Kidnapped in Sister’s Place and Emotionally Numbed: The Tragic Twin Cuts All Ties Chapter 12
Within a month, Kaelis handed everything over: Pack Council, Lycan enforcers, all of it.
Calder Holdings‘ trafficking network blew wide open.
The rogues secretly hired by Blackridge to kidnap me had used wolfsbane supplied by Calder Holdings.
That was part of why Kaelis had sought me out in the first place. Why he’d insisted on helping.
My case was the last piece he needed to bury Alpha Calder for good.
Frostmere didn’t walk away clean either.
Dad had helped launder the pack’s dirty money trail.
Once the investigation kicked off, Frostmere’s businesses collapsed. The land and the Alpha estate were
both seized and repossessed by the Council.
For most people, it would’ve been survivable. For a family that had never lived without luxury, it was the end
of the world.
Veyra sobbed over her designer dresses and custom handbags.
Mom couldn’t take it.
“Can’t she at least keep some of it?”
Dad looked like he’d aged a decade in a month.
“You think I want this?”
“If we don’t sell everything, how do we pay the Council reparations?”
Even if they liquidated every last thing they owned, the reparations would swallow it all.
Evander disappeared. Took nothing with him.
Nobody knew where he went.
Before he vanished, he texted me.
[I’m sorry.]
He’d managed to stay out of the indictments. Barely.
But luck only stretches so far.
Kaelis had already tracked him down.
I finally understood why Kaelis had dug into the Rothmeres so relentlessly. It wasn’t just about the money trail. He was tearing down the people who broke me.
When I walked into the Frostmere pack house one last time to pack my things, Veyra’s voice cut across the
empty foyer like a blade. “Liora! What are you doing here?!”
“You ruined everything! The second you came back, it all fell apart! I hate you! Why can’t you just die?!”
Dad grabbed her arm.
“Enough!”
It was the first time I’d ever heard him raise his voice at Veyra.
“You ran her over with a car. You left her in those woods.”
“We didn’t lose everything because of Liora.”
“We lost it because we kept covering up the wrong things.”
Veyra lunged for me. Mom held her back.
I walked past them both and pulled my grandparents‘ wooden chest out of the storage room.
Dad stood in the doorway, voice spent. “You came back just for that?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Veyra.
“I also wanted to see which one of us ended up worthless.”
Her face crumpled.
“I’m sorry…” Mom could barely get the words out.
“I know you hate us.”
“…”
She broke down before she could finish.
Hate?
Before the kidnapping, all I’d felt was sadness.
After it, nothing.
And now, looking at them, the only thing I felt was gratitude.
Grateful that I hadn’t grown up in this house.
Grateful that I’d had the best grandparents anyone could ask for.
“Take care of yourselves.”
I turned, walked out, and climbed into the Maybach parked at the curb.
The Rothmeres watched from the sidewalk. None of them moved.
“How do you feel?” Kaelis asked, leaning over to buckle my seatbelt.
“I don’t feel anything,” I said.
He kissed me.
“What about now?”
I looked at him.
This time, I didn’t pull away.
He leaned in again.
Gentle, at first.
Then something hit me: a scent, unfamiliar and overwhelming, flooding every sense I had.
Cedar. Fir. Wet earth after a storm.
A howl tore through the silence inside me from a place that had been dark and still for months.
Something cracked open. Something that had been sealed shut.
A pair of silver–gray eyes opened in the dark.
My wolf rose slowly, shook herself clean, and sent one word ringing through my entire being.
Mate.
Kaelis pulled back. Gold bled into his irises as his wolf surged forward, and his breath came fast.
“Did you feel that?”
I didn’t answer.
She was already running through the dark she’d been trapped in, straight toward his wolf.
The bond locked into place between us, warm and undeniable.
Kaelis smiled.
“Told you.”
I raised my hand.
He caught my wrist.
“Whoa, we just confirmed the mate bond and you’re already trying to punch me?”
“I was going to tell you to wipe that smug look off your face.”
“You were way cuter when you couldn’t feel anything. At least you didn’t punch your mate.”
“Go away.”
But there was no edge to it this time.
Irritation. Relief. Joy.
And underneath all of it, my wolf stretching awake, alive, humming through every nerve.
I could feel again.
She didn’t wake up when the Rothmeres begged me to come home.
She woke up in the life I’d chosen for myself.
Maybe that was the Moon Goddess’s gift all along.
