Let Them Kneel (kaelani and Julian) novel Chapter 48

A woman who belonged somewhere. A woman who might have been loved out loud.

Her throat tightened.

Why?

The word throbbed in her chest. Why send this? Why now?

Did he think this made anything right? That an $800 dress could fill the hollow he’d carved into her? Did he think she’d see this, remember his voice saying she’d look beautiful in it, and forget the way he made her feel disposable?

Her hand clenched around the fabric. She didn’t need him to buy her things. She could’ve bought it herself.

But what would be the point?

Her reflection blurred as her tears began to reach the surface. She blinked hard. “Doesn’t matter,” she whispered to no one. “There’s nowhere to wear it. No one to wear it for.”

Anger caught up to her all at once. She marched back to the kitchen table and shoved the dress back into the box, not bothering to fold it this time. The tissue crumpled, the flaps slammed shut with a hollow sound that echoed through the room.

Her hand found her face, dragging down as she exhaled, weary to her bones.

She crossed the room and sank into the window nook, pulling her knees up to her chest. Outside, rain sheeted across the garden—her garden—turning the flowers into dark silhouettes. The sound should’ve been calming. It always was. But tonight it only made the silence inside her louder.

The world smelled of wet earth and heartbreak.

It was in moments like this that the truth hit hardest—when the noise stopped, when she was left alone with nothing but her pulse and the rain.

She wasn’t eating much.

She wasn’t sleeping at all.

There was an ache under her ribs that refused to fade, something vast and hollow that no amount of defiance could quiet.

She rested her forehead against the cold glass, eyes closing.

“Get over it,” she murmured, voice shaking.

But the ache only pulsed harder in reply.

Seen the way her composure cracked the second she was alone.

Those tears—goddess, he’d never meant to see them. Never wanted to. Because now he couldn’t unsee them. Couldn’t unfeel the way his chest ached with every drop that slid down her cheek.

His wolf pressed harder, its rage and grief blending into one relentless demand: Go to her.

Julian shut his eyes, jaw clenched tight enough to hurt. “I can’t,” he whispered. “You don’t understand.”

But the truth was, it wasn’t just the wolf who didn’t understand.

He didn’t either.

If this was guilt, it had long since outgrown its name.

If it was remorse, it had become something worse—something that was apart of him now, gnawing at everything that made him feel human.

He ran a hand through his hair, his gaze lifting toward the faint glow from her window. She’d gone still, probably asleep. He exhaled, shoulders sagging under the weight of something far too heavy for him to stand.