Alpha alec's redemption (Sadie) novel Chapter 367

The world shrinks into a ringing silence the moment Lola goes limp beneath me.

“Xena?” My voice rips out of me, raw and feral. “Xena, look at me. Please.”

Her blood is warm against my palms. It shouldn’t be outside her body; it feels wrong, clinging to my skin, under my nails, soaking into the cracks of my shaking fingers. The warmth drains with every heartbeat that isn’t hers, slipping away like sand I can’t hold.

“Please,” I sob, broken. “Open your eyes.”

My hands press over the wound in her chest as if I can hold her soul in place, as if pressure and prayer could reverse death. But her skin is cooling beneath my touch. The warmth leaves her the way light leaves a dying star.

I brush her hair from her face. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t move. Slowly, too slowly, I place my hand beneath her nose. I find no breath.

A sound tears out of me, primal and agonized. The earth trembles beneath us, as if the world feels this loss too. As if it knows a goddess’s daughter is dying on its soil.

I clutch her face in shaking hands, pressing my forehead to hers, desperate enough to believe that closeness can anchor her to life.

“I’m so sorry,” I choke, voice splintering. “I thought I hated you but I didn’t. I never did. I just missed you. Gods, I missed you so much.”

My tears fall onto her cheeks like rain on marble, sliding down instead of sinking in. Her skin cools further, each moment stealing another piece of her from me.

Panic fractures into full-blown terror.

“Don’t leave me.” My voice breaks. “Don’t leave me again.”

The memory of us as children flashes like lightning… chasing wolves in the gardens, braiding each other’s hair, whispering secrets under blankets. We used to sleep with our hands touching so nightmares couldn’t find us alone.

Once she was my other half. How did we become this? How did we go from sisters to enemies on opposite ends of a battlefield?

“And now she’s your consequence. If I didn’t need your powers, I would have let you live with the guilt of killing your own sister.”

I can’t stop the sob or the pain. My heart is breaking, twisting, and crushing so badly it makes it so fucking hard to breathe. I feel like it’s being carved out by a knife, and I know nothing will make it feel better.

Mother is right next to me, sobbing, holding Xena’s hand.

“I told you,” She whispers, her pain evident in her voice. “I warned you. I tried to stop you, but you still went ahead and stabbed her, now look at what you have done! She’s dead. Your sister is dead and all because you didn’t fucking listen!”

The world tilts. My heart is thumping so hard it’s painful.

I look down at Lola, at the lashes that rest too still against her cheeks, at the blood staining her mouth like a cruel smear of lipstick. She was never meant to die like this. Not by my hand. Not misunderstood. Not alone.

“I should have protected you,” I whisper, voice trembling. “I should have fought harder.”