My Sister Stole My Mate, And I Let Her

Chapter 513 DIVIDE AND CONQUER

LUCIAN’S POVI had spent so long convincing myself there was only one acceptable ending that, when the truth finally clawed its way into the open, my first instinct was to reject it.

‘MATE!’

Rhegan’s howl continued to reverberate through every corner of my consciousness, fierce enough to make my skull ache.

But...no.

He was wrong; he had to be.

The word echoed in my mind anyway as my wolf surged forward with desperate urgency, straining against whatever remained of Catherine’s chains.

Around me, reality fractured into overlapping impressions: Sera’s surprised recoil, Corin’s controlled alarm, Kieran’s tense stillness, Zara’s soft inhale, Evelyn’s stunned silence.

They were all there, but none of them was the center of what I felt.

The center was the word.

MATE.

It wasn’t for Sera—she had already reforged her bond with Kieran. I felt it shimmering between them, absolute and unmistakable.

Maris, too, was spoken for.

It should have belonged to Zara. In another life, it would have.

But we’d lived in denial for far too long. No matter how much I wanted to cling to the memories, to the pieces of her that took me back to the one time in my life when my soul was whole...I couldn’t.

Zara herself had confirmed it. Catherine could duplicate features down to the most minute strand of DNA, but the mate bond was too special, too woven deeply between souls to ever be replicated with a copy.

So that left only one possibility.

My gaze drifted without permission.

Evelyn stood slightly apart from the others, her posture rigid in a way that did not match the chaos of the ridge. She looked like someone trying very hard to remain an observer in a moment that had already decided she was not allowed to be one.

It should have been impossible.

Witches and werewolves didn’t belong together in any logical sense.

Witches did not answer to pack law or lunar sovereignty or the ancient, primal logic that governed bonds.

Mate bonds were sacred among wolves because we believed the Moon Goddess herself forged them.

Evelyn had not been raised beneath the moon. She had been raised beneath Catherine’s shadow.

And yet...

Something inside me pulled toward her like iron drawn to a hidden magnet.

The alarmed look in her eyes and the slight quiver in her lips told me she’d felt it too.

I could deny it no longer—and gods knew I’d tried.

Every interaction we’d had, I’d forced the feeling down, down, down.

And now—

No. This couldn’t be.

I would die soon; there was no point contaminating her life with something unstable, something already collapsing.

Besides...

My gaze shifted to Zara, who was also a little frozen.

Even though I knew, in the deepest part of my mind, that she was not real in the way she appeared to be, in the way I desperately wanted her to be, my heart still ached.

I no longer believed the illusion, but I couldn’t get the look on her face after she’d said, “I’m not the real Zara,” out of my mind.

There had been enough suffering on this ridge already without adding another fracture to a person who had been built from them.

The best thing I could do for everyone involved was—

I gasped, my back arching as pressure descended on my skull.

I felt it again—Catherine’s influence, sliding into the cracks of my mind like poison into a wound.

My vision sharpened into something too bright and too narrow. The world tilted. The ridge beneath me felt suddenly distant, as if I were no longer on it but suspended above it, watching through someone else’s eyes.

My hands twitched, and I watched in horror as they curled into claws once again.

“Lucian!” Sera’s voice felt far away, as if coming through water.

I lurched forward on all fours, breath turning ragged as something large and black surged beneath my skin, pressing outward like a wild animal breaking its cage.

Catherine was back, and she was about to turn me loose again.

“Dammit, I’m not fighting him again,” Kieran spat.

“Enough.”

The word cut through everything, and I forced my head up to see Zara stepping forward.

She moved like someone who had already decided the outcome and was merely walking through the steps required to reach it.

Dust clung to her hair, blood still marked her ribs where she had been struck earlier, and yet there was something unnervingly calm in her expression.

“I know how to stop this, once and for all,” she said quietly, eyes fixed on me.

Sera stepped forward, her expression tightening. “I know that look. If you’re thinking of doing something reckless—”

“I am not thinking,” Zara interrupted. “I’ve decided.”

Corin’s gaze sharpened. “That’s not a good sentence.”

A faint flicker of something that might have been humor passed through Zara’s expression, but it did not last.

“Listen carefully,” she said. “There are three systems interacting inside him right now: Catherine’s override, whatever remains of Lucian’s wolf, and the bond resonance triggered by the mate call.”

Her eyes shifted toward me again.

“I can feel all of them. And I think I understand how they’re layered.”

My body jolted as another wave of pressure surged through me.

Catherine was pulling harder now, angry at the interruption.

Zara did not flinch.

“If we try to force her out,” she continued, “we risk losing him entirely. The override will collapse unpredictably. His wolf will destabilize. He may not come back.”

Sera asked, “Then what are you suggesting?”

Zara inhaled slowly. “Divide and conquer.”

She turned, gesturing between us as if mapping invisible roles onto physical space.

“Evelyn,” she said, “you call to the wolf. The wolf responds to resonance. Instinct. If there is anything left of him that can recognize you, it will surface through that channel.”

Evelyn’s expression tightened. “I don’t understand—”

“You do,” Zara cut in. “Let’s not waste time with games.”

Evelyn sucked in a sharp breath. “So what—you want me to anchor him?”

“Yes,” Zara answered simply. “Through the bond.”

Evelyn looked like she had been physically struck by the concept.

“I—” She turned to me, and our eyes locked.

My lips parted, but no words came out. She averted her gaze before I could try again.

Zara continued before anyone could interrupt. “I’ll draw Catherine’s control into myself. Whatever thread she used to anchor him, I’ll take it into a single point. It will concentrate her influence and give you a clean target.”

She fixed her gaze on Sera and Colin. “And then you two destroy it.”

Sera went still.

“That will kill you,” she said flatly.

Zara did not deny it.

Understanding spread slowly across Sera’s face.

“No,” Evelyn interjected. “Absolutely not.”

Zara looked at her, and there was something almost gentle in her expression now.

“You’re in no place to object,” she said.

“I am in exactly the right place to object!” Evelyn snapped.

I could feel myself slipping again. The monster beneath my skin was rising, not fully formed yet, but close enough that every breath felt like a warning.

“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “I’m already dead.”

Technically, the words were true, but they landed wrong. As if they contradicted something fundamental about reality.

Sera’s jaw tightened. “That doesn’t justify—”

“It does,” Zara interrupted, her gaze flicking to me again, “if it prevents him from dying too.”

A pause.

Then, softer: “Maybe this is why I was left here when the others fell. Maybe this is the only function I still have.”

Evelyn stepped forward.

“No,” she said again, but this time it sounded less like refusal and more like something breaking under strain. “We find another way.”

“There isn’t one,” Zara replied.

Evelyn’s gaze darted to me. “Lucian—don’t you dare let her do this.”

I groaned. "Zara, you can’t—"

I felt it then—Catherine tightening inside me, sensing resolution forming against her will.

My vision blurred. My voice broke apart beneath a growl that didn’t sound like mine.

Zara moved before anyone could stop her.

I felt her senses reach into me, felt them clamp around Catherine’s anchoring thread within me.

Then she yanked.

Catherine reacted instantly.

My body arched as something tore upward through my chest—not pain exactly, but the sensation of being unstitched from the inside.

Rhegan surged, responding to the intrusion with raw defensive instinct.

“Evelyn!” Zara snapped.

Evelyn dropped to her knees before me, and her hands cupped my face.

“I don’t...I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

I reached for her, gripping her arm tighter than I intended to. I noticed with dismay that my claws shredded her sleeves and small pinpricks of blood rose, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“That’s right,” she said softly, her voice still shaking. “Hold on to me. Take whatever you need. I’m here. I’m here, Lucian.”

A low, fractured recognition surged through me, drawn toward her voice like something starving recognizing warmth after too long in the cold.

The bond—whatever it was, whatever it should not have been—strengthened.

Catherine screamed inside me.

And Zara severed the thread.

My vision shattered.

My body crashed onto Evelyn.

The last thing I saw clearly was Sera stepping forward, hand raised, psychic energy already gathering—sharp, precise, lethal.

Zara turned her head toward me and...smiled.

“You’re going to be okay,” she said softly.

Then Sera struck.

And the world went dark.