Chapter 154: 154-Secrets laid bare
The blood bite touched the petals of the flower of fate differently, it had done more than mark them as Maisa’s mates. It had connected them.
Varitreya, Addessa, Lumi, and Zolani stopped what they were doing, though in different parts of the mansion, they were bound by an invisible thread that ran far deeper than blood or instinct.
Their minds had become intertwined, forming a strange, almost hive-like connection.
They could see one another’s thoughts, feel fragments of one another’s emotions and, most unsettling of all, they could access each other’s memories.
A memory that surfaced in Varitreya’s mind could be witnessed by Addessa, Lumi, and Zolani.
A painful moment from Addessa’s past could suddenly become clear to the others.
A forgotten childhood memory belonging to Lumi could appear in Zolani’s mind as though she had lived it herself.
There were no locked doors between them anymore. No secrets that could remain completely hidden.
Their minds had become four rooms connected by invisible corridors, and sometimes a thought would wander through those corridors without permission.
The connection lasted for a full five minutes. Five minutes in which their minds were no longer their own, seeing memories that did not belong to them, feeling emotions that weren’t theirs, and glimpsing pieces of lives they had never lived.
Then, the connection shattered. The invisible connection between them snapped so abruptly that Varitreya’s breath caught.
Silence descended over the room. Varitreya, who had been standing in the same room as Lumi, didn’t move.
She simply stood there, staring ahead with widened eyes, her mind struggling to comprehend everything she had just witnessed from the other three vampires.
Memories were still flashing through her thoughts: faces, voices, emotions and moments she knew had never happened to her, yet somehow felt as familiar as her own
"What was that?"
The flower mark on her wrist pulsed harder than ever before. She could feel the three other vampires but not Maisa.
"What is going on?"
Lumi was no different. She remained completely still, her lips slightly parted as she stared into empty space.
Neither of them spoke, they seemed incapable of finding the words to describe what they just experienced. For five minutes, they had been connected.
They had seen too much, felt too much of each other lives and now that the connection was gone, the silence felt almost deafening.
Varitreya slowly raised a hand to her temple. "What..." she stopped, her mind unable to wrap around everything she just learnt.
There was no question she could ask that would make sense of what had just happened.
Across the room, Lumi finally blinked. Her eyes met Varitreya’s. For several long seconds, they simply stared at each other.
They both knew things about each other they normally wouldn’t know. They had seen each other’s minds and neither of them knew what to do with that knowledge but Lumi knew where to begin.
"When were you planning to tell the rest of us about the true heart?"
Lumi shot to her feet, the movement so abrupt her chair scraped against the floor. Anger sharpened every line of her face as she turned on the princess.
Varitreya folded her hands tightly against her chest, instinctively retreating behind a guarded stance. Her expression remained composed, but the silence between them felt like an admission.
"That was private information you had no right to access."
Lumi stared at her, disbelief giving way to something far more wounded.
"No right?" she echoed. "You know all of us have been trying to understand what this mate bond means... what it is." Her voice trembled, but she refused to let it break. "And you knew. You had a book explaining it, a book my brother gave you. You’ve had it for weeks, and you didn’t say a word."
Each sentence struck harder than the last. She felt betrayed. Not merely frustrated but brutally betrayed by both Varitreya and Luan.
"I don’t understand the bond myself," Varitreya said, her voice controlled despite the accusation.
Lumi’s eyes widened. "Bullshit!" the curse tore from her lips. "Don’t insult me with excuses. So what if you didn’t understand? You could have told us. We could have figured it out together, but no..."
Her voice cracked, bitterness bleeding through every word. "The princess couldn’t lower herself to be honest with lowly subjects like us."
Varitreya’s expression tightened, the first visible fracture in her composure. "You called me princess, Lumi. Act like I am..."
"Go to hell, Varitreya Vancrest!"
Lumi stormed out before she could finish. With all the turmoil in heart, the secrets revealed from catching a glimpse of the other mates was like a blast that made her feelings explode.
She shoved the door open and stepped into the hallway, nearly colliding with Zolani as she emerged from her own room.
The anger already burning through Lumi flared into something hotter. She rounded on Zolani without hesitation.
"And when were you going to tell the rest of us that Maisa is an Everheart?"
Her voice rang through the hallway, loud enough to draw attention from the rooms nearby. "How could you keep that from us?"
Her eyes burned with accusation, but beneath it lay something rawer: the shock of realizing how many people had known things she should have been told, and how many had chosen to let her remain ignorant.
"Knowing everything we’ve all lost to the Everheart hunters?!"
The memory of her father came rushing back.
He had been killed by an Everheart hunter.
The image of his death, the helplessness she had felt, and the grief that had never completely faded suddenly collided with the conversation she had once shared with Maisa about trust.
Lumi’s chest tightened at the memory of losing the most important person to her. She had trusted them.
Perhaps she and Zolani weren’t friends. They weren’t particularly close. They only associated with one another because they served on the same council and worked for the princess.
But she had still believed there was loyalty between them. Now, that belief felt shattered.
Both Zolani and Maisa had looked her directly in the eyes while knowing the truth and neither had told her.
When she confided in Maisa with her father’s death and asked if she can trust her, the two-faced redblood had looked her dead in the eyes and lied to her. She didn’t disclose that the culprit was her own mother.
"I know we aren’t friends or that close, and only associate because we serve the same council and work for the princess," Lumi said, her voice trembling with hurt. "But I at least thought that I had your loyalty..."
Zolani simply stared at her. Her humanity switch was off. She couldn’t feel the emotions consuming Lumi; the anger, the frustration, the betrayal, the hurt. None of it reached her.
So she merely stood there, watching Lumi pour out everything she was feeling without reacting and that lack of reaction only made Lumi feel more furious.
Her hands curled into fists. "You are all just a bunch of secret-keeping traitors!"
At that moment, a blur shot through the hallway. Before anyone could react, Zolani was sent flying sideways by a powerful punch that seemingly came from nowhere.
BOOM!
Her body slammed into the wall with enough force to crack the stone. The impact reverberated through the entire corridor.
Dust rained from the ceiling. A deep fracture spread across the wall, and for one terrifying second, the structure groaned as though the entire roof might come crashing down on them.
Varitreya stepped out into the corridor, her eyes widening and Lumi froze. Both women stared at Zolani in shock before slowly lifting their gazes toward the spot where the mixedblood had been standing only moments earlier.
And there stood Addessa, she calmly dusted off her fist. Her expression was anything but calm.
"Zolani Mortensen..." her voice was dangerously quiet. "If I don’t turn your humanity back on and give you hell..."
She lowered her hand, her eyes fixed coldly on Zolani. "...my name won’t be Addessa Challan moving forward."