizing aura radiating from Isabella.

"You want to talk about how you’d ’never’?" she challenged, her lips curling into a cold, mocking smile.

"You already did. Every time you looked the other way while Selena and the others pushed me into the dirt, you were doing it. Every time you let the pack treat me like a stain on their reputation, you were as guilty as the one holding the knife."

Alaric opened his mouth, his face pale and eyes pleading, but Isabella didn’t give him the space to breathe.

"But you know what? Honestly?" Isabella paused, taking a slow sip of her broth that seemed to settle the fire in her chest into a cold, hard diamond of resolve.

"I’m actually grateful. I’m grateful for every pathetic, miserable second of it. Because look at me now." She gestured vaguely to the opulent kitchen.

"If your dear Selena hadn’t been so consumed by her own malice—if she hadn’t left me in that trap to die alone in that dark forest—I might never have met my mate,"

"I wouldn’t have met Lucian. I’d still be in the South, shrinking into the corners, waiting for a scrap of acknowledgment from a boy who was too much of a coward to give it." She looked Alaric dead in the eye, her expression devoid of the old pain, replaced by a terrifying clarity.

"So, thank you, Alaric. Thank you for being exactly who you are. Because it led me exactly where I was supposed to be."

A ghost of a satisfied smirk played on clara’s thin lips. She had known the girl had fire, but this was a conflagration.

She could feel the power rolling off Isabella in waves, the raw Lycan energy that was finally beginning to understand its own worth.

The room fell back into a ringing silence, the kind that follows a lightning strike. Alaric looked utterly defeated, his gaze fixed to the floor as if the weight of Isabella’s words had physically pinned him there

Clara, who had remained as still as a statue throughout the outburst, finally adjusted her posture.

She slowly turned her head, her milk-white eyes traversing the space until they settle directly on Alaric’s pale face.

"I have been hearing ’Selena, Selena, Selena’ for quite some time now," Clara said, her voice dropping into a low, dangerous tone that made the temperature in the kitchen feel like it had plummeted ten degrees.

She let the name hang in the air, a foul taste that needed to be rinsed out. Alaric shifted uncomfortably, his breath hitching, but he didn’t dare interrupt the witch.

Clara leaned in slightly toward him, her aura flaring just enough to make the fine hairs on Alaric’s arms stand up.

"Tell me, wolf boy" she whispered, her voice carrying the chill of a mountain grave. "Who exactly is Selena?"