Knot The One They Want

KEION POV

The room tilts violently. The air vanishes from my lungs. It feels as if the ground itself has been ripped out from beneath my feet, leaving me plummeting into a dark, bottomless void. My hands go numb. My heart slams against my ribs so hard it’s deafening.

"No," I burst out, dropping his wrist and stumbling back a step. A nervous, disbelieving laugh tears from my throat, jagged and wild. "No, no, no. You’re out of your mind, Walter. You’re delirious. The fever is messing with your head! That’s impossible. That’s a mistake. If it was true, I’d have felt it, but I don’t, so it’s not true! It can’t be true!"

"It is true, Keion!" Walter sobs, clutching his stomach as he curls into a tight ball on the bed. His chest heaves, his voice breaking apart. "It’s all true..."

"Shut up! Just shut up!" I yell, my voice cracking with desperate panic. I pace back and forth, dragging my hands through my hair, refusing to accept it, refusing to let the reality settle in. "Lorali? The girl we made miserable? Our fated mate? Do you hear how insane you sound?! That makes no sense! It’s wrong! You’re lying or Torin is playing a twisted game with your mind!"

This cannot be true. It cannot. Lorali would have said something. I would have felt something. I NEVER ONCE FELT ANYTH—

I stop dead in my tracks.

The room fades away, and suddenly, a memory explodes in the front of my mind, a memory I had buried under layers of denial. It was the night she caught me trashing the kitchen. I remember the ambient light, the cold tile, and the hurt in her eyes as she looked at me. And I remember leaving. As I passed her, our fingers brushed accidentally, and a jolt of pure electricity shot through my arm. A sudden, magnetic pull dragged at my entire soul, screaming at me to turn around, to grab her, to protect her.

But I had swallowed it down. I had forced myself to ignore it. I told myself it was just adrenaline, that I had to stay loyal to Walter, to the pack, to our strength. I turned my back on the bond. I felt it, and I buried it. And because I buried it, I never felt it again. I convinced myself it was nothing, just the wind, just nerves, just a trick of the moment.

Now, standing here, I know the truth. I felt it. And I denied it.

A crushing weight slams into my chest, cutting off my breath.

"We made her sleep in the shed, Keion..." Walter weeps softly, his voice a haunting backdrop to my internal collapse. "We starved her... we treated her like dirt... we broke her..."

"Stop," I choke out, clutching my head as a wave of suffocating guilt tears through my brain. "Stop it, Walter... stop talking..."

"We let her suffer—"

"I SAID STOP!"

I bolt for the door. I can’t breathe. I can’t be in that room. My legs feel like lead as I stumble into the hallway, my hands shaking so violently I can’t keep them steady. Every step feels like groveling in the dirt, the agonizing reality of what we’ve done clawing at my throat. We tortured our own mate. We tormented the very soul tied to ours by the Moon Goddess.

And then, the paralyzing guilt twists into a white-hot, blinding fury.

Torin.

He knew. He kept quiet. All so he could be her savior.

I storm down the corridor, my heavy footsteps echoing like thunder. I shove open the doors to the second master wing and throw open the entrance to Torin’s room. Augi is standing near the doorway, hollow-eyed, but I don’t care. I slam past him so hard he stumbles into the wall.

Torin sits on the edge of the bed. I launch myself at him, reaching down to yank him up by the front of his shirt, desperate to rip his face. But he’s too heavy, anchored like a stone wall. Cursing, I settle for grabbing his collar with both hands, twisting the fabric until my knuckles turn white, dragging my face inches from his broken eyes.

"You piece of shit!" I roar, the veins in my neck bulging as tears of rage burn my eyes. "You knew! You sick, manipulative bastard, you knew the whole damn time! You kept the fact that Walter and I are fated to Lorali! You destroyed this pack! All so you could play the hero! I’ll kill you, Torin! I swear to God, I’ll rip your throat out!"

Oril stands in the corner, completely silent, his head bowed, not lifting a finger to stop me. No one moves. No one defends him.

Torin doesn’t flinch. He just sits there, staring up at me with dead eyes tinged with sorrow. He doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t fight back. He waits until my rage burns itself out, until my chest heaves and my grip shakes against his clothes.

Then, Torin speaks. His voice is terrifyingly calm. "It was you who abused her for half a year before I ever came along," Torin says, each word dropping like a lead weight into the silent room. "Before I made a single effort to know her."

My grip loosens slightly, my brain stalling. "Whatever the reason," Torin continues, his eyes cutting into mine like knives, "you were all so blind, so lost in your own pathetic egos, that you failed to notice your own fated mate living right under your roof."

"Shut up..." I whisper, my voice trembling, the words breaking apart under the weight of his truth.

"And now that you know?" Torin lets out a cruel, bitter laugh, the sound scraping against my nerves. "Now that you know she’s your fated mate, suddenly you feel guilty? Suddenly you’re sick to your stomach for all the things you’ve done?"

He leans in closer, his gaze tearing away every last shred of my defense. His voice drops into a harsh whisper that cuts deeper than any blade. "You’re all exactly like me. You’re monsters. Because you didn’t feel guilty until now because what you did to a helpless girl was wrong. You only feel guilty because she belongs to you. You only care because she’s your fated mate."

A sad smile spreads across his face and it slices me open more brutally than his words.

"And I bet... even if you did know back then that she was your fated mate, you would have abused her anyway. Because the truth is, Keion, you have no morals when your sweet Walter is involved. Yes, I may be a manipulator. I may be the reason Spade is in the broken condition it’s in right now. But I’m not the one who treated Lorali like trash for months, and then cried about it later."

His words hang in the air impossible to escape. My grip slips entirely from his collar. My hands fall uselessly to my sides. I am speechless.

My heart pounds against my ribs in erratic, violent panic, refusing to slow down. The walls of the room feel like they are closing in, shrinking, suffocating me, squeezing the air out of my chest until I can’t catch a single breath.

My mind spirals into a dark abyss, tearing itself apart as the terrible, agonizing truth settles deep into my chest.

He is right.

God help me, Torin is right.

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