The Wolf God's Unwanted Luna

Chapter 80: Sleep, grieve, forget

I felt the storm raging inside him through our bond, conflicting and chaotic and barely contained. For the briefest moment, I caught something unexpected, anxiousness, maybe even remorse, and then just as quickly it vanished. Like a door slammed shut, the emotions disappeared as if they’d never been there at all.

When he opened his eyes, they were frozen and unreadable.

My breath caught.

"Because I don’t care what I have to do or who I have to crush, as long as I end up with what I want," he said coldly.

He stepped back, slipping from my hands. I stood there staring up at him, and I felt something inside me fracture. My hands dropped to my sides.

"My mistake," he said, voice flat, "was thinking I needed to be someone you’d want to spend forever with. I’ve been pretending, pretending to be gentle, pretending to be safe, while fighting chaos behind the curtain. I let you believe in a side of me that never truly existed."

His eyes locked onto mine. "But the truth is, I was born a monster, and a monster I remain. A weapon built to destroy. I’m no savior, Vivian."

His voice never wavered. Each word landed like something thrown with intention.

"I’m a creature of the night. Vile. Cold-blooded. Created to stalk, seduce, and kill. And you know that. You’ve always known." He leaned closer, his breath brushing my neck as he tucked my hair behind my ear. "Even our bond can’t hide that truth from you. You’ve felt it too, the darkness clinging to me like a second skin."

I stood rigid, fists clenched so tightly my nails bit into my palms. I needed the pain. I welcomed the distraction from the weight of what he was saying. He wasn’t lying, every word rang with raw truth and I knew it.

I had felt that darkness, of course I had. But when I was with him it always faded, like mist retreating from sunlight. I’d been choosing blindness, painting him into the shape of what I thought a mate should be, someone gentle and devoted and capable of being saved. I’d let myself believe that once he claimed me, everything fundamental about him changed.

But now I had to wonder: had he simply learned to wear the role I needed him to play?