Mated To The Crippled Alpha

Chapter 466: What the Rain Took

Bang.Fireworks split open the sky above the hillside cemetery, bright and indifferent, flashing against the dark like the world hadn’t just ended down here on the ground. The rain came harder. I watched it hit the earth around Julian’s body, mixing with the blood already soaked into the soil, and I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t move. I just held him.

By the time Lewis crested the hill, I was still there, Julian’s weight in my arms, gasping through sobs I couldn’t control. Wisteria lay further away in the rain, eyes wide open, staring at nothing , or maybe at me. Like she’d spent her last breath trying to memorize my face. The maid had run, abandoned her, bolted down the mountain , and walked straight into Lewis on his way up.

He saw me from a distance and broke into a run. "Elena ,"

He was soaked through, his suit jacket clinging to him, hair plastered to his forehead. He dropped to his knees in front of me and took my face in both hands, his eyes moving over me fast, searching. He couldn’t tell yet whose blood it was.

"Elena, are you hurt?" His voice wasn’t steady.

"He took the death curse for me." The words came out thick and broken. "I’m fine."

Julian’s face was quiet in a way I’d never seen it. Eyes closed, lips curved just slightly, like he’d finally set something down he’d been carrying too long. I held him anyway. I wasn’t ready to let go.

Lewis pulled his jacket off and draped it over my shoulders without a word.

"Lewis ," My voice cracked. "Our babies."

"They’re safe." His hands steadied on my arms. "Amber brought them to the venue earlier. I had Damian with them the whole time. Then Julian called me." He exhaled slowly. "I’m sorry. I should have been here sooner."

I stared at him. "This was your mother’s plan. Eleanor. If the children are safe, where is she?"

Something shifted behind his eyes. His jaw tightened. "Oh, no."

He signaled to the men behind him, and they moved carefully to take Julian from my arms. Then Lewis lifted me and carried me down the hillside without hesitation, moving fast.

This was supposed to be our bonding ceremony. Instead we were racing toward the coast in the dark, rain battering the windshield, the wipers barely keeping pace.

Eleanor had never touched the children. She hadn’t wanted to hurt me , not really. She had wanted to protect her son. With Wisteria dead and the curse lifted, Lewis was finally free. But what did Eleanor do now that it was over?

"Do you know where she’d go?" I asked quietly.

Lewis’s hands tightened on the wheel. "Where she first met my father. The Tidal Coast. If she’s planning to disappear, that’s where she’ll be."

His voice carried something underneath the words , grief already forming, loss that hadn’t fully arrived yet. I could feel it in him the same way I felt my own. He had only just found her again. He had kept his distance because of what she’d done to me, and now he might lose her before he ever got the chance to close that gap.

He pressed the accelerator down, and neither of us spoke. The silence between us breathed the same grief.

We found her on the sand. She was standing at the water’s edge in a white dress, hair loose around her face, no makeup, looking out at the storm like someone who had already made their decision and was waiting to be collected. When she heard us, she turned, and her expression was something I hadn’t expected , open, quiet, like a child who’d been lost for a very long time.

"You’ve come."

Lewis approached her carefully, eyes checking her over. No blood, no visible injury. "What are you doing out here alone? Come with me."

Her gaze dropped to the bloodstained hem of my wedding dress. "The curse lifted, didn’t it?"

"Yes," I said. I kept my voice flat. I understood why she had done what she’d done. That didn’t make the pain smaller.

Something in her face softened. "I’m glad." She looked at Lewis then. "You knew, didn’t you? You knew it was me behind all of this."

"Yes," he said. "I knew you were doing it for me."

"I knew I couldn’t hide it from you." She held her arms open. "Come to me. Come to your mother."

Lewis moved toward her. For a moment I almost let myself believe we had misread the ending of this , that she would simply come home, that Lewis would finally have this one thing back. He had so little family left.

Then a line of black blood slipped from the corner of her mouth.

Lewis’s steps quickened. Eleanor’s legs gave out before he reached her, and he caught her on the way down, both of them sinking onto the wet sand together.

"I’m taking you to a hospital," he said immediately.

"No." She gripped the front of his shirt with both hands. "Please. Just let me say what I need to say." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "I’m sorry. I failed you. Most of my life I was so consumed by my own hatred that I couldn’t see anything else. I wasn’t there for you the way I should have been."

"That’s not true." His voice broke on the words. "You’ve been protecting me for years. I know that now."

"I protected you by hurting the woman you love." Her smile was gentle in a way I had never seen from her before. "You must have been ashamed of me." She paused, and something in her expression went quiet and far away. "Even after everything your father did to me, I never once regretted having you. My only regret is leaving you. I should have taken you with me and given you better."

She turned her eyes to me, and the weight in them was real. "Elena, I owe you more than I can repay. Please don’t let what I’ve done stand between you and him."

I moved closer. Standing over her now, seeing how small she had become, I understood something about her I hadn’t before , the way pain can hollow a person out over decades until there’s almost nothing left but the shape of it. She had been powerless in her own way, trapped inside a wound that never healed.

"I would never take my anger out on him," I said quietly. "Don’t worry."

The black blood kept coming. Lewis was wiping it away with his hands, frantic and helpless, and it kept pouring. His hands shook. "Why did it have to be this way? There were other ways to make things right. Why this?" His voice fractured. "Dad is already gone. Are you leaving me too?"

The man I had always known as unshakeable looked utterly undone, and it broke something open in me to see it.

Eleanor raised one trembling hand to his face. "Because I could never let him go, even now. But I know he never loved me. I won’t hold on anymore." Her thumb moved across his cheek. "Lewis, I still remember when you were just over a year old. So small. So soft. You used to call for me." She smiled, and her eyes grew wet. "Will you say it one more time? Just once. Call me mom."

The tears Lewis had been holding back finally fell. "Mom."

"Good boy," she whispered, her hand going still against his face. "Such a good boy. I can finally rest."

Her eyes closed, and the tension went out of her all at once, gently, like a breath let go.

Lewis didn’t make a sound. He just held her there in the rain, his head bowed, and after a long moment said softly, "You were the best mother in the world."