Rejected then Claimed by the Alpha King (Liam and Hope) novel Chapter 25

Chapter 15

Christian’s POV

Carrie forced herself to stand despite the pain. She wiped the tears off her face, let out a cold laugh, and

when she looked at me again-her eyes were icy, sharp, dripping with hatred and sarcasm.

“Christian, you call me malicious?” she snapped through clenched teeth. “You think you’re any better?”

I said nothing. Just stood there, staring at her. It was like she’d finally dropped the act-no more fake tears,

no more soft-spoken masks. What stood before me now was her true self, raw and unfiltered.

“When I left five years ago, you ended up with Blair. And why? Because we looked alike.” She met my gaze

head-on. “Be honest with yourself. Wasn’t she just my stand-in from the start?”

Every word she hurled at me struck deep, tearing open the wounds I tried hardest to ignore.

“Five whole years, and you refused to seal the mate bond with Blair. Yet all it took was a few lies from me-

and you marked me without a second thought.” She scoffed. “That’s what you call loyalty?”

My throat tightened, but I still couldn’t speak.

She stepped closer, her voice dropping lower, colder, “You’re not mad because you love Blair. You’re mad

because you can’t stand the fact that someone like me played you like a fool.”

“Everything you’ve done-all of it-wasn’t for Blair. It was just to soothe your own damn guilt.”

Her words cut with precision-sharp and unrelenting. “You’re the selfish one. You’re the hypocrite. You’re the

one who makes me sick.”

“A self-righteous bastard.”

I clenched my fists, fighting the urge to flinch, to break, to let her words get to me.

Then she turned to the others-Lysander, Orion, Zayden.

“And the rest of you?” she sneered. “No different. Just as selfish, fake, stupid.”

Her eyes swept over them, cold and accusing. “We lived together for over twenty years. You’re telling me you

really didn’t know what I was doing to Blair? Was it ignorance-or did you just not want to know? Deep down,

you know the answer.”

My chest tightened with every word.

“I wasn’t even that clever about it,” she laughed bitterly, voice shrill. “Hell, my tricks were sloppy as hell-but I

still had you all fooled for decades.”

“And Blair-” her tone twisted, dripping with irony, “-your precious Blair. If any of you had cared about her

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even a little… you think I could’ve done what I did right under your noses?”

Then she lost it completely. The laugh that burst from her lips was wild, deranged, euphoric-like she wanted to drag every last one of us into her madness.

“My dearest brother,” she turned to Lysander now, her gaze venomous, “you run the entire Bloodstone Pack.

Nothing gets past you. So tell me-did I whip her myself? Was I the one who hung her over a cliff, leaving her

to die and rot?”

It was like she’d reached into my chest and gripped my heart, squeezing until it couldn’t beat.

“Yes, I’m cruel. I’m calculated,” her voice shot up like a scream, “but don’t pretend your hands are clean. Blair

didn’t die because of just me. We all killed her-together.”

My breath caught.

She looked at us like a judge handing down a sentence, voice trembling with madness and certainty.

“Every single one of you is a killer. None of you are innocent.”

As the warriors dragged her away, she kept screaming-cursing, her voice raw with fury, until a hand

clamped over her mouth, cutting her off mid-cry.

The room plunged into dead silence.

No one spoke. We just stood there, rooted in place, her words echoing again and again in our heads.

I don’t even remember how I got back to the pack house. It felt like I was floating, no ground beneath me.

Just… nothing.

When I stepped into the courtyard, I saw the maids tending to the garden. I waved them off. The sun poured

through the trees, casting dappled shadows on the ground. My gaze drifted to the lemon tree.

And then I saw her. Blair.

It was a memory-one from just after she became my Luna. Back then, I was still cold, distant.

I remember her standing outside the study door, hesitating for a long time, too nervous to knock.

In the end, I was the one who told her to come in.

She stammered, cheeks red, saying she wanted to plant a lemon tree in the garden.

I’d laughed. “You really hesitated this long… for something that small?”

She dropped her gaze and nodded, lips pressed together. I didn’t think much of it then. But that lemon tree… it

takes five years to bear fruit.

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