My Sister Stole My Mate And I Let Her (Seraphina) novel Chapter 481

Chapter 481: Chapter 481 SCIENCE EXPERIMENT

EVELYN’S POV

“If you cooperate with me, I’ll help you.”

The words left my mouth before I had time to measure them.

For one strange, suspended moment, the hollow seemed to hold its breath around us.

Jack’s ruined body strained against Lucian’s bindings, the dying forest crackled softly under the weight of the corruption leaking from him, and Lucian Reed stared at me as though I had just offered him a blade and asked him to place it against my throat.

Maybe I had.

I barely knew him.

I knew his name, his reputation, the fragments Catherine allowed to circulate through her laboratories, and the wary respect even her most loyal people carried when they spoke of him.

I knew he was dangerous. I knew he had helped Catherine more than once. I knew that, just like me, he had stood close enough to darkness that it had left stains in him no amount of regret could fully wash away.

And yet, when I looked at him, something in me paused.

Maybe it was the sadness in his eyes, the kind that did not ask to be pitied because it believed it deserved every wound it carried.

Maybe it was the way he had lifted that blade against Jack while knowing it would kill him, too. He had not acted out of cruelty, but out of a terrible, exhausted certainty that one life could prevent something worse.

Or maybe it was something older and stranger, some instinct beneath witchcraft and blood that I did not have the time or will to examine.

Whatever it was, it did not matter.

I could not afford to dwell on Lucian Reed.

Jack’s body jerked violently against the bindings, and a wet snarl tore from his throat as black veins pulsed beneath his torn fur.

The corruption inside him was still alive, still searching, still waiting for a command from the woman who had always known how to break things to her benefit.

I stepped back from the circle. “Are you going to cooperate or not?”

Lucian’s gaze sharpened, all that startled emotion folding behind caution. “That depends on what your version of cooperation means.”

“It means you stop trying to martyr yourself long enough to be useful.”

His mouth tightened, and for the briefest second, I thought he might argue.

Jack convulsed in his restraints again, claws digging into the earth until dirt and blood sprayed across the glowing seal.

Lucian looked at him, and his expression hardened.

“What do you need from me?”

Hope should not have moved through me as strongly as it did.

I ignored it.

“First, you need to understand that Catherine will already know something went wrong,” I said. “Jack’s corruption is tethered. If his condition destabilizes too sharply, she will feel it.”

“She’ll send people.”

“She already has.”

Lucian stilled.

I turned my head slightly, listening past Jack’s ragged breathing, past the brittle shiver of dead leaves, past the faint hum of Lucian’s binding spell.

There it was. Movement threading through the trees, too disciplined to belong to frightened civilians and too quiet to be ordinary trackers.

Catherine’s retrieval unit.

Marcus’ men—or what remained of them after the tribunal had exposed him to the world—were probably with them.

Either way, they were coming for Jack, and if they found Lucian here with me unharmed and Jack bound beneath a spell shaped from his hand, everything would collapse before it began.

“Follow my lead,” I said.

Lucian frowned. “What—”

I bent and snatched a jagged strip of bark from the base of a dead sycamore. Before I could give myself time to flinch, I dragged the sharp edge across my forearm.

Pain split hot and bright through my skin, and blood welled instantly, sliding down toward my wrist in a vivid line.

Lucian cursed under his breath and reached for me, then stopped himself before his fingers touched my arm.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“Giving them a story.”

“Does your mouth hurt?”

I bit back an inappropriate bark of laughter.

“My stories work better with evidence.”

Lucian’s gaze flicked to the cut, and tension flashed across his face: a mix of concern, anger, or maybe both.

I clenched my jaw against the sting and smeared some of the blood along the sleeve of my dress.

“Jack attacked me,” I said quickly. “You stopped him from killing me, but I was wounded in the process. That’s why he’s bound.”

Lucian’s gaze searched mine. “And Catherine will believe that?”

“She has no reason not to.”

“Is this necessary?” Lucian said, skeptical.

I nodded. “She has already felt that he was spelled. Do you want to tell her what you planned to do?”

A muscle in his jaw ticked as his eyes darted to my arm again. “This is crazy.”

“Well,” I said, looking toward the trees as the footsteps drew closer, “it’s the best we have.”

***

Catherine burst into my room on the island less than an hour after we returned.

The door struck the wall hard enough to make the glass ornaments on my vanity tremble.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify