Chapter 3
Five years passed.
The fir forests of the mountain range stayed evergreen, but the chill of the Abyss Dungeon seemed to have lodged permanently in my bones.
Every year, on the anniversary of Claire's death, I returned to the abandoned altar on the old pack grounds to pay my respects.
Jack never spoke of what had happened. He played the role of the perfect bonded mate — draping a coat over my shoulders to ward off the wind, pressing a thermos of hot tea into my hands.
But he never once bowed his head at the grave, and he never uttered the names Claire or Joanna.
As if the blood and the false confession of that night were just a nightmare I refused to wake from.
On the way back from the altar, Jack told me to go to the mall — to take the day off from the kindergarten and not sit at home brooding.
The air conditioning in the downtown shopping center was turned up to full blast. The biting cold seeped through my thin blouse and into my skin.
I had just picked up a pre-ordered aromatherapy set from the counter and was heading for the elevator when a small boy clutching a stuffed animal came barreling around the corner and crashed straight into my legs.
"Careful." I instinctively reached out to steady his shoulders.
The boy looked up at me, a little timid.
The moment I saw his face clearly, my breath seized.
A pair of extraordinarily rare amber eyes. Slightly curly brown hair. Features that were, unmistakably, a miniature replica of Jack.
Before my brain could recover from the shock, a woman's voice came from nearby: "Leo, don't run off like that."
The voice was oddly familiar — and yet I knew that person had been dead for years.
I raised my head stiffly.
A woman in a khaki trench coat walked briskly over and pulled the boy to her side.
She bore a faint resemblance to me. Even the voice was similar. But she was absolutely not the sister I remembered.
Her jawline was sharper. The outer corners of her eyes tilted slightly upward. Her makeup was polished and cold — nothing like Claire's gentle, soft-spoken warmth.
She had to be a stranger.
"Sorry — did the boy bump into you?" The woman glanced at me with nothing more than polite courtesy.
"N-no." I stared at her, my voice trembling beyond my control.
She paid me no further attention. She took the boy by the hand, walked to the nearby coffee bar, and accepted an iced Americano from the barista.
I stood rooted to the spot, feet nailed to the tile, my gaze tracking her every movement.
She raised the coffee cup. The ring finger of her right hand lifted slightly out of habit.
I froze.
That was Claire's lifelong quirk — a distinctive way of holding a cup, because she had injured that finger as a child and the fascia had never fully healed.
She frowned slightly and muttered to the boy about the air conditioning: "This weather is 'bloody freezing' — put your jacket on."
Bloody freezing.
Claire's favorite expression.
My heart hammered. Blood roared against my eardrums.
The bloodstained necklace delivered from the Abyss Dungeon. The Elder Council's cold death pronouncement. Every tear I had shed at that gravestone over five years… all of it clashed and tore at the seams in this single moment.
She wasn't dead.
This woman — holding the hand of a child who looked exactly like Jack — was my sister, Claire.
I bit down hard on my lower lip, tasted blood, and forced myself to swallow the cry that almost escaped.
I couldn't tip them off. Whatever lay behind this was far from simple.
I followed them at a distance, watching them enter the underground parking garage and climb into a black SUV.
I hailed a taxi at once and told the driver to tail them from afar.
The car left the city, drove deep into the countryside, and finally stopped in front of a secluded villa.
I hid behind a distant fir tree and watched Claire lead the boy out of the car.
The villa's front door opened. A woman in casual clothes came out smiling, scooping the boy into her arms.
When I saw her face, my stomach flipped so violently I nearly doubled over against the tree trunk.
Joanna.
The woman who had supposedly died in a cliff fall five years ago — the woman whose death had sent my sister to a dungeon to "die in her place" — was standing alive in broad daylight, her face glowing with maternal warmth.
Before long, a familiar car pulled into the courtyard.
Jack stepped out. The boy cheered and threw himself into Jack's arms, calling out "Daddy!"
Jack laughed, lifted the child above his head, then leaned over and pressed a deep kiss to Joanna's lips.
And Claire simply stood to one side, smiling at this cozy family of three, as if she were nothing more than a loyal guardian of this household.
"Jack, it's really unfair to you — not even being able to see your own son openly."
My heart sank into an even deeper abyss.
No cliff-fall death for Joanna. No dungeon death for Claire.
For five years, I had wept at that grave every year while Jack held me in his arms like the perfect mate, tenderly soothing my "post-traumatic symptoms."
And behind my back, they had been here together, raising the pup.
Night fell. I went home.
Jack was sitting on the living room sofa, going through the pack's account ledgers.
He looked up at the sound of the door, flashing his habitual warm smile. "You're back? Why do you look so pale — wasn't the mall supposed to cheer you up? What happened?"
He stood and reached out to touch my forehead, the way he always did.
I flinched back a step, dodging his hand.
I stared at this face — the face I had loved for years — and felt nothing but cold.
"I ran into a woman at the mall today who looked a lot like Claire." I watched his eyes, my voice so calm it frightened even me. "She was with a boy who had amber eyes. I followed them to a villa outside the city… Jack, Joanna is taking very good care of that child."
Jack's hand froze in midair.
The living room fell deathly silent. The only sound was the tick of the wall clock's second hand.
He didn't show the panic of a man caught in a lie. He didn't try to explain.
He simply lowered his hand, the warmth draining from his face degree by degree, replaced by a suffocating indifference.
He was quiet for a long time — so long the air itself seemed to freeze.
"Evelyn," he sighed, his tone laced with condescending pity and a thread of impatience, "your mental state has only just stabilized. Why do you insist on wasting energy on these pointless things?"
"The truth? Is it really that important?"
