Breed Me, Daddy Alpha-Chapter 319

Damon

Some months passed, and I still wake every morning with the same memory seared into my chest. I remember the warmth of her body draining in my arms, the way her blood covered my hands, staining them so deep I thought I would never feel clean again.

I remember how her lips parted like she wanted to say my name one last time, but no sound came out, only blood, and the silence was louder than any scream I have ever heard.

I remember pressing my forehead against hers, begging her to stay, commanding her to live, and realizing that even all my strength, all my rage, all my power could not stop death from reaching for her.

That night did not just take her away from me, it hollowed me out. It carved me into something that pretends to breathe but has no soul left to burn.

Every day since then has been the same. I walk through this world like a man made of ashes.

They say the Alpha still rules, they say Damon is unbroken, but what they see is only the shell of me. My heart is in the ground. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

My heart was buried with her. I go to the grave every dawn. I kneel in the dirt until my knees bleed and I talk to the stone that carries her name, and I curse myself for being too slow, for not seeing the knife in time, for not killing every last traitor before they even thought of touching her.

I tell her that I would burn the world to bring her back, that I would kill the gods themselves if they stood between us, but the stone never answers. The earth never gives her back to me.

And yet she never leaves me. I hear her voice when I close my eyes. I feel her hand brush against mine when the wind shifts. I smell her in the rain and I swear I taste her in the air.

I tell myself it is madness, that grief has poisoned me, that I am imagining what I cannot have, but the truth is crueler. The truth is I would rather go mad hearing her ghost than live sane in silence. Because silence is death, and I am already too familiar with it.

I saw her die. I felt her body go limp against me. I kissed her and tasted the cold creeping into her lips. I carried her until my arms gave out, and I laid her down knowing I would never lift her again. My mate is gone. My kitten is gone. The one thing in this world that kept me breathing has been stolen from me.

"Alpha Damon," a voice called gently behind me, and I turned slowly, still half caught in the shadow of the grave I had been living in for a year. One of the elders stood in the doorway, bowing his head with the kind of respect men give when they are both loyal and afraid.

He cleared his throat, clutching his hands together. "The Luna’s dress is ready. Everything has been arranged just as you commanded. The seamstresses have worked through the night. The colors are those you chose..white stitched with silver thread.

"Oh... thank you," I finally murmured, the words pulled out of a throat that had forgotten what gratitude even sounded like.

It wasn’t the kind of thank you a man gave for favors. It was the kind of thank you whispered by someone who has been drowning for so long he no longer believed in air, and then suddenly feels it filling his lungs again.

"And your mother is asking to see you, Alpha. She says it cannot wait. She says blood calls to blood. She reminded me... you did not come for your brother’s funeral."

My jaw clenched. My chest went tight. A flash of memory burned through me..Darren’s eyes wide as his heart tore free in my hand, his voice breaking into pleas, his blood spilling across the floor. Funeral? No.

There had been no funeral in my heart. There had been justice, there had been rage, there had been the end of betrayal.

"Why would I?" I thought bitterly, my teeth grinding together as I stared at the wall. Why would I stand over the grave of the man who stabbed me, buried me, tried to kill my mate, and dared to call himself my brother? Why would I offer prayers to a coffin that should have burned? I had already given him more than he deserved by letting him have a grave at all.

The silence stretched until I forced myself to answer. "Alright," I said at last. "Bring her in."

The door opened, and I felt her before I saw her. And she looked at me. She didn’t blink. Her gaze swept down to my hands, the hands that had killed her other son, and lingered there before lifting back to my face.