Chapter 331: Promise Me You’ll Stop

Rebecca’s POV

​Why was I nervous?

​I had asked myself that question at least ten times in the last hour, and I still didn’t have an answer.

​My eyes moved to the wall clock hanging in my room again. The hands dragged past 2:00 PM. Kaden had said he would be here by noon. Two hours had passed without any sign of him, yet instead of making me relax, the delay had somehow made me even more restless. I knew he would come—Kaden wasn’t the type to agree to something like this and simply not show up.

​Still, the uneasy feeling in my stomach wouldn’t go away.

​Stephanie was sitting on the edge of my bed with her phone in her hand. Sensing my restlessness, she lifted her face and looked at me. "If you don’t want to do this... you don’t have to."

​I forced a breath into my lungs and shook my head. "I want to."

​She studied my face for a moment before giving a simple, understanding nod. "Okay."

​I sucked in a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and slowly released it, trying to calm my racing heart.

​Just then, the distant crunch of tires on gravel echoed from outside. Cars were driving up the private driveway.

​My entire body went still.

​Mate, Laura howled softly deep inside me.

​My heart raced instantly. Kaden was here.

​Stephanie looked toward the window and then back at me. "He’s here."

​"Yes," I whispered.

​"Do you want to meet him up here, or...?" Stephanie asked gently.

​"The garden," I replied, my voice quiet but firm as I rubbed my palms against my dress. "The garden is better."

​"Do you want me to come with you?"

​I shook my head. "It’s fine. I need to do this alone."

​Stephanie nodded, though the worry didn’t leave her face.

​I stood up, smoothed down my dress, and left the room. My steps were slow as I walked down the long hallway toward the staircase, and with every step, the nervous feeling in my stomach seemed to grow. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, I could already hear voices coming from the living room below.

​I knew one of those voices belonged to my mother, but I didn’t need to hear the other one to know who was with her. Laura’s restless movement inside me was enough.

​I took another step forward and looked down into the living room.

​That was when I saw him.

​Kaden stood in the middle of the room, with my mother a short distance away from him. For a moment, I simply stood there at the top of the stairs, staring at the man I hadn’t seen in more than two weeks.

​As if he felt my presence, Kaden suddenly looked up, and our eyes met. I couldn’t look away, and neither did he. We simply stared at each other as I continued down the stairs.

​The very first thing I noticed was the complete lifelessness in his eyes. That sharp, fierce spark that had always been there—whether he was angry, irritated, teasing me, or simply staring at me too intensely—was completely gone, replaced by a hollow, vacant darkness.

​I swallowed hard, my chest aching. Then my gaze moved down, and I noticed the drastic change in his physical frame. He had lost a terrifying amount of weight in just two short weeks. His broad shoulders looked gaunt, his strong jawline hollowed out, his cheekbones far more visible, and his clothes hung loosely on a body that used to look broad and unbreakable. It was painfully obvious how much he had deteriorated.

​I swallowed hard again, forced myself to look down at my feet, and stepped off the last staircase into the living room, stopping a few feet from him.

​He looked at me, his voice barely a rasp. "Hi."

​"Hi," I murmured back.

​I turned toward my mother, who was watching us with deep concern etched across her face. She knew why Kaden was here today. We had already discussed it, and the worry on her face made that very clear.

​"We’ll be in the garden," I told her quietly.

​My mother’s eyes softened with worry, but she nodded. "Call for me if you need me, Rebecca."

​"I will," I said. Then I looked back at the man standing before me. "Alpha Kaden, please come with me."

​He gave a small nod without saying anything.

​I turned and led the way outside through the back glass doors. Neither of us spoke as we walked down the stone path toward the quiet shade of the garden bench beneath the large tree. I could hear his heavy footsteps behind me, but he kept enough distance between us that I never felt crowded.

​When we reached the bench, I sat down on one end of the wood, but Kaden remained standing.

​"Sit," I told him gently. "You can sit."

​He hesitated before moving slowly, lowering himself onto the bench. He gave me plenty of space, leaving enough room for another person between us as if he were afraid his very touch might burn me.

​Deep inside my chest, I felt a faint, painful pulse from my wolf. My wolf whimpered, a low, miserable sound, but I ignored her as best I could.

​For several long seconds of suffocating silence, neither of us spoke. I looked down at my hands, trying to remember all the things I had spent the entire morning preparing myself to say.

​When I finally looked at him, Kaden turned his head slightly toward me. "How have you been?"

​"I’m coping," I answered truthfully.

​He didn’t answer beyond a single, small nod, his eyes dropping to the ground between his boots.

​I swallowed hard and looked away for a second. I hadn’t brought him here to make small talk anyway. I turned my body so I was facing him directly. "I have something to say to you, Kaden."

​He didn’t speak. He just gave another small, silent nod, telling me to go on.

​"First, I know what you’ve been doing," I said softly, my voice trembling slightly before I forced it to steady. "Kane came here yesterday. He told me about the flogging."

​Something changed in his face, his jaw tightening immediately.

​My eyes dropped briefly to the dark, long-sleeved black shirt covering his torso, obviously meant to hide the thick layers of bandages and raw, infected wounds covering his back. I couldn’t see them beneath the fabric, but knowing they were there was enough.

​"Kaden, stop," I begged him, my throat tightening with raw emotion. "Please stop doing that to yourself. What happened wasn’t entirely your fault."

​He slowly shook his head.

​"It wasn’t," I insisted, looking directly into his hollow eyes. "Yes, you shouldn’t have fought Callum. You should have controlled your jealousy and walked away. But I was the one who ran down those stairs without watching where I was going. I slipped. You didn’t push me. It was an accident that we both contributed to."

​His jaw tightened again, but he still didn’t speak.

​"I’ve spent two weeks blaming myself too. I’ve asked myself what would have happened if I had walked instead of running. What if I had held the railing properly? What if I had stayed upstairs?" My throat tightened, but I forced myself to continue as tears began to prick at the corners of my eyes. "I can ask myself those questions for the rest of my life, Kaden, and they still won’t bring our baby back. So please stop punishing yourself. Self-destruction isn’t going to fix anything."

​Kaden remained completely silent. He didn’t offer an excuse or defend himself. He just stared at the ground.

​"If you want to mourn, mourn. Cry, scream, grieve, break things if that’s what you need to do to feel the pain. But don’t keep having people tear your back open every morning because you think suffering will somehow make what happened right. It won’t."

​My eyes began to burn, and a single tear spilled over my lash line.

​"I know about the nursery too."

​His eyes closed tightly. That tiny, subtle reaction almost broke me.

​For a few seconds, I couldn’t continue. I looked away, blinking rapidly until the tears in my eyes cleared enough for me to speak.

​"You loved our baby too. I understand that now," I said, my voice coming out quieter. "So if you really loved our child, then please don’t use his death to destroy yourself."

​Kaden’s eyes opened again, staring blankly at the ground.

​"Promise me you’ll stop," I said, pleading. "Promise me, Kaden."

​He stared at me for a long, agonizing moment, his throat bobbing painfully, before he slowly nodded.

​It wasn’t enough. "Kaden, promise me."

​"I promise," he rasped out, his voice thick and broken.

​I let out the suffocating breath I had been holding and swallowed back the painful lump in my throat, bracing myself for the harder part.

Author’s Note

For a better visual of each Chapter, please check the comments. I usually drop pictures of the scenes there so you can see exactly how I imagined them while reading.