My Sister Stole My Mate, And I Let Her

Chapter 509 THE THIRD WRONG THING

SERAPHINA’S POVWe—Kieran, Tobias, Evelyn, my mother, and I—emerged through the treeline in a staggered formation.

The explosion still echoed inside my head.

Every muscle in my body felt tight with residual adrenaline, my nerves stretched raw from the collapse of the chamber and the sight of Catherine vanishing into the heart of her own detonation, just like Marcus had.

Part of me kept expecting her to reappear. Catherine had survived too much, manipulated too much, to disappear so neatly and absolutely.

The uncertainty sat like a stone lodged in my throat, refusing to settle.

Beside me, Kieran was no better. His shoulders remained rigid, his eyes constantly sweeping the terrain ahead, every instinct braced for another attack.

The mate bond carried the edge of his vigilance into me, a steady current of readiness pulsing beneath the exhaustion we both felt.

Evelyn hovered beside Tobias, her expression pinched and tense as she scanned the surrounding battlefield.

Tobias had insisted on carrying my mother himself.

She slumped unconscious in his arms, her breaths shallow but steady, and after everything that had happened below, neither Kieran nor I protested.

We didn’t yet know what Catherine’s disappearance meant for her stolen power and survival, but we had to put that on the back burner for now.

If we encountered resistance on the surface, we needed our hands free. We needed to be able to fight immediately.

But—

The surface felt wrong.

It was quieter in an unsettling way, as if the world had been turned out of its proper alignment and hastily pressed back into place without anyone checking if it fit.

First of all, the eclipse was gone.

The sun hung fully restored above the island, its light so absolute it felt almost unnatural after everything we had endured in the darkness. It illuminated everything with a brutal honesty that left nowhere for shadows to hide.

For a moment, I wondered if I had imagined the entire descent into Catherine’s domain, if the world had simply split and reformed while I was still inside it.

But then I saw the second wrong thing: the battlefield.

Puppets lay scattered across the ridge and down into the clearing like discarded marionettes, limbs slack, weapons slipping from open fingers.

The rogues who had been fighting under Catherine’s influence had been affected too—just differently.

Some blinked into the light as if they had just been born into it.

Others were frozen mid-motion, weapons halted mid-air, as though their bodies had forgotten why they had been moving at all.

A few had dropped to their knees, clutching their heads, gasping like drowning men yanked back to air too quickly.

The silence was not peaceful.

It was disorienting. Unnatural. Like the aftermath of a scream so loud the world had not yet remembered how to continue.

This wasn’t just aftermath; it was severance. A system that had stopped functioning because the thing sustaining it had been removed entirely.

My mind went back to the chamber—to the way Catherine laughed like the world was still hers to command.

The implication formed in my chest like ice spreading through water.

If Catherine’s control had been what sustained this battlefield, then Catherine’s disappearance was not just an escape.

It had been a collapse of her entire structure.

But that didn’t ease the tightness in my chest.

Because Catherine did not do anything without intention.

Even disappearance could be a weapon in her hands.

A cold wind moved through the ridge, carrying the scent of disturbed earth and distant smoke.

Somewhere far below, the ocean continued its rhythm, indifferent to the fact that something foundational had just broken in the world above it.

First things first, we had to—

Movement exploded from the right side of my vision.

Fast. Direct. Unhesitating.

Lucian.

There was no warning in his expression, no hesitation. His eyes were locked on me with a focus and intent that did not belong to the man I had seen earlier.

The third wrong thing.

My mind registered the threat a fraction too late.

I tried to move.

But exhaustion still clung to me from the chamber, from everything that had not given my body time to recover from the last crisis before the next one arrived.

Lucian closed the distance in an instant.

Kieran reacted at the same time I did, but he was not fast enough to intercept cleanly. His hand reached for me, but Lucian’s trajectory was already set.

His strike grazed my arm as I twisted at the last possible second, instinct flaring just enough to save my center mass but not enough to avoid contact entirely.

Pain lanced through me—sharp, searing, shocking in its simplicity after everything else I had endured.

I staggered back, breath hitching as I stared at the line of blood splitting my sleeve.

“Lucian!” I gasped, confusion overriding pain.

But he didn’t respond, didn’t even pause.

His gaze locked on me with brutal precision as he charged again.

This time, I saw it clearly.

Something behind his movements—something threaded into his muscles like invisible hooks pulling him forward whether he wanted it or not.

Kieran’s reaction was instantaneous.

It was a soundless surge of rage that rolled through the bond like a shockwave, so strong it nearly bent my knees.

He intercepted Lucian mid-charge.

The impact of their collision was violent enough to kick up dust and fractured grass from the ground beneath them.

Lucian was strong—stronger than I remembered him being—but Kieran was not simply meeting strength with strength.

The controlled restraint that had held him human, held him measured, shattered under the pressure of his fury. After everything he’d endured, this—my getting hurt—seemed like the final straw.

Bones restructured beneath skin. Muscles expanded with brutal speed.

A low, animal sound tore from his throat as golden fur began to break through along his arms and shoulders.

Lucian swung again, but Kieran caught his arm mid-motion, twisting with a force that would have snapped bone in a lesser opponent.

But Lucian did not react like a man in pain. He simply continued pushing forward, as if the sensation did not register as relevant.

Like something else was driving him entirely.

“Fight it,” I heard myself say sharply, stepping forward instinctively despite the injury in my arm.

Kieran’s attention was locked entirely on Lucian, jaw clenched, eyes burning with a feral intensity.

“Not him,” Kieran growled through clenched teeth. “Something’s in him.”

Lucian twisted violently, breaking Kieran’s partial hold, and drove forward again.

In that split-second, Ashar surged forward.

He emerged with a force that shook the ground beneath us, massive and controlled, power radiating from him in waves that bent the air around his movement.

Lucian did not hesitate.

A savage snarl ripped from his throat as his own shift began.

Dark fur erupted across his body as he dropped to all fours, bones cracking, muscles expanding, the change so seamless that it felt less like a transformation and more like a predator finally revealing its true shape.

His massive black wolf burst into view.

The sight struck me harder than I expected.

The last time I’d seen Lucian’s wolf was during the run with his pack, which felt like a million years ago.

There was warmth and kindness in those silver-ringed navy eyes, but whatever had once looked back at me through them was buried beneath something darker.

His enormous body coiled with unnatural tension, every muscle pulled tight as though invisible chains had been hooked into his flesh and were dragging him forward against his will.

For one terrible moment, our gazes met, and I thought I saw a flash of resistance trapped somewhere deep behind the violence.

Then it vanished.

Lucian lunged.

Ashar met him head-on.

The collision shook the ridge.