My Sister Stole My Mate And I Let Her (Seraphina) novel Chapter 457

Chapter 457: Chapter 457 NOT ENTIRELY ALONE

MARGARET’S POV

For a moment, I thought my mind had finally broken.

It would have made sense. There was only so much the mind could endure before it conjured ghosts.

That’s what this had to be. Because the person kneeling before me did not look like Tobias Brighton.

At least, not at first glance.

His hair was longer and darker, pinned beneath a faded scarf in a style typical of the island’s older female staff.

A loose caretaker’s uniform softened the shape of his shoulders and hid the breadth of his frame. His skin had been subtly altered with cosmetics—his jaw shaded differently, his mouth held in a smaller, quieter line.

Even his scent was wrong, buried beneath antiseptic, salt, detergent, and the faint bitter trace of herbs used in the servants’ quarters.

But no disguise could change his eyes.

Storm-gray, steady, and old with knowing.

Nothing could hide the way he looked at me as though he had once seen me at the beginning of all this—before Catherine, before the seal, before the years had taken our choices and turned them into consequences.

His fingers tightened around my wrists, not painfully, but firmly enough to keep me anchored.

“Not so loud,” he whispered.

I stared at him, my breath trapped in my chest as my mind fought to pull itself together.

“You’re real,” I breathed.

A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth. “In a matter of speaking.”

My knees weakened, and I might have collapsed if he had not shifted closer, one hand moving from my wrist to my elbow to steady me.

“How?” I asked. “How are you here?”

His gaze flicked toward the open door, then back to me. “I can’t stay long enough to explain everything.”

“Then explain enough.”

Tobias studied my face, and for a second, something like regret crossed his eyes.

“I tried to find you as soon as I heard you were here,” he said, voice low and urgent. “It wasn’t until you agreed to cooperate that they relaxed certain protocols around your holding pattern because they believed they’d broken you enough to control you. That gave me the opening I needed. Unfortunately, reaching you took longer than it should have.”

My breath left me slowly.

My cooperation. The performance I hated myself for.

At least it had not been wasted.

"You’re here now," I whispered.

His jaw tightened, and, through the disguise and the altered scent and the impossible circumstances, I saw the man I knew years ago.

The man who had argued against Catherine when the rest of us had been too frightened and too desperate to think clearly.

The man who had looked at Sera not as a disaster waiting to happen, but as a child in need of guidance.

Oh, how different things might have been if we’d trusted him instead of the devil.

He must have seen the flash of pain and regret in my expression, because his grip tightened before I could pull away.

“Margaret—”

“You were right,” I choked out.

“About Sera. About the seal. About Catherine.” My voice trembled despite every effort to steady it. “You were right, and we didn’t listen.”

Tobias closed his eyes, as if the words hurt him more than they vindicated him.

“When people are afraid,” he said, opening them again, “they often choose the hand promising control over the one asking for trust."

A faint sound escaped me, not quite a laugh and not quite a sob. “That is a very generous way to describe our stupidity.”

“No,” he said softly. “It is an accurate way to describe Catherine’s manipulation.”

My eyes burned.

For a moment, I couldn’t speak. There were too many emotions pressing against my chest, too many questions crowding my tongue.

Where had he been? How had he entered Catherine’s facility? Who was helping him? Did he know about Edward?

“Listen to me, Margaret,” Tobias said. “You need to stay alive.”

The words were quiet, but they landed with the force of an order.

“I mean it,” he pressed. “Whatever Catherine shows you, whatever she threatens, whatever she uses against you, you stay alive.”

My mouth twisted bitterly. “She has Edward.”

“I know.”

My eyes widened.

“You know?”

His eyes darkened.

“I have seen enough to understand what she is attempting.” His voice lowered further. “And I know enough to tell you that dying now will not protect anyone from her.”

“She wants my wolf,” I said, the words scraping out of me.

“I know.”

“She already took my psychic power. She used it for years. She used it on Edward. She wants Sylvia now to finish whatever monstrosity she’s building.”

“Then do not give her Sylvia,” he said.

A broken laugh slipped from me. “You say that as though willingness has ever stopped Catherine.”

“No,” he replied, and there was a hardness beneath the calm now. “But resistance changes the shape of a ritual. Consent changes the channel through which power is drawn. Catherine knows that, or she would have already ripped whatever remains of your wolf out of you by force.”

I stared at him, my pulse beginning to pound.

“She needs me to agree.”

“She needs enough of you to yield,” he said. “That is not the same thing, but it is close enough that you must be careful.”

The room seemed to tilt from the sudden, terrible rearrangement of my understanding.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify