My Sister Stole My Mate And I Let Her (Seraphina) novel Chapter 408

Chapter 408: Chapter 408 Z-01

SERAPHINA’S POV

The last line blurred before my eyes.

Do not trust me.

The words pressed into me, heavy and suffocating, as if trying to take root beneath my ribs.

For a long moment, I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.

The letter trembled in my hands, the paper whispering under the strain of my grip, but I barely felt it.

My mind had already fractured into too many directions at once, each thought crashing into the next before it could fully form.

Lucian.

Marcus.

Zara.

My cousin.

The word echoed strangely in my head, foreign and intimate all at once. Cousin. Bloodline. Shared power.

I stared down at the ink again as if it might rearrange itself into something that made more sense if I just looked long and hard enough.

It didn’t.

Instead, everything unraveled further.

Lucian had known from the beginning.

Not just who I was—but what. What ran through my veins. What I could become.

A sharp ache seized my chest.

Every conversation, every piece of guidance, every moment he had stood beside me had been based on a lie.

Or worse—calculation. Manipulation

My stomach turned at that.

“No,” I whispered under my breath.

It wasn’t that simple; it couldn’t be.

It might have started as a ploy, but I knew Lucian cared about me. No one was that good an actor.

My fingers curled tighter around the letter, creasing the edge.

“Sera.”

Kieran’s voice cut through the noise in my head, low and steady. He was close enough that I could feel his warmth seep into me.

I didn’t look up immediately; I wasn’t sure what he would see on my face.

Instead, I focused on breathing.

In. Out.

Slow. Controlled. Measured.

I tried to calm my thoughts, to find something solid to anchor myself to.

But it felt like everything was shifting.

“Sera,” Kieran repeated, gentler this time, his hand coming to rest lightly against my arm.

There—solid.

I closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath. Long enough to gather the pieces of myself that had scattered too far.

When I opened them again, the world felt...clearer.

I forced my grip to loosen, and the paper straightened again, but the crease remained—a thin, permanent scar across the margin.

Fitting.

“I’m fine.” The lie slipped out smoothly.

Kieran didn’t call me on it, but I felt the shift in him anyway—the way his presence adjusted, closer without crowding, steady without pressing. He knew what I was doing.

He’d seen me do it before.

With Celeste.

With my parents.

With everything that had tried to break me before I was ready to deal with it.

Compartmentalize.

Survive first.

Feel later.

My jaw tightened as I folded the letter and set it aside on the counter.

I would deal with Lucian’s secrets later.

Right now...

I glanced down at the open box again and reached into it.

The documents were thicker than they had looked at first glance, layered in uneven stacks—some neatly bound, others hastily clipped together, a few marked with annotations in Lucian’s unmistakable handwriting.

My chest tightened again.

Ignore it.

Focus.

I pulled the first stack free and spread it across the counter.

Kieran shifted beside me, close enough to read over my shoulder, while Maya moved to the other side, already scanning.

Everything looked classified; Lucian must have risked a lot getting these.

Alois lingered just behind us, silent, observant.

I skimmed through the first few pages—data logs, monitoring records, energy fluctuations, patterns I didn’t understand.

Then my fingers stilled against the paper.

“No,” I whispered.

“What?” Maya asked, leaning closer.

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