73 Chapter 73 My Stolen Years
I studied her now, prostrate at my feet, my vision blurred with tears and blazing with incredulous fury. “You hid him from me,” I rasped, each word feeling like broken glass in my throat. “You kept my son away from me!”
But compassion eluded me. Not even a fragment. My wolf bared its teeth, dismissing her anguish. She had earned every moment of this pain.
He was a stranger to me. My own son had no knowledge of my identity, and I had done nothing to warrant this cruelty.
Her confession struck like a physical assault. Complete love? Without demands? What did she believe I had offered her? I laughed bitterly, the sound hollow and sharp.
Perhaps I had failed as a partner or fiancé, but I would have been an exceptional father. I deserved that chance.
Deep within, my wolf released a mournful howl, pure torment mixed with primitive fury. I sensed Seraphina’s wolf responding, a distant echo, fracturing alongside mine. Waves of grief, profound and devastating sorrow.
She shifted, but I kept my gaze fixed downward. I stared at my hands, now white-knuckled fists resting on my thighs. Then I sensed her approaching, so near I could detect her familiar scent. She dropped to her knees before me, her head lowered
in submission.
“Julian,” she started, her voice quavering like a leaf in a storm. “No words, no
justification will ever undo my actions. I understand that completely. But please… I’m pleading for your mercy.”
Reality had shifted beneath my feet. My stomach had plummeted, and arctic dread had flooded my veins, turning my blood to slush. This was no mistake. This was truth.
She winced, her frame collapsing further inward. “I know,” she whispered through streaming tears. “I realize what I’ve done. But… what comes next?”
One tear broke free, then another, blazing trails down my cheeks. My breathing became ragged. An Alpha weeping. It violated every instinct, every law of what I was supposed to be. But I was powerless to stop the flood. The barriers had crumbled, and years of anguish, bewilderment, and betrayal cascaded out.
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73 Chapter 73 My Stolen Years
Intimate moments, skin against skin, making love, and I had always dismissed them as fantasies conjured by my desperate loneliness. Wishful thinking. Beautiful lies I told myself. Never once had I considered they might be genuine. Never had I suspected they were actual memories, buried deep, waiting to resurface.
The tears ceased. Cold, merciless rage replaced them, surging through every cell in my body. I shot to my feet, the mattress springs protesting my violent movement. I aimed an accusatory finger at her trembling form.
Each time I believed she had inflicted all the damage possible, Seraphina found new ways to shatter me completely. I had no idea how I was supposed to survive this
revelation.
I remembered arranging their immediate travel, ensuring they received first-class accommodations, though their worry for her made them indifferent to my generous arrangements or lack of advance notice.
“Why, Seraphina?” The words scraped out of my throat, barely audible but heavy with years of accumulated pain. “Why would you do this to us? To me? How could you?”
Seraphina finally raised her head, tears glistening, complexion ashen. “I was exhausted, Julian,” she breathed, words barely reaching my ears. “Completely drained. I needed distance. As far from you as possible. And I… I had no idea about the pregnancy. Not for weeks afterward.” She drew a trembling breath. “When I discovered it, telling you was impossible. Because… because at last I had someone entirely mine who would love me completely. Without conditions or demands.”
My mind replayed recent events. The agonizing moment when understanding dawned. I recalled catching fragments of her parents’ conversation. Something about a child. I had gone rigid. My wolf had awakened inside me, a peculiar blend of terror and recognition washing over me. I had tried to dismiss it, to convince myself I had misheard, that fate was playing a vicious joke.
“You are a monster!” I bellowed, my voice transforming into a feral snarl that reverberated through the room. “You don’t deserve my devotion! I gave you everything! My heart belonged only to you! But nothing was ever sufficient, was it?” My voice fractured under the weight of my wrath. “Not enough to make you stay. Not enough to make you choose me. And certainly not enough to share the news that we had created a son together!”
“What about me?” I demanded, my voice now glacial, stripped of everything except
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betrayal. “Didn’t I deserve that opportunity? Didn’t I earn the right to receive my son’s love? To love him in return? You stole that from me, Seraphina! You robbed us of years! Years of watching him walk, hearing his first words, celebrating birthdays! You destroyed my chance to be his father!”
My Seraphina would never commit such an act.
My thoughts were chaos. For years, I had experienced these bizarre flashes. Like fragments of old films flickering through my consciousness. Images of us together. That specific evening when alcohol had clouded my judgment, when she had vanished from my life.
I barely retained details of my conversation with them, only that they revealed she had returned because illness forced her hand, and she required treatment available only here.
My throat burned like fire, matching the inferno consuming my heart.
Not against me.
Her child.
My knees buckled, and I collapsed onto the bed’s edge, the springs creaking under my sudden weight. A sledgehammer was pounding against my skull, each throb bringing waves of disbelief and anguish. My ribcage felt crushed, as if someone had wrapped steel cables around my chest and pulled tight.
Then Penelope had contacted me. Her tone was cautious, measured. “Julian,” she had said. “There’s a family… they’ve been reaching out. They need to speak with Seraphina. Regarding her child.”
Julian’s POV
That little boy resembled me perfectly. He embodied every dream I had harbored about my future child, and I had missed his entire existence.
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