<h4>Chapter 367: Chapter 367 A SETUP</h4>


    CELESTE’S POV


    The familiar smoked-ss coffee table stood before me. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed dark cliffs.


    The firece crackled softly to my right, its warmth unable to prate the ice flooding through my veins.


    My hands were clenched in the cushions so tightly that my nails had torn through the leather.


    For a long moment, I could not breathe. I could not understand.


    Then I saw them.


    Ethan stood near the windows, shoulders squared, jaw rigid, the light carving harsh lines across his face.


    Not the younger version outside my door. Not the indulgent brother who rolled his eyes and dismissed Sera as a nuisance.


    His expression held none of that easy fondness, only the exasperation and frustration he’d begun to reserve solely for me.


    Kieran stood by the firece, his posture straight and immovable, that same coldness and condemnation shining in his eyes.


    Sera stood slightly behind him, fingers inteced with his, her face unreadable.


    And near the far wall was a stranger, leaning against the stone with his arms loosely folded as though this were nothing more than an ordinary evening.


    Recognition struck me hard.


    He wasn’t a stranger; I had seen him in the hallway days ago, when Ethan had rebuked me.


    The one who was staying here. Sera’s friend.


    “Even after I realized I mistook you for Sera,” Kieran’s voice cut through the room, his tone low and controlled, each word measured with visible effort, “I told myself you were innocent in all of it. I thought the mistake was mine alone. I was the one who made the first move at the Hunt; I was the one who set it all in motion. I never believed you were capable of something like this.”


    Unlike his eyes, there was no usation in his voice. No rage or condemnation.


    Only something steadier and far more devastating—disillusionment. The look of a child watching an idolized parent tumble off their pedestal.


    I felt it like a physical strike.


    “I—” I inhaled sharply. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking—”


    ‘Seduce her, moron. Start in the hall before moving to the room.’


    My head snapped to the side. Maya stood at the media console, her expression cool and merciless, her thumb on a recording device.


    I frowned. “What the hell—”


    ’I want her so trashed that nobody will ever look at her without wrinkling their nose in disgust.’


    “Stop it!” I snapped.


    She shrugged and, without a word, turned on the t-screen TV above the firece.


    The screen flickered to life.


    Static.


    Then—


    The Elysian lounge.


    Crystal chandeliers glittered overhead. Marble floors reflected golden light. I saw myself standing near the bar, silk gown clinging to my frame.


    My breath stalled in my throat as I watched myself approach Jason.


    I watched my lips move.


    "We had no way of knowing what you discussed with him,” Maya said icily.


    She held up the recording device. “Thanks to Corin and your little mind trip, now we do.”


    My head snapped back towards the stranger—Corin. “What did you do?”


    He smirked, his heterochromatic eyes twinkling. “Took you on a little trip down memoryne. Hope you don’t mind that we hitched a ride. The view was...interesting.”


    My jaw dropped, closed, then dropped again as I tried to process his words.


    I nced back at the television that was now showing Jason and me entering the room—and then at the recording device in Maya’s hand.


    “No,” I whispered. “No.”


    She cocked her head. “Something wrong?”


    “You faked this,” I said, rising abruptly to my feet, ring at Corin. My legs trembled, but anger steadied them.


    I pointed at Sera. “You and her.”


    Sera did not flinch.


    She did not smirk or look triumphant. Her face was a nk canvas.


    “This is fabricated,” I said, pointing at the TV. “Deepfake technology. Editing. Anyone with resources could create this. This is a setup designed to humiliate me.”


    “You think everyone is as bored and malicious as you?” Maya sneered.


    My gaze shifted back to Corin.


    “I don’t know what tricks you specialize in,” I continued sharply, “but you have no right to do...whatever the fuck you did!”


    He didn’t flinch. “Enlighten me. What do you think I did?”


    “I—I—” I sputtered. “Some psychic trick. You put images in people’s heads, and now you’re projecting them.”


    “And I made you say those words, too?” he replied evenly.


    “I don’t fucking know!”


    “Celeste,” Ethan sighed. “Enough. It’s time toe clean.”


    I turned to him. “Come clean?” I scoffed. “Surely you don’t believe all this bullshit they’re spewing.”


    I moved toward him and grabbed his arms. His expression was hard and unyielding, but I could still see the young man from eleven years ago.


    The brother who adored me, who always indulged me with a smile and a good-natured eye roll.


    “That’s not me, Ethan,” I pleaded. “They’re conspiring against me. You can’t believe them.”


    Something in his gaze flickered before it hardened again. “I didn’t want to,” he murmured. “I didn’t want to believe you were the one in the video. But how could they fabricate the ne I gave you for your birthday? The one you wore to the Blood Moon Hunt. The one you’re wearing as you plot against our sister?”


    “Wha—”


    I turned back to the TV.


    The footage shifted to a corridor camera. I stepped out of Room 108, phone in hand. The timestamp blinked steadily in the corner.


    And around my throat, gleaming even in grainy security camera resolution, was the ne.


    Instinctively, I reached up to my bare corbone.


    He had forged it himself for my birthday—a slim silver thorn wrapped into a circle, a single dark ga set at its heart. He’d sworn it was one-of-a-kind.


    “Jewelry can be replicated,” I argued, desperation cracking my voice. “That ne proves nothing.”


    “That design can’t be replicated,” Ethan said, his tone t and stripped of warmth. “You know I made it myself.”


    The silence that followed was deafening.


    Ethan’s gaze lifted from the screen to my face, and for the first time in my life, there was nothing in it.


    No indulgence. No warmth. No instinct to shield me from consequence.


    Not even the frustration or exasperation.


    His expression was stripped clean of feeling—t, distant, as if he were looking at a stranger who happened to be wearing his sister’s face.


    “You nned for your sister to be sexually assaulted,” he said, the words cold and hard. “As if that was not enough, you nned to reveal her shame to the world.”


    It was not a question.


    I took a step back, my eyes scanning the room, taking in all the using faces, the judgment, and disdain.


    Iughed.


    The sound came out high and brittle, scraping against my own ears.


    “So what?” I said, the words tumbling out. “So what if I did?”


    Kieran’s jaw flexed.


    Sera’s fingers tightened around his.


    “Yes,” I continued, my voice rising, “I nned it eleven years ago. I wanted her disgraced.”


    The room seemed to take in a simultaneous breath.


    “But did I seed?” I demanded. “Did she end up ruined? No.”


    A hysterical edge crept into myughter.


    “She won,” I said, ring at Kieran. “You still chose her.”


    His expression did not change, but something in his eyes darkened.


    “You misidentified me,” I pressed on. “You thought I was her. You proposed under a false belief. Did that humiliation not count for anything?”


    My chest heaved, words pouring out raw and unfiltered.


    “You think I didn’t suffer?” I shouted. “You think being betrayed didn’t destroy me?”


    Heat burned behind my eyes, but I refused to cry. Not yet.


    “Ten years,” I said hoarsely. “Ten years alone abroad. Stripped of status. Stripped of support. My wolf weakening day by day because I had nothing left anchoring me.”


    Kieran’s gaze flickered briefly behind me before returning to me.


    “My wolf is gone now,” I whispered, usation thick in my voice.“Shouldn’t you atone?”


    Sera’s eyes widened, and she finally spoke, her voice a tiny, infuriating thing. “Atone?”


    “Yes,” I snapped. “If you hadn’t existed—if he hadn’t confused us—none of this would’ve happened.”


    “You can’t be serious,” Kieran hissed.


    “I loved you first,” I insisted. “I was supposed to be Luna. It was my fate. She just existed—weak, passive. She would’ve crumbled.”


    “And you would have been better?” Maya snorted.


    “I fought!” I barked. “I took control of my destiny. Is that a crime?”


    “You orchestrated assault,” she snarled. “That’s a fucking crime.”


    “And yet, I’m the one who suffered,” I retorted.


    I jabbed a finger at Sera. “I wish you were never born. You ruined me!”


    “Did she?”


    My head snapped toward the doorway behind me at the sound of the new voice.


    A man leaned there casually, as though observing an ordinary conversation among friends.


    For one disorienting second, I saw Jason.


    The same build. The same structure of features.


    But the eyes were different. Sharper, knowing. Honey-brown.


    And then the illusion disappeared.


    The shock hit me so hard that my knees gave out. Inded on the carpet, my wide-eyed gaze still trained up at the neer.


    Brett.