Chapter 131

The artifact's whispers slithered darkly through my mind. Each voice knew exactly which memories would make me bleed.

"Poor Aurora," they cooed with fake sweetness. "Still completely alone. Even your fated mate would rather warm someone else's bed."

Kane's face flashed across my thoughts. That night at the council when he chose Alpha Sarah’s daughter over me. The dismissal in his eyes when he said those three words that shattered everything: "It meant nothing."

Our entire partnership reduced to lies and convenience.

I tried to focus on the ritual, but I couldn’t seem to stop my hands from shaking. The ancient words Elsa had taught me kept slipping away every time I reached for them. Like trying to grab water.

The artifact pulsed brighter as my suffering deepened. Its surface shifted with patterns that hurt to look at directly. My pain fed it, each wave of anguish making it stronger.

"We can make it stop hurting," the voices shifted to mock sympathy. "Let us take away the memory of his betrayal. No more nights lying awake wondering what you did wrong."

The temptation was almost overwhelming.

Giana circled me like a vulture. She'd dropped her usual innocent act completely, revealing the predator underneath.

"Listen to them, Aurora," she said with a sharp smile. "They're offering peace. You could let go of all this pain."

The chamber around us thrummed with a sick energy. Ancient symbols carved into the stone walls glowed with an eerie green light that made my skin crawl.

The temperature dropped until I could see my breath. Yet somehow the air felt thick and poisonous. Every breath I took felt like swallowing tar mixed with broken glass.

"You could have everything," the voices pressed harder, their whispers becoming a seductive chorus. "Kane's love without his fear. Raymond's devotion without obsession. Your mother's health restored. Your father's approval finally earned. Just surrender your stubborn will to us."

The promises felt so real I could almost touch them. Kane looking at me with pure love instead of guilty terror. My mother laughing and healthy again. A life without constantly carrying other people's expectations on my shoulders.

More images flooded my brain. Kane with that woman. Raymond's twisted obsession. My friends screaming in dungeons all because they'd been loyal to me. My mother suffering alone while I played politics.

But other memories surfaced too. Marcus's writhing in pain from poison. Lydia's body being pulled from the water. Timothy's defiant voice echoing through torture: "She loved you and you betrayed her."

Those words applied to Kane too. Both he and Raymond had betrayed me. Both chose their fears over our bond. Now this artifact wanted to use that pain to control me, just like it controlled others.

Ice water seemed to hit my veins as realization struck. This was exactly what happened to every victim.

The artifact found their deepest wounds and promised healing in exchange for submission. It transformed love into weakness, hope into despair, courage into surrender.

"No," I whispered, gripping Elsa's crystal key so tightly my knuckles went white. "I won't let you feast on my pain like some sort of emotional vampire."

The voices turned vicious instantly. False kindness evaporated like mist.

"Then we'll destroy you with it instead," they snarled with venomous fury. "Every betrayal replayed in perfect detail. Every loss magnified until it consumes you. Every moment of abandonment will stretch into eternity until you beg for the mercy of madness."

Pain exploded through my skull like someone had taken a sledgehammer directly to my brain.

Memories cascaded through my mind in a poisonous waterfall. I was forced to relive it all. Every cruel word, every broken promise, every lonely night stretching back to childhood when I first learned that love always came with conditions.

Instead of fighting the psychological assault, I did something Giana would have never expected.

I embraced it with open arms.

"You want my pain?" I snarled through gritted teeth, forcing myself to stand despite feeling like my head was splitting open. "Then you can choke on it!"

I ripped open every wound with surgical precision. Kane's betrayal at the council. Raymond's months of cruelty. My father's manipulation. My mother's health declining.

Years of being controlled by people who claimed to love me.

I let it all pour out like blood from a severed artery. But I didn't surrender to the agony; instead, I turned it into a weapon.

The artifact gorged itself with greedy satisfaction. Its surface blazed with dark fire as my suffering fed it like a starving animal. Perfect. That's exactly what I'd been counting on.

Elsa was right about one crucial detail. The artifact needed to feed to maintain power. And like any glutton, it could be overfed.

"Aurora, what are you doing?" Giana stepped back, her confidence cracking as she sensed something going wrong.

"Something you taught me," I replied, raising the crystal key. "All power has a price."

The artifact consumed so much pain it couldn't process anything else. Its defenses dropped. All attention focused on feeding. The network connections protecting it became overloaded with sheer volume of anguish.

That's when I struck.

I plunged Elsa's key straight into the artifact's core while screaming every word of the destruction ritual. The key met the crystalline surface with a sound like reality cracking. Raw magical energy erupted from the contact point as my channeled heartbreak met all that accumulated power.

The explosion defied description.

An inhuman scream tore from the master artifact—like every nightmare given voice at once. Dark energy exploded outward in waves that shook the entire estate. Stone walls cracked. Windows shattered. The air itself seemed to burn.

Giana shrieked as her magical network collapsed like a house of cards. Connections spanning multiple territories snapped one by one. Conditioned minds across the werewolf world suddenly found themselves free.

"No! You don't understand what you've done!" she screamed, voice raw with rage. "Years of work! Generations of planning!"

Feedback ripped through every connected mind. I felt it happening—pack leaders across territories waking up from magical nightmares. They remembered who they really were beneath the conditioning.

Backlash hit me like a physical blow as I collapsed. Every nerve felt like fire. Blood ran from my nose and ears. But through the agony, I heard something.

Silence.

The whispers vanished. The artifact's presence had disappeared completely. In its place came blessed quiet, the sound of free minds thinking their own thoughts again.

My hands shook as I tried to push myself upright. The crystal key had shattered from magical stress, leaving only the silver hilt. But it had done its work. The network was broken. The conditioning was ended.

Giana stumbled toward the exit with her usual composure completely gone. Her face twisted with grief and rage as tears streamed down her cheeks.

"This isn't over, Aurora," she snarled, promising terrible revenge. "You think you've won? You've only delayed the inevitable. The Rogue King still has his army. And now we have nothing left to lose."

She disappeared into the corridors before I could stop her. I barely had the strength to lift my head anyway. Magical backlash had drained me completely.

But I'd accomplished what I came for. The network was broken. People were free to make their own choices again.

As my consciousness faded, I heard sounds of confusion throughout the pack house. Voices called out in bewilderment as conditioned minds suddenly remembered their true loyalties. The sound of chains breaking—both metaphorical and literal.

Freedom was possible again.

That made everything worth it.