<h4>Chapter 107: Chapter 107 THE SAME MISTAKE</h4>


    MARGARET’S POV


    The drive home passed by in a haze, but I hardly noticed the route. Each turn slipped by unnoticed, my mind caught somewhere else entirely.


    Finally, the Lockwood Manor loomed before me—our home. Except it didn’t feel like a home. It hadn’t in months.


    Not since Edward’sughter no longer echoed through the halls, not since Ethan buried himself in pack duties and found hisfort in the arms of his mate.


    Not since Celeste returned to our lives—just to move in with Kieran almost immediately.


    What remained was silence. The kind that pressed on the chest like a weight, the kind that made the clink of a spoon against porcin sound deafening.


    I sat in the entryway for a long time, staring at Edward’s coat still hanging on the rack. We’d been about to go out; he was halfway through tugging it on when the call of the attack came through.


    In his haste, he’d shrugged it off and tossed it aside.


    And there it had stayed for the past three months, untouched, as if waiting for him toe back and shrug into it.


    My throat burned, and I pressed a hand to it, forcing the tears back. I had already cried too much for too long; still, the tears seemed endless. The sorrow eternal.


    But right now, what gnawed at me more than grief was confusion.


    I reyed the scene at Sera’s house in my mind again and again, trying to pinpoint where I had gone wrong.


    Yes, perhaps my motives had gone misunderstood—Sera always did have a way of misconstruing my intentions.


    And yes, perhaps I had clung too hard. But what mother didn’t? What mother, after giving life, could be expected to simply let her child turn cold to her?


    No matter how many years stretched out between us, no matter how hard she tried to pretend otherwise, I would always be Seraphina’s mother.


    And even if I was wrong, what right did Lucian Reed have to interfere? He wasn’t even her husband. His ce was nowhere between us.


    It was still onlyte morning, but my outing had had the opposite effect of its purpose and exhausted me greatly. I copsed into bed without changing.


    I curled up on my side, hugging Edward’s pillow to me.


    I hadn’t washed it in three months, but his scent was already fading, and I fell asleep like I always did—tears slipping down my cheeks.


    And then—rare as rain in drought—I dreamed of him.


    Edward stood before me as he once had: broad-shouldered, his hair touched with the faintest silver, eyes a beautiful cerulean-blue that used to both steady and undo me.


    Eyes exactly like Sera’s.


    His arms opened and I went into them, desperate, clutching at his shirt like a drowning woman clinging to a life vest.


    “Edward,” I whispered, the name breaking into a sob. “Oh, Edward.”


    “My love.” His voice was warm, slightly gruff. Oh, how I’d missed his voice.


    “I can’t do this anymore,” I said, voice thick. “I don’t understand them. I don’t understand her. Everything I say—everything I do—it’s wrong.”


    I pulled back to look up at him. “Seraphina hates me, Edward. Our daughter hates me. And Ethan is so busy, and Celeste... Celeste, I can’t quite figure out. What am I supposed to do? I don’t know how to do all this without you, Edward.”


    His hand smoothed over my hair, his touch so achingly familiar I thought I might dissolve under it.


    He didn’t speak for the longest time, only held me the way he always had when words failed him. And then, when the dream had begun to fade, when I could already feel the cold of the waking world creeping back in, he leaned close.


    “Don’t forget,” he murmured. “Sera is our daughter, too. No matter what. Don’t lose sight of that. Don’t make the same mistake I did.”


    “Edward...”


    I tried to cling to him, but he was already dissolving, vanishing into the thinning veil of the dream.


    “Edward, please don’t leave me!”


    My hands closed over nothing, and panic wed up my throat. “Edward, I can’t—"


    I woke with a jolt, wet cheeks, and a hollow in my chest that no amount of air could fill.


    All through the day, his words haunted me.


    ‘Don’t make the same mistake I did.’


    I might not have been the one to cast her out, but I’d stood by and done nothing about it. I’d been angry, so consumed by Celeste’s pain and grief that I had blinded myself to Sera’s.


    Ten years—an entire decade—stood like a wall between us.


    Did I truly think a single visit, a handful of stubborn words, could tear it down?


    No. Crumbling those defenses would take more than just persistence; it would take humility.


    But I wasn’t sure I knew how to do that. After being Luna for more than thirty years,ying my pride down did note easy.


    That evening, I invited Ethan and Celeste to dinner, and to my surprise, they obliged.


    Ethan took Edward’s ce at the head of the table, and Celeste sat at my side, her fork scraping idly against her te.


    For the first time in a long time, I did not see only them. I saw the empty chair beside Ethan, the one Sera should have upied.


    And the thought formed unbidden, fragile but persistent: perhaps it wasn’t toote.


    “Ethan,” I said softly,ying down my fork. “I was thinking... Perhaps we could invite Seraphina home for a meal. To sit together again, as a family.”


    The words had barely left my lips when a sharp crash split the air. Celeste’s te shattered against the marble floor, fragments scattering, food sttering across the polished surface.


    “Mom?” she hissed, her voice trembling with something between rage and hurt. “Did I hear you correctly? You want to invite her?”


    Her fingers curled into fists around her fork like a weapon.


    I straightened my back, though my pulse jumped. “Yes, Celeste. She is family, whether you like it or not. Your father—” My voice cracked, but I forced it steady. “Edward’s dying wish was to see a harmonious family. That includes Sera.”


    How could I make them understand? That the daughter Edward had asked for, the child he longed for in his final moments, was actually Sera.


    Celeste’s chair screeched against the floor as she shot to her feet, trembling. “So that’s it? Even you’ve chosen her now? After everything? After all these years, when you begged me toe back, when you cried and pleaded for me to return? And now that I have, you run after Sera instead?”


    Her eyes glittered with wetness, but the fury in them burned hotter.


    “She’s the reason I had to leave in the first ce, and yet you choose her over me?” She threw the fork across the room, and it ttered into a vase that wobbled and crashed to the floor.


    “You might as well have left me to die abroad!”


    “Celeste!” Ethan barked, his voice cutting through the tension. He mmed his hand against the table, rattling the silverware. “Enough! We’ve discussed this matter before. You’re being childish. It’s been ten years; give it a fucking rest!”


    Celeste’s breath came in sharp, ragged pulls.


    She looked at Ethan, then at me—her eyes full of betrayal, of disbelief—and then she turned on her heel.


    Her footsteps pounded out of the room, and a door mmed with a violence that made the chandelier tremble.


    Silence fell heavily over the dining room. I stared down at the shards of porcin scattered across the floor, my appetite gone, my hands shaking faintly in myp.


    I whispered, more to myself than to Ethan, “Why does it always feel like no matter what I do, I am failing one of them?”


    Ethan said nothing, his face a mask of tension, his jaw tight.


    But inside me, Edward’s words echoed still. ‘Don’t make the same mistake I did.’