My Sister Stole My Mate, And I Let Her

Chapter 518 THE LAST THING

SERAPHINA’S POVBy the time I returned to Mother’s room, Ethan hadn’t moved.

He was still sitting beside her bed with one hand loosely wrapped around hers, his thumb absentmindedly brushing slow circles across her skin as though the gentle rhythm could somehow guide her back to us.

He looked up when I walked in.

“Everything okay?”

I nodded, though it took me a second longer than it should have to answer. “It will be.”

I lowered myself into the chair beside him and laid my head on his shoulder.

Outside, I could hear the distant sounds of the estate carrying on with its ordinary routines—footsteps on gravel, someone calling instructions across the training grounds, birds singing in the gardens.

Life.

It felt almost surreal that it had resumed so easily.

I studied Mother’s face again.

She looked peaceful, and I found myself wondering whether she was dreaming or simply floating somewhere between worlds, waiting patiently for her body to remember how to wake.

Ethan’s voice broke gently through the silence.

"Does Celeste know?"

The question lingered between us for a moment before I understood what he meant.

"About Mother?"

He nodded.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, lifting my head. “I haven’t seen her since we got back.”

Ethan let out a slow breath. “Yeah, that checks out.”

He leaned back in his chair, rubbing a tired hand across the back of his neck before answering.

"She mostly stayed in her room. She’d come out for the occasional walk or to eat if no one brought anything up, but..." He shrugged. "She kept to herself. The only person she spoke to was Mireya."

At the mention of Mireya, my chest tightened.

My thoughts immediately drifted to Damian Rooke—to the fact that the entirety of the island and its surrounding areas had been scoured and we’d come up empty.

We were actively tracking him, and I hoped we would find him soon and make him answer for his crimes.

For now, though, he was still out there somewhere, and if that knowledge sat heavy in my stomach, I could only imagine how Mireya felt.

I added visiting her to the long mental list of things I had to do.

"You okay?"

Ethan’s voice pulled me back.

"I was thinking about Mireya," I admitted quietly.

Understanding settled over Ethan’s expression, and he nodded. Neither of us spoke for a while after that.

We simply sat there beside Mother’s bed, listening to the steady rhythm of the monitors as the afternoon sunlight crept a little farther across the floor.

Eventually, Ethan broke the silence with a quiet sigh.

"Maybe we should go see Celeste."

His words drew my thoughts inward before I could answer.

For so long, the relationship between my sister and me had been painfully easy to define.

She’d always hated me, but I’d loved her anyway—until years of rejection, humiliation, and heartbreak had finally taught me to stop hoping for a place in her heart that had never existed.

Eventually, my love had curdled into resentment, and resentment had festered into something resembling hatred.

But things weren’t that simple anymore.

Ever since she’d arrived at Nightfang, something between us had shifted.

Not enough to erase the years of hurt, and certainly not enough to undo the damage she’d caused, but enough that I could no longer feel only anger when I looked at her.

The sharp edges had dulled, replaced by a cautious uncertainty I wasn’t sure how to navigate.

There was still pain. Too much of it. Too many memories that neither apology nor time could erase.

Yet beneath all of that was the uneasy awareness that we had both been Catherine’s victims—in different ways, but victims nonetheless.

Whether that left room for forgiveness, or merely a quieter kind of coexistence, I honestly couldn’t say.

The uncertainty was strangely more unsettling than the hatred had ever been.

After a long moment, I drew in a slow breath and nodded.

"Yeah," I said softly. "Let’s go see her."

Together, Ethan and I left the medical wing, the journey back to the packhouse passing mostly in silence.

The corridors seemed quieter than before, many of the alliance members having already departed for temporary quarters or returned to their own packs to begin rebuilding.

We stopped outside the guest room Celeste had been staying in since her arrival at Nightfang, and Ethan knocked twice against the door.

"Celeste?"

His voice echoed softly down the quiet corridor, but no answer came. After waiting a few seconds, he knocked again, a little more firmly this time.

"Celeste."

Still nothing.

I glanced at Ethan, and when he gave the slightest nod, I reached for the handle. The door wasn’t locked, and it swung open with barely a sound.

At first, nothing seemed out of place. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the partially drawn curtains, spilling across the neatly made bed and bathing the room in a warm, golden glow.

But something felt wrong.

The room wasn’t simply tidy. It was empty in a way that no occupied room ever was, stripped of the little traces of personality people always left behind.

The floral scent Celeste had started wearing to cover up the absence of a wolf scent had disappeared, and so had the hairbrush and the tubs and tubes of cosmetics I’d seen on the vanity when I’d laid her to sleep all those days ago.

Behind me, I heard the closet doors slide open.

"Sera..."

I turned at the sound of Ethan’s voice.

"It’s empty."

Every hanger inside stood perfectly still, swaying only slightly from where he’d opened the doors.

There wasn’t a single dress hanging inside, no coats, no shoes lined neatly along the bottom shelf.

Unease settled in the pit of my stomach, and a knot formed in my chest as I crossed to the dresser and pulled the drawers open one after another. They were just as bare.

The adjoining bathroom offered no reassurance either; the shelves had been cleared of all toiletries.

This wasn’t someone stepping out for a walk or taking a meal downstairs.

I slowly turned back toward the bedroom, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, and then my eyes refocused on the bed.

A single folded sheet of paper rested neatly in the center of the white duvet.

It was the only thing left in the entire room.

Ethan followed my gaze, his brows furrowing.

"Is that...?"

The note looked impossibly small against the broad expanse of the bed, and a quiet sense of dread settled over me as I picked it up, unfolded it, and began to read.

Sera,

The first line of the first draft of this letter was an apology. I didn’t even finish writing it before I crumpled it up and tossed it.

After everything, an apology is woefully inadequate, so I won’t even try.

I agonized all night over what to say, and I still have nothing. Because words are not enough—they will never be enough.

I could tell you I’m sorry. I could explain that, yesterday, for no reason I could discern, something...popped within me. All of a sudden, there were these emotions, these memories. This...clarity.

I can only imagine that means you’ve defeated Catherine and that whatever hold she had on me is gone.

But does that justify anything? I still did all those awful, horrible things to someone who should have been my best friend, whom I should have loved and looked up to.

The thing is, in addition to being a bitch and a schemer and every bad word in the book, I’m also a coward.

I can’t bear it, Sera. I can’t face you.

I don’t know if I have a redemption arc. I don’t know if there’s any version of a future where I can come back from who I’ve been and what I’ve done.

There’s too much I don’t know. Too much I can’t come to terms with. Every time I look in the mirror, I want to throw up.

I think the best thing I ever did for you was leaving ten years ago—so that’s what I’m doing now.

Who knows, maybe I’ll find myself on some Eat Pray Love journey and fix the fundamental thing that’s broken within me—if that’s even possible.

Maybe I’ll do the world a favor and end up dead in an alley somewhere.

Maybe this is goodbye forever.

Maybe I’ll see you again.

We’ll see.

Celeste

I lowered the letter slowly, and for a long moment, I couldn’t find a single thought that didn’t contradict the one before it.

I wasn’t sure whether what settled in my chest was grief, regret, or good old numbness.

“What does it say?” Ethan asked gently, but his voice was strained. He already knew the answer.

I folded the letter carefully along the creases she’d made, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

Perhaps because, after everything we’d destroyed over the years, it felt wrong to destroy the first honest thing Celeste had ever given me.

And perhaps because there was the very real possibility that it was the last thing she would ever give me.