---- Chapter 28 Damien POV: They threw me out into the rain like a piece of trash. | landed hard in the mud outside the shimmering barrier, the sounds of the party, of her life continuing without me, a faint, mocking echo, The baby was gone. The words circled in my head, a vulture tearing at the last scraps of my hope. My son. Gone because of me. Because | was a fool who chose a lie over my own Mate, my own blood. | didn't leave. | couldn't. Where would | go? | stayed there, just outside the barrier, for days. | didn't eat. | didn't sleep. | just knelt in the mud, staring into the silver mist, hoping for a glimpse of her, a sign that she was lying, that it was all a cruel trick. On the third day, | saw movement. A carriage, pulled by great, white beasts with antlers of pearl, was being prepared near the gate. She was leaving. Just as the gate began to shimmer open, a figure emerged from the mist. It was Alpha Alaric. Elara's father. The Alpha of Alphas. ---- He stopped a few feet from me, his presence so powerful it felt like the mountain itself was looking down on me. | wanted to grovel, to beg, but no words came. "You are a persistent pest," he said, his voice calm but laced with the threat of annihilation. "| need to see her," | rasped, my throat raw. "| just need to talk to her." He was silent for a long moment, studying me. | expected him to order his guards to kill me. Instead, he said something that lit a tiny, impossible spark in the darkness of my soul. "You have made a mess of things, Damien," he said. "A complete and utter disaster. You shamed my daughter. You allied yourself with a rogue. You destroyed your own pack." He paused, letting the weight of my failures crush me. "If you ever want to have even the slightest chance of Elara speaking your name again without disgust, you will go back to your lands. You will formally and publicly sever all ties with that rogue creature. You will atone for the chaos you caused. You will make things right." Hope, treacherous and blinding, flooded my veins. "You mean... if | do all that... she'll see me? She'll give me another chance?" Alaric's expression was unreadable. "| mean, it is the only path that does not end with you being hunted down and erased from this world. What my daughter chooses to do is her own ---- decision." It was enough. It was more than enough. It was a lifeline. "I'll do it," | said, scrambling to my feet, a new energy surging through me. "I'll go now. Tell her... tell her to wait for me. I'll fix everything. | promise." | turned and ran, not even looking back. | didn't see the profound pity in his eyes. | didn't hear him murmur to the empty air, "No one ever waits for you in the same place, boy." All | could feel was a renewed, desperate purpose. | would purge the rot from my life. | would cleanse myself of Lyra's poison. And then | would come back for my Mate.