Chapter 167

167 The Poisoned Truth

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Lucian

“Your father was crazy about your mother,” Lydia said, her voice heavy with memory. “Obsessed, even. Why he cheated? We’ll never truly know. But what we do know is-he regretted it. Deeply. And after that, he lived in constant fear that we had come to take her from him. That we were feeding her thoughts of leaving.”

She shook her head, her eyes distant. “But that couldn’t be further from the truth. My mother was just glad they’d moved on. All she cared about then was helping Natasha raise you.”

I sat still, the weight of the past pressing against my chest like iron. I could feel the shift in Lydia’s voice, the pain of untold history finding its way to the surface.

“When you turned two,” she continued, “life in Mooncrest began to wear your mother down. It was subtle at first. Then it became obvious-she was sinking into depression. Vander tried… gods, he tried. He did everything he could to pull her out of it. But nothing worked.”