My Sister Stole My Mate, And I Let Her

Chapter 530: Chapter 530 A SECOND CHANCE (BONUS Chapter 8)

LUCIAN’S POV

For the first time in longer than I could remember, I woke to peace.

For a few precious seconds, I simply existed beneath the warmth of late morning sunlight and soft sheets, suspended in a strange, unfamiliar stillness that settled deep in my chest and silenced every ugly, anguished thought.

Then, through the haze of sleep, memory returned in a rush powerful enough to leave me reeling.

Moonlight spilling across polished floors, Evelyn’s fingers curling into my shirt, her voice promising she was here, the taste of her kiss, the bond surging to life between us with enough force to awaken parts of me I had thought were buried too deeply to ever feel anything again.

Without opening my eyes, I reached automatically toward the warmth that should have been beside me, seeking her out with the same unconscious certainty that had drawn me toward her all night.

My hand met cold sheets.

My eyes snapped open.

Panic crashed through the fragile peace I had woken to moments earlier, and I forgot how to breathe.

I pushed myself upright so quickly the room tilted around me, my gaze sweeping the bed and then the room beyond it in mounting alarm.

Empty.

Only the lingering traces of her scent remained behind, woven through sheets and pillows and morning air in a way that suggested she couldn’t have gone far.

A soft knock sounded against the door, and I was moving before conscious thought had time to catch up with me, hope bursting through my chest.

Maybe she had gone in search of breakfast.

Maybe she had needed a few moments to herself after everything that had happened between us last night.

Maybe—

I pulled the door open and found Sera standing in the hallway instead.

Her eyes widened, and she instantly snapped them shut. “Goddess above, Lucian!”

“Shit!” I hissed, realizing that I had shot out of bed completely, spectacularly naked.

I reached blindly for the pair of trousers hanging from the chair near the door and pulled them on with whatever dignity I had left.

“Sorry. I thought you were—”

"Evelyn," Sera finished knowingly.

I stopped, my fingers stalling on my zipper.

"...Yeah."

I threw on my shirt and cleared my throat. “I’m decent.”

Sera exhaled slowly and opened her eyes, running a hand through her hair.

The movement shifted the collar of her shirt just enough for my gaze to catch on something near the curve of her neck: a pinkish scar, barely healed.

A bite mark.

She and Kieran had completed the bond.

Something warm settled in my chest despite everything else pressing against it.

After everything they had survived, after all the years spent circling hurt and misunderstandings and impossible circumstances, they had finally made it here.

Sera seemed to notice where my attention had landed because her fingers drifted toward the mark and her cheeks reddened.

“I keep forgetting it’s visible.”

"You seem happy."

A small, dreamy smile touched her lips. "I am."

I nodded, and I meant the words that followed without reservation.

"You deserve that."

"Thank you."

For a moment, silence settled comfortably between us, but it didn’t last long before my attention drifted inevitably back toward the room behind me, toward the empty side of the bed and the cold sheets that had greeted me when I woke.

"Where is she?" My voice broke at the end of the question.

The smile on Sera’s face faded.

"Evelyn left a couple of hours ago."

The words struck somewhere beneath my ribs with enough force to make me stagger back a step.

"Left?"

Sera sighed. "She said Jack isn’t responding to treatment as well as she hoped. Apparently, the corruption is getting worse in some ways even while he’s improving in others. She wants to visit her coven and see if they have records or knowledge about older forms of orthodox witchcraft that might help."

I stared at Sera for a long moment, hearing her words but not quite comprehending them.

Then my eyes drifted toward the packed bags resting against the wall inside the room.

Understanding settled heavily in my chest as the pieces arranged themselves into a picture I recognized with painful ease.

Jack’s worsening condition might have given Evelyn an excuse to leave, but it wasn’t the reason.

She had seen the bags. She had known what they meant. And she had almost certainly reached the same conclusion I would have reached if our positions had been reversed.

Lucian Reed regretted what had happened between them beneath the full moon.

Lucian Reed was running again.

A familiar refrain slipped through my mind, worn smooth by repetition: It’s for the best. She deserves better than this. Better than me.

Someone safer. Someone whole. Someone who wasn’t carrying ghosts and weight or waking in the middle of the night listening for malicious voices in the silence.

I turned toward the bed behind me, toward the place where she should have been.

The bond shifted restlessly at the sight of it, and for the first time in a very long while, I listened to the feeling instead of immediately trying to bury it beneath guilt.

Because there was another dangerous truth sitting beneath all the fear and self-loathing that had been choking me for too long.

I wanted Evelyn.

Not eventually, when I was better than this version of myself.

Not someday in the distant future, after I had somehow become a man worthy of standing beside her.

Now.

I wanted her now.

The thought should have terrified me. I should have shut it down swiftly and absolutely.

Instead, I felt something like relief. Like I’d finally come up for air after being held underwater.

Last night I had asked her to push me away. I had begged her to save herself from me.

Instead, she had looked me directly in the eyes and pulled me closer. She’d kissed me first. She’d given herself to me first.

‘I choose you.’

She knew exactly who I was.

The man who had let himself be broken.

The man who had failed more people than he cared to count.

The man who still waded through enough guilt to drown in if he stood still for too long.

And somehow, impossibly, she had chosen me anyway.

The realization settled deep inside my chest, warm and terrifying and dangerously close to hope.

When I looked back at Sera, I found her watching me with an expression that hovered somewhere between amusement and satisfaction.

"Interesting."

I frowned. "What is?"

"I haven’t seen that look on your face in a very long time."

"What look?”

“Determination. The kind that makes you do brave, reckless things.”

Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.

Sera folded her arms loosely across her chest and tilted her head. "So, Lucian, what brave, reckless thing are you going to do?"

"I’m going after her."

The words were spoken with startling certainty, as though some part of me had already made the decision before my mind had caught up with it.

Sera raised an eyebrow, and her lips twitched. "Just like that?"

Again, my gaze drifted toward the empty side of the bed and then toward the bags packed for a journey that suddenly looked very different from the one I had intended to take.

"No," I said quietly. "Not just like that."

Because this wasn’t impulse. It wasn’t moonlight or instinct or the bond speaking for me.

It was a choice.

For years, I had spent every ounce of strength I possessed learning how to master myself, how to lock away the uglier parts of who I was behind composure and duty until even I sometimes forgot they existed.

I learned how to bury longing beneath responsibility and need beneath restraint.

Maybe it was time to learn something else.

I didn’t deserve a second chance, but dammit, I would take it if she would give it to me.

“I’m going to find my mate.”

The words felt strange on my tongue. Impossible. Wonderful.

Sera smiled then, and it wasn’t the careful smile she reserved for wounded people or grieving people or people she was afraid might shatter beneath too much pressure.

This one was brighter than that. Proud.

Then she stepped aside from the doorway. “You might want to hurry.”

I glanced back toward the room one final time, toward the place where I had woken to peace for the first time in years and where Evelyn had shown me that there were parts of me worthy of something more than darkness and corruption.

Then I reached down and picked up the bags. I stepped into the hallway and paused.

"Sera?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

The words carried far more than simple gratitude.

Thank you for refusing to give up on me.

Thank you for seeing the man beneath the damage.

Thank you for packing the bags while secretly hoping I wouldn’t need them.

Understanding flickered in her eyes as moisture gathered there.

"You can thank me by coming back happy and whole."

I looked down the hallway stretching out before me and thought of roads I hadn’t walked yet, choices I hadn’t made yet, and a witch with defiant eyes and reckless courage who had looked at the worst parts of me and pulled me closer instead of cringing away.

A smile spread across my face as I prepared to embark on the most terrifying journey of my life.

"That’s the plan."