More than being a pathetic, wolfless, outcast, I was the crazy bitch who hurt the sister who only ever cared for her.
Celeste blinked at me now, a faint smile playing at the corner of her lips. For a heartbeat, I thought she’d continue the charade,
But she leaned closer, her perfume wrapping around me, her whisper venomous. “Of course I told them.
Deliberately. Did you really think I’d let you use your weakness to receive sympathy? No, what you deserved is scorn.”
Gods, my sister had never looked uglier than she did in this moment. “Wolfless, pitiful Sera. Born marked by the Moon Goddess herself as tainted. And you can train as hard as you want. You can kick and punch and run, but you will never, ever be more than what you are-“
Her lips curled, teeth bared. “Broken.”
Celeste’s head whipped to the side, hair spilling forward as the crack of my palm against her cheek echoed around us.
For a moment, silence.
Then-she laughed. Low, eerie, chilling. A sound that curdled the air.
“You’re so fucking predictable,” she whispered, eyes gleaming.
She edged around, but kept facing me, and started walking backwards. “That’s why you’ll always be behind.”
Step by step, she backed away, her smile growing into something vicious and primal. “That’s why you’ll never have the life you want.”
She stopped at the end of my driveway and raised her voice. “That’s why I’ll always win.”
I frowned. “Wha-“
She stepped out into the street.
“Celeste, get the fuck out of the-“
“You’re not the only one who can fake a crisis, sweetie.” She winked.
And in one deliberate motion, she let herself fall. Backward.
My scream ripped from my throat as a horn blared. Tires screeched.
Then impact.
SERAPHINA’S POV
Hours later, I could still hear the screech of tires.
Could still see the sickening sway of Celeste’s body, the blur of her hair as she toppled sideways into the street.
Even after she disappeared into the ambulance, and I climbed in after her, after the sirens wailed us down the road, Mrs. Harlow’s terrier racing after us, my chest wouldn’t unclench.
I sat there in a haze, the once serene world around me suddenly too bright, too loud, too fast.
And so fucking confusing.
I couldn’t fathom it.
‘You’re not the only one who can fake a crisis, sweetie.’
I remembered once when Celeste got nothing more than a paper cut and treated it as though she’d been mortally wounded.
She shrieked that she could see bone, demanded an ambulance, and even sprawled across the chaise like a tragic heroine awaiting her last rites.
The family doctor was summoned for what had already stopped bleeding, and Celeste milked it for weeks- refusing chores, parading around with a useless bandage, and sighing dramatically whenever someone asked her to lift so much as a book.
Celeste had always been cruel, always cunning, ridiculously dramatic. But this?
Throwing herself into the path of a moving car? My brain scrambled around the image like it couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t fit the sheer insanity into the outline of the girl I’d once thought I knew.
Everything in the emergency ward was happening in a dizzying blur.
Nurses in pale scrubs moved with hurried, sharp precision, calling out codes and requests.
The sliding doors groaned behind me again and again as more people swept in.
My mother arrived first. Her heels clicked like gunshots across the linoleum, her fur coat dragging along the floor.
Her lipstick was immaculate, her face tight with controlled panic. Only the slight mascara smudges under her eyes hinted at her distress. “Where is she? My daughter-where’s Celeste?”
I shrank back automatically, once again reminded that the daughter my parents looked for would always be
Celeste.
And then Ethan appeared, tall and grim, his hand brushing her shoulder as though he could temper her storm.
His presence should have been grounding-and maybe it was for my mother. Instead, it rattled me further.
He glanced at me briefly-his expression unreadable, cold perhaps, or just stunned. I couldn’t tell.
Finally, Kieran arrived. His stride was longer, urgent, his hair damp from the drizzle that had begun outside.
When his eyes landed on me, something unreadable flickered there-suspicion? concern? I couldn’t pin it down before the moment broke.
It was disorienting, all of them rushing in like a tide, pulling air from the room, leaving me stranded at its center.
It almost reminded me of when my father had been on his deathbed.
But the similarities niggled at me, and I almost laughed at the absurdity.
They would rush to the hospital for my father. They would rush for dramatic Celeste.
But nobody rushed like this when I’d almost died giving birth to Daniel.
I should have left as soon as they all came; I should have known that all of us being in close proximity with heightened emotions wouldn’t end well.
But I kept seeing Celeste fall back into the road, kept hearing the tires screeching.
I’d stay just long enough to know she was okay. She was batshit crazy, but she was-unfortunately-still my sister.
After a while, a doctor appeared, pulling down his mask. They all surged forward to hear the news. “She’s stable. Mild concussion, a wrist fracture, some bruising on her ribs, and minor scrapes. We’re keeping her for observation, but she’s out of immediate danger.”
Relief washed through the room-through them. Mother exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for hours, clutching Ethan’s sleeve as he held on to her elbow.
Kieran’s jaw unclenched, the muscles twitching as he ran a hand over his face, and tension flowed out of him.
I should have felt the same. Relief. Gratitude that she wasn’t broken beyond repair.
But instead, all I felt was that clench in my stomach-the dizzying aftershock of watching her nearly shatter herself for spectacle.
‘You’re not the only one who can fake a crisis, sweetie.’
After the doctor’s words, a shuffle of movement followed-relieved sighs turning into urgent nods as the nurse gestured for us to follow. The sterile corridors seemed to hum with too-bright lights and too-loud footsteps as we trailed behind, our little parade of strained faces and clenched hands.
I walked with them, though every step felt detached, like I was floating above my own body.
Inside her room, Celeste lay propped up against a stack of pillows, looking far more fragile than I’d ever seen her. And yet, still somehow immaculately put together the way only Celeste could be.
Her hair was in perfect waves down her shoulders, her arm cradled in a cast, ribs bound in bandages that peeked beneath the hospital gown.
It was the kind of image that demanded sympathy-delicate, breakable.
And then, of course, she started speaking.
“She-” Celeste’s voice cracked as her eyes landed on me. Her skin was pale, her lips glossy. “What is she doing here?”
A question I was beginning to ask myself.
“How can you show your face here,” she rasped, “after shoving me into the street?”
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