I remained silent, my chest tight, my mind a storm of betrayal and disbelief.
Kyle’s voice, usually so steady, trembled slightly with concern. “Sandra, what weighs upon you? Are you upset?”
“I… I’m at home,” I replied quietly, avoiding the moonstone glow of our shared mindlink. “I don’t wish to go to the grove today.”
There was a pause, the kind that carries the weight of unspoken worries. Then he spoke again, gently, as if coaxing a trembling wolf from the shadows. “Very well. I shall come to you at once.”
He asked no questions about my refusal. It wasn’t the depth of his devotion that made him so deferential. Rather, it was that his moonstone bond with Selindra had already been sealed beneath the ceremonial light of the full moon. I existed only as a contingency, a safety net in case the proposal faltered.
When he entered the chamber, I had just stepped from the warm steam of the bath. Behind him stood Selindra, her presence a thorn I had no desire to touch.
“Why have you brought her here?” I asked, my voice sharp as a wolf’s growl. My fangs were metaphorical, yet the edge in my tone was real.
Kyle’s gaze faltered, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose—a gesture far too human to mask guilt. “I met her in the courtyard,” he murmured. “She… she lives in our neighborhood now. When she learned you were in Solaria, she insisted on coming to make amends.”
I fixed him with a cold stare, unimpressed by his careful words and controlled tone.
“Sandra,” Selindra began, her voice trembling in that way only practiced remorse can sound, “my mother and I acted wrongly back then. I… I am here to apologize on her behalf. Can you find it in your heart to forgive us?”
I turned to Kyle, my voice steadier than my quaking soul allowed. “And you think I should forgive them? Both mother and daughter?”
The past was a landscape of scars etched deep into my flesh and mind: ruptured eardrums from the blows, the sting of bamboo whips, the charred remnants of my mother’s belongings reduced to ashes. I did not ask why Kyle had ever been drawn to Selindra—it would have revealed weakness I could not afford.
I waited, defiant, as the warmth of his guilt seemed to dissipate into the air. “Sandra,” he said finally, voice gentle yet impatient, “Selindra was but a child then. She did not know the difference between right and wrong. She has carried remorse for years, and she has sought your forgiveness. Why cling so tightly to the past?”
The past, I thought, was the abyss of my suffering—the physical and emotional torment that had hollowed me out. Refusing to forgive Selindra was not stubbornness; it was survival. He knew, better than anyone, what her cruelty had cost me. Yet he had chosen to bind himself to her, to favor her over me, to align his life with hers while I bled unseen.
When he reached for my hand, trying to forge peace between us, I recoiled and slapped it away. “Kyle, what right do you have to demand my forgiveness?” I snapped, my voice echoing the ache of betrayal. They had harmed me behind my father’s back, poisoned his mind against me, and after his death, had not even honored his memory.
He stared at my hand, now reddened from where I had struck him, confusion and disapproval etched across his features. “Sandra, I only wish to help you. You are alone now, and they are the only family you have left. Why dwell in the past and prolong your suffering?”
“You wish for me to move on, do you not?” I asked, a tremor of disbelief beneath my words. His voice, meant to soothe, carried the impatience I knew far too well. The calm, steady affection I had once relied upon was gone.
In that moment, my heart, already fractured, shattered completely into dust. Pain so acute it stole my breath, left my thoughts raw and unformed, almost rendering me mute.
Selindra’s eyes, brimming with the pretense of sorrow, gleamed with that familiar arrogance, that same provocative spark from our shared past. “Sandra,” she said, her tone a poisonous caress, “it matters not if you cannot forgive me now. I shall continue my penance, my guilt, until you accept me as part of your non-biological family.”
“Leave,” I commanded, my voice carrying the authority of a wolf claiming its territory. “Leave this place.”
