Chapter 151: Gult
Kaden’s POV
For forty-eight hours, I hadn’t slept. I hadn’t eaten. Every time I closed my eyes, the image of Rebecca’s tear-stained face flashed behind my eyelids, her broken voice echoing through the empty parts of my mind.
My burdened steps echoed across the floor as I walked into Helen’s room. It was a space I had kept exactly the same, frozen in time since the day she died. The air still carried the faint smell of her favorite flowers, but today, it didn’t bring me the comfort it used to. Instead, the clean, quiet room felt like a courtroom, and I was the one on trial.
I stopped in front of her table, my breath catching as I looked down at her framed picture. My hands shook badly as I reached out and picked it up, staring into her bright, smiling eyes.
"I failed you, Helen," I whispered into the dead silence, my voice cracking completely as a sudden wave of emotion hit my throat. Tears immediately made my eyes blurry, hot and stinging. "The people who took your life walked freely while I hunted the wrong person. I was so consumed by my grief that I couldn’t see the truth, even when it stood right in front of me."
I squeezed my eyes shut, a suffocating, painful sob catching in my chest.
"And instead, I hurt an innocent woman," I choked out. "I broke her, Helen. I tortured her. I left her hungry. I watched her suffer... and convinced myself she deserved it while she was a victim of the same people who killed you."
I pulled the frame closer, my shoulders shaking as the full horror of what I did hit me hard.
"You must really hate me right now, don’t you?" I asked the picture, looking desperately at her frozen smile. "No wonder you came to me in that dream. No wonder you looked so incredibly angry at me. I am such a fool. I let my pain hold me so tightly that I became completely blind. And now that I finally know the truth... Moon Goddess, I don’t know what to do."
"You have to do the right thing, Kaden."
The quiet, firm voice broke the silence of the room. I didn’t even have to turn around to know it was Logan.
He stepped through the open door, his footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. He stopped a few feet away, crossing his arms over his chest, his face filled with a deep, solemn concern.
"What are you going to do now?" Logan asked gently, though his eyes demanded an answer. "You can’t just remain silent, Kaden. You have to let Rebecca know. She needs to hear from your own mouth that you finally know she’s innocent."
Logan was right. In a way, he was completely right. But the moment his words hit me, a sudden, sharp fear caught my chest. I shook my head quickly, my grip tightening on the picture frame before I carefully set it back down on the table.
"I can’t," I breathed out, my voice dropping to a rough, scared whisper. "Logan, I can’t just go to her and tell her."
Logan’s eyebrows pulled together. "Why? She deserves to know her name is clear!"
"Because if I tell her, I’ll lose her!" I snapped, turning around quickly to face him, the raw panic finally coming out. I took a step toward him, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. "Think about it, Logan! If she knows that I know the truth, she will have absolutely no reason to stay with me anymore. She will ask for her freedom. She will walk out of my life, and she will never look back. I’ll lose her forever."
Logan stared at me for a long, silent moment. Then, he let out a low, weary sigh, shaking his head.
"Then you are thinking like a man in love, Kaden," Logan said softly, his voice cutting straight through my walls.
The words hit me like a physical blow to the chest. In love. My chest moved up and down as I stared at my Beta. I didn’t accept it, but God help me, I couldn’t deny it either. The truth was terrifying. Somewhere between her tears, her courage, and everything she had endured, I had fallen in love with the woman I had destroyed.
"So what’s next?" Logan pressed, stepping closer, his voice getting firmer, refusing to let me hide. "What will you do? Keep her as a prisoner forever just to keep yourself happy? Make her remain a slave to you while she thinks you still hate her? Kaden, it’s unfair. It’s cruel. She has spent her entire life suffering, and she deserves her life back."
"Leave me, Logan," I ordered flatly, the cold mask sliding back over my face to hide the total mess tearing my soul apart. I turned my back to him again, staring blankly at the wall. "Just leave."
Logan paused, opening his mouth to say more, but seeing the dark, dangerous power rising around my shoulders, he stopped. He let out one last sad sigh, turned around, and quietly walked out, closing the heavy wooden door behind him with a soft click.
Once the room was completely silent again, I turned back to Helen’s photo. The guilt was eating me alive from the inside out, but the thought of Rebecca walking away, the thought of never seeing her, never smelling her scent, never having her near me... it felt like death.
"What should I do?" I cried out to the empty room, dragging my hands down my face. "I don’t want to lose her. If I tell her the truth, she will be free from me, Helen. She will hate me for what I did, and she will leave."
I gripped the edges of the wooden desk, my strength leaving me as hot, bitter tears finally ran down my cheeks fast. God, I was crying like a baby.
"Helen... I think... I am in love with her," I whispered, the words feeling unbearably heavy and terrifyingly real as they left my lips.
It was the very first time I had ever dared to say it out loud. But it was true... I love her. I love Rebecca.
I let out a bitter, mocking laugh through my tears, looking at my messy reflection in the dark glass of the window.
Kaden, if you truly love her, you will tell her, the voice in my mind said. If you love her, you have to free her from this nightmare. Even if it destroys you.
I stood there for what felt like hours, surrounded by a stifling silence, until I finally drew a long, shaky breath. I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t keep her a slave... she deserved to know the truth.
"Fine," I muttered, wiping the tears from my face with the back of my hand. "I will do it. I’ll tell her the truth and beg for her forgiveness."
I opened the mind-link to my Beta immediately. "Logan, prepare the car and the jet. We are leaving for Kane’s packhouse right now."
"Right now?" Logan sounded shocked. "Alpha, it’s 9 p.m...._"
"Don’t question me," I cut him off. "We leave in thirty minutes."
I stood up straight, taking one last look at Helen’s smiling picture before turning away. I walked out of her room, heading straight into my own room. I quickly went into the bathroom, throwing freezing cold water on my face to wash away any trace of tears, and changed into a fresh, clean shirt.
It was time to face the consequences of everything I had done. It was time to give Rebecca the freedom she deserved, even if it meant breaking my heart into a million pieces.
