My Sister Stole My Mate And I Let Her (Seraphina) novel Chapter 460

Chapter 460: Chapter 460 NOBODY’S PUPPET

SERAPHINA’S POV

Lucian’s retreating figure did not fade from my mind.

Even after the forest swallowed him and the delay trap loosened its invisible grip, even after Brett’s furious snarls dissolved into raw silence, I still saw him.

The tension in his shoulders as he forced himself away.

The haunted look in his eyes.

The way he had hesitated.

That was the part that burned the deepest.

Not his betrayal. Not even the fact that he had helped Thomas escape.

But that hesitation...

That hesitation meant that somewhere beneath Catherine’s shackle, beneath Marcus’ influence, beneath whatever poison had been layered over his will, the man I had once known was there. He had heard me.

He had stopped.

For one impossible second, he had almost come back.

And then he had chosen—or had been forced—to leave.

By the time we returned to Nightfang, my wild emotions had condensed into something cold, sharp, and dangerous.

The convoy swept through the gates under the hard white glare of security lights, tires hissing across the stone drive as guards moved into position around us. No one spoke much.

Brett looked like he had aged ten years in one night.

His jaw was so tightly clenched I wondered how his teeth had not cracked. His eyes stayed fixed ahead as if some part of him was still in the forest, watching Thomas disappear again and again.

Kieran sat beside me in the back seat, his presence solid and silent, but I could feel the attention he kept trained on me.

His hand covered mine, a quiet anchor.

I turned my palm upward and intertwined our fingers, keeping my eyes focused ahead without meeting his gaze.

If I looked at him, if I let myself sink even briefly into the safety of him, I was afraid I would crack open and not be able to put myself back together again.

As soon as the cars stopped, I pushed the door open myself and stepped out before the guard could reach me.

The night air pressed against my face, dry and cool, carrying the faint scent of dust, stone, and the distant ocean beyond Los Angeles.

Nightfang’s main house rose ahead of us, all dark glass and sharp shadows, its windows glowing like watchful eyes against the black sky.

“Where is the puppet?” I asked.

Corin, who had just climbed out of the second vehicle, paused with his hand still on the door. His gaze flicked to Kieran first, then back to me.

“Sera,” he said carefully.

“Where. Is. It?”

Kieran moved to my side. “Do you think now is a good time?”

“Now is a fantastic time.”

Corin stared at me for a long moment, and I knew he saw it, the need to do something with the restlessness boiling under my skin before I exploded.

He exhaled through his nose.

“The dungeon,” he said at last.

I was already walking.

Nightfang’s lower levels had always been cold, but tonight the chill seemed to crawl beneath my skin with purpose.

The puppet had been secured in one of the reinforced interrogation rooms near the eastern wing of the lower level.

Corin and Brett had captured it during the shipment raid, along with crates of concentrated wolfsbane and medical equipment that still made my stomach turn when I thought about it.

He sat strapped to a steel chair bolted to the floor, wrists bound with cuffs and ankles locked into heavy restraints.

His head hung forward, dark hair falling across a face too still to look asleep and too alive to be dead. His skin carried a grayish undertone, and faint scars climbed the side of his neck in thin, deliberate lines.

Not battle scars.

Surgical ones.

My hands curled into fists.

Alois stood in the corner with two monitors beside him, his expression grim behind his glasses.

“His vitals have remained stable. No significant response to verbal commands since arrival.”

“Has he spoken?” I asked.

“Not a word.”

I moved closer to the puppet.

Kieran’s hand caught my wrist before I reached the chair.

I looked back at him.

His eyes searched mine, and for one quiet moment, the room around us vanished beneath the weight of all the things he did not say.

Do not let this hurt you.

Do not go somewhere I cannot follow.

“I’m here,” he said softly.

My throat tightened, but I nodded and turned back to face the puppet.

I placed my fingers against his temple and flinched.

His skin was frigid.

He lifted his head, and his eyes met mine. Empty, just like Aaron’s had first been.

A shiver moved up my arm, not from temperature, but from the wrongness beneath it.

Before I could second-guess the merit of this idea, I dived in.

His mind did not open like Celeste’s had earlier, raw and frightened and desperate for release.

It did not rise to meet me like Aaron’s, fragmented but still alive beneath layers of pain.

This mind was a locked room inside a locked room inside a sealed grave.

The first touch of it was darkness.

Then pain.

Then static.

I drew a breath through my nose and pushed deeper.

The world around me fell away, and I stood in a corridor made of fractured memory.

White walls stretched endlessly on either side, flickering in and out as if the mind could not decide whether to preserve them or erase them entirely.

Overhead lights buzzed with a sickly hum. The floor was slick, though when I looked down, there was nothing there.

“Hello?” I called.

My voice echoed strangely, warping at the edges.

A shape moved at the far end of the corridor.

I turned toward it.

The puppet stood there, but not as he appeared in the interrogation room. Here, he looked younger. Healthier.

His eyes were still empty, but his face had not yet taken on that gray, lifeless cast. A memory of the person he had been before Catherine reduced him to a tool.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

I stepped closer, and the corridor flickered.

Suddenly, black lines shot across the walls like veins, spreading fast, crawling toward me with a sharp, insectile whisper.

A pressure slammed into my chest, and I staggered back, teeth gritting as the force tried to drive me out.

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