Chapter 97

Evelyn

The cure was finally in my hands. In the small vial weighing no more than a pen, the cure to wolfsbane felt incredibly heavy.

I could hardly believe it. The vial of shimmering, dark liquid rested in the center of my palm, seeming so inconsequential despite changing the course of our world.

Chris had been astounded, dropping the charcoal mixture he had been working on and shattering the container in his awe.

“You did what no one else has done,” he had said, turning over the vial to view it from all angles. “I always knew that you had extraordinary healing capabilities and instincts, but this…. Evelyn, this is unbelievable.”

Since he had left to spread the word to the appropriate people, I had been looking at the vial with my own sense of astonishment. If I had had this substance when Jesse had kidnapped me, I wondered what might have been different.

My heart pounded, not with fear this time, but with relief, pride, and fragile hope. There would no longer be people like me, drugged against their will and left pliant to their captors. People like Logan’s mother would no longer be casualties of these drugs.

I was still staring at it when I heard the hoofbeats of horses outside the gates. My head snapped up, and my pulse skipped. For days, Logan and Alex had been out searching for Emma. I stood and smoothed my skirt. Now, they had returned, and I wondered what developments of their own they had brought with them.

A part of me wanted to sprint outside to meet them at the gate. It had been so long since I had seen them, and while I had missed my brother, I found my heart skipping at the thought of Logan’s return in particular. Even after finding a cure in their absence, it had not been enough to chase away my thoughts of him.

But instead of childishly jogging out to meet them, I stayed rooted in place. In the end, it didn’t take long for Alex to come to me, like he was seeking me out. When I met his gaze, I saw something there that made my skipping heart stop.

“Evelyn,” he said quietly. “We need to talk. Now.”

I didn’t like the weight in his voice. My fingers closed around the vial to the point of pain. “What’s wrong?”

Immediately, I was thinking about Logan being hurt. He had seemed fine upon his return, but maybe I had misread it all from a distance.

Alex glanced down the hall to make sure no one was listening before pulling me into a small side room. “It’s about Logan.”

The instant Logan’s name left his lips, a cold knot formed in my stomach. “What about him?”

Alex’s jaw worked like he was trying to decide how much to say, but in the end, his bluntness won. “We found Emma.”

I breathed out a relieved sigh. “Oh,” I said. “Oh, good.”

Alex shifted his weight between his feet uncomfortably. “Well, there’s more. She came when only Logan was awake, and he was drunk and… Well, Emma kissed him. I caught her practically straddling him against a tree. He was too drunk to fight her off properly in his defense, but I felt like you needed to know.”

The words landed like blows. I would have rather been physically hit; it would have been less painful, at least. For a while, my ears rang. “She… She kissed him?”

He nodded, his expression hard. “I woke up before it could escalate and intervened. She ran before we could grab her. But Evelyn… you should ask him yourself. It’s up to you to decide what to do with the truth now.”

I didn’t want the truth. Not this one. It was all too much. Just moments ago, I had been basking in the success of my discovery, and in just a handful of words, my world had shattered.

He’d kissed her.

I murmured something. I wasn’t even sure what I said, only that it was dismissive and sounded distant in my ears. Then, I pushed past him, squeezing out the door and leaving before he could say anything more.

As I walked, my legs felt unsteady, and my chest was tight. I made it to my room and shut the door behind me before the first tear broke free. I leaned against the wooden partition, trying to catch my breath, but each inhale was shallow.

Then I broke entirely, pressing my palm against my mouth to try to muffle the sound.

I stumbled across the room and sank onto my bed. I wanted to scream, to tear the sheets, throw the glass cups on my desk, burn everything that reminded me of him.

My cure, my victory, it all now felt meaningless with that image in my head. I could vividly picture it: Logan getting tangled in Emma, their entwined bodies lit from the orange glow of a campfire. Emma’s hands on him. His mouth on hers. Whether he was too drunk to resist or not, the hurt cut deep.

By the time the knock came at my door, I’d just barely replaced my sorrow with anger. It felt good to reestablish my devastation as fury. But then the knock came and interrupted this evolution of emotions.

Without being invited in, the door swung open, and the Alpha King stood there. My father’s sharp eyes swept over me in that way that made me feel like he could see every thought in my head. In an instant, he acknowledged my sorrow and assessed my fury.

And then, he disregarded it all to get to the point. Always strictly business.

“Evelyn,” he said. “I heard you’ve made a breakthrough with the cure.”

I straightened. “Yes. I’ve found something that should be substantial at counteracting the effects of wolfsbane in large doses. I think it should be sufficient in curing most of the wolfsbane cases we are faced with. It’s stable, and Chris has also cosigned his belief that it will work.”

“Good. I am glad to hear it. I always knew you were capable of such accomplishments.” But then his brow furrowed. “And yet you look like you’ve just been told your world’s ending.”

My throat tightened. “Because it might have.”

He stepped inside and closed the door. “Explain.”

Even at his most comforting, he was still strictly business.

But I told him. I had no one else to turn to and divulge it all to. I told him about Alex finding Logan with Emma and how I didn’t know how true his drunken excuse was or what Logan had been thinking. The words came out jagged and bitter. Recounting it all brought a fresh wave of pain.

My father listened without interrupting, though his face grew darker with every detail. When I finished, he was silent for a long moment.

Finally, he said, “Evelyn, you just found a cure for wolfsbane. You are better than these petty lapses. And you certainly don’t need to live like this. You don’t need to stay bound to a man who can’t protect what he’s been given. You are a princess as well. If you want, I’ll see to it that the marriage pact is severed. You can start over with someone worthy of you. If that is what you wish.”

The idea struck me like fresh blows. Of course this was always an option. But even reconsidering it felt like a betrayal of what Logan and I had so briefly been building.

“You think I should divorce him?” I asked.

“I think,” he said, his tone deliberate, “that you’ve been holding on to something that’s hurting you. You should let it go before it breaks you completely. Everything about you is better than this. You do not need to waste time or tears on some Alpha who cannot see your worth or put aside Emma entirely.”

He cracked open the door before pausing. “Just let me know what you decide.”

And with that, he left me alone.

I stared at the vial filled with the cure that I had placed on my desk. How small that victory seemed now in the face of this personal plight. It should have felt like a triumph. I should have been out celebrating. Instead, I felt hollow.

I put my head in my hands, fresh tears brimming. For the first time, I truly didn’t know what I should do.