Chapter 141

Lauren

The sky looked like it had been painted in ash. Flat. Still. Unyielding.

There wasn’t any wind, not even the usual rustle through the trees. The forest just... watched. Held its breath with the rest of us.

Sophia’s funeral felt wrong. Not because she didn’t deserve one—though there were whispers about that too—but because no one seemed to know how to feel. Not truly. She had lived too many lives, worn too many faces. Beloved once. Banished later. Killer. Martyr. Mother. Yet none of those.

And now? Now she was just gone.

Which seemed impossible for the fiery red hair, even though I watched it happen. Still, it wasn’t real.

Or maybe I didn’t want it to be.

The clearing had been arranged with care—white blooms circling the stone platform, candles flickering in shallow bowls, the kind we usually reserved for moon rituals or new beginnings. It felt almost cruel. New beginnings.

Her coffin sat at the center of it all—dark mahogany wood with silver accents that caught the grey light. Simple. Clean. Closed. No one had asked if we wanted it open. No one dared.

She… would have hated it. The color of the wood all wrong, not enough flowers, and the entire thing not nearly to her standards. But then again, I didn’t know her as well as I thought anymore. Maybe she liked tulips over roses now.

I stood at the front with Alexander, his fingers threaded through mine, though he hadn’t moved or spoken in over an hour. His grip was steady, but everything else about him was stone. The set of his shoulders. The line of his jaw. The distant look in his eyes that told me his mind was elsewhere—years elsewhere. With her.

I couldn’t even blame him, she was… something to him for years.

He wouldn’t let himself mourn her aloud. But I could feel it—the grief clinging to him like smoke, sinking into every breath.

Owen stood to our left, his expression unreadable, though his hands kept curling and uncurling at his sides. Abigail was further back with Theo. Mark stood alone, a shadow at the edge of the circle, unmoving except for the tension in his jaw.

There were no speeches prepared. No songs. No pack elder to speak over her. No tradition fit the shape of this goodbye.

So when the elder, one older then her knees would allow, tired up the stairs for a speech, but failed; I stepped forward—not because I was the one who should, but because someone had to. And no one else could carry the weight she left behind. No one knew what to say.

I walked toward the platform slowly, the moss beneath my boots damp and springy. The scent of earth and old bark filled my lungs. I passed the coffin and paused to lay one hand gently on its lid. It was cool beneath my fingers.

Then I turned.

The faces in the crowd were solemn, unreadable. Some filled with pity. Some with anger. Others with the kind of vacant neutrality that said I don't know how to feel, so I won't.

I swallowed hard.

“She wasn’t perfect,” I said, my voice cracking at the edges but holding steady. “She didn’t pretend to be. Sophia was loud. Unapologetic. Fearless. She lived the way some people dream of living—without hesitation.”

A flicker of something moved through the crowd. One or two heads nodded.

“She made mistakes,” I continued. “Some of them too much. Some of them broke hearts. And in the end… she still chose to die protecting the people who had every reason to hate her. She… wasn’t who I met years ago. Infact, I hardly recognized her last day here.”

My throat tightened. I blinked up at the grey sky.

“I’m not asking you to forget what she did. I won’t forget. But I will remember that she was brave. That she loved, even when she didn’t know how to show it. That she gave everything she had in the end, not for redemption—but because it was right.”

I took a breath. My eyes found Alexander. His jaw clenched tighter, but his gaze was on me now.

“There’s a kind of beauty in that. In a life that breaks apart and still ends in something good.”

I stepped down. I didn’t return to Alexander this time. My legs moved of their own accord, carrying me toward Owen, who stood rigid as a statue. His eyes were locked on the coffin as the ropes began to lower it into the earth. The sound of shifting wood and stone made my stomach turn.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t speak. But his breath hitched, just once. And that said more than anything else could.

Abigail

I thought I’d feel something.

Not grief, exactly. Not sadness. Just… something. But I didn’t.

Everyone around me looked cracked open—too many feelings spilling into the space between trees. The pack stood stiff, quiet, some heads bowed, others staring into the coffin like it might look back.

But I just stood there, arms crossed, watching dirt cling to the tips of my boots.

Sophia was dead. And everyone was acting like the world had ended.

Except… she wasn’t a mother to me. Not like Owen. She wasn’t really anything to me. Just a name in someone else’s story. A shadow that loomed in every conversation about Alexander. A reason for the pain behind Owen’s eyes. A warning carved into pack law.

She was a ghost before she ever died, someone who’d ruin my mother’s life, stole it.

She was… evil. Hurt everyone, lied to everyone around her.

So why did Owen look like someone had carved out his heart and left him hollow?

I moved closer to him, feeling uneasy. He stood just a few feet from the edge of the grave, still and silent, hands balled into fists at his sides.

“Man, what a bore.” I nearly yawned, elbowing his side playfully. “You want to go for a dip in the river? It’ll get your mind off—”

“Shush, Abs.” Owen nipped at me low. “Show some respect will you?”

I blinked at him, unsure of what to think.

“I don’t get it,” I whispered. “Why are you so upset? It’s not like she was ever really your mom.”

He turned toward me, slow and sharp. His eyes narrowed. “Don’t say that.”

I blinked, frowning. “But it’s true, isn’t it? She stole you from mom, tried to kill her. She betrayed all of us. She wasn’t there for you. Not really. She was here for Alexander’s title, even you know that.”

“You don’t understand.” His voice was rough, breaking.

“Then explain it to me,” I said, softer this time. “Because all I see is someone who caused pain.”

Owen’s mouth opened like he was about to yell, but he didn’t. He just stared at me—eyes red, but no tears. Just that same old ache behind them.

“She was…something,” he said finally. “Before everything. Before Dad sent her away. She wasn’t all bad. I mean, yes she was… heartless at times, and I wanted her gone, my real mother. But she was still the first face I saw when I was a babe. She used to make the worst pancakes, burned, careless, but they were something she did for me. She used to play with my hair, compare it to dad’s. She told me gossip, politics, and drama at night instead of bed time stories… and even she wasn’t a mom, I don’t…hate those moments.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Not really.

I’d never had that version of her.

To me, she was just a ghost who haunted everyone else, a problem we solved.

I looked away, my chest tight with something that felt dangerously close to guilt.

Then I saw Mark.

He was kneeling by the edge of the grave now, his head bowed low, both hands gripping the earth like he needed to feel it—to hold onto something that hadn’t vanished.

His shoulders shook. No sound came from him, but it was the kind of crying that lived in the bones. Deep and old. Grief that came not from what had been lost, but what had never been fully saved.

The world around us was silent.

No wolves howled.

No wind blew.

Just a grave.

And the people who still lived above it.

I moved closer to Owen again. This time, I didn’t say anything. I just stood beside him and let the silence stretch between us—no longer empty, but full of all the things we couldn’t explain.

I guess… everyone, even the villains, are loved by someone.