The Alpha Didn’t Repent Until I Was Gone Chapter 10
The book kept going.
My body started to rot.
The pack buried me.
Julian built Vera a grave right beside mine.
He remembered she was the last person I tried to protect with my life.
He buried her himself.
No servants. No help.
He placed some of Vera’s favorite old dresses into the ground one by one.
Then he carved the words onto her stone.
Beloved Friend Vera.
“Olivia,” he said into the snow, voice wrecked, “I know you cared about her. I brought her back for you.”
“If you’re still mad at your brother, come curse me in my dreams.”
“Just… don’t stay out in the cold.”
The snow was the only answer he got.
Later, Julian gave up his position as commander of the wolf guards.
The border hero everyone admired turned into a drunk.
He carried a bottle of whiskey everywhere and kept mumbling my name.
Sebastian’s hair turned white overnight.
He gave up being Alpha.
Then he built a little cabin beside my grave and lived there for the rest of his life.
Every day he prayed to the Moon Goddess for me and our five children.
On the final page was an illustration.
A cold Moon Goddess shrine.
Dim moonstone lamps.
A white-haired man in rough robes kneeling on the floor.
In front of him stood a stone tablet.
My fated mate, Olivia Kessick.
Five years after I died, a blizzard fell around that little cabin.
Sebastian Ravencroft died there.
Frozen stiff.
But even in death, he still clutched the tiny little wolf shoe he stole from under my pillow and never managed
to burn.
Two years after that, Julian Kessick got drunk one night and fell into the coldest frozen river in Ravencroft
territory.
By the time they found him the next morning, the icy water had swollen his body beyond recognition.
I stopped scrolling.
I didn’t feel vindicated.
Didn’t feel happy.
Didn’t feel like justice had been served.
The hole in my chest didn’t close just because their endings were miserable.
But it didn’t hurt anymore either.
Love that came too late was cheaper than weeds by the road.
And this love had been fake from the start.
They were just paper characters in a book.
Their regret.
Their pain.
Their ending.
All of it had been written for them long before I ever got there.
But I was real.
Why should I ruin my life over fictional people and their scripted misery?
Those seven years of pain were real to me.
Those five babies who turned into blood before they ever saw daylight were real to me.
To the story, though?
They were just plot devices.
I set the iPad facedown on the couch and closed my eyes.
The blood. The screams. The pain.
It all still echoed in my ears.
I thought it would haunt me forever.
But once I knew it had only been the plot of a book, the pain started to blur.
Like some distant, twisted nightmare.
My life shouldn’t be trapped inside a nightmare.
I picked up the iPad again.
Then I deleted the novel.
Just like that.
As if those seven years, all that love, all that hate, all that blood, and all those tears got deleted too.
I stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.
Then I yanked the curtains open.
Golden Manhattan sunlight flooded the whole apartment and tore through every last bit of darkness.
I closed my eyes and let the warmth hit my face.
Then a voice called up from downstairs.
“Hey, Sophia Rain! What’s taking you so long? You promised me coffee. Get down here now or I’m ordering you a giant iced Americano with full cream and double sugar!”
I leaned out the window.
My best friend was down there, waving at me with that fake-annoyed smile on her face.
I leaned against the frame.
Then I smiled back.
Goodbye.
Goodbye to the Olivia Kessick who got driven to the edge by fake love and fake family.
Goodbye.
The End.