TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 225

Two hundred and twenty five

Cassidy POV

Even more ironic was my mother’s death the following year. By then, she was the only person who still called me every morning. The only person who visited, scolded me for being stubborn, and still convinced me to eat afterward.

When she died, the silence changed. Before, it had been loneliness. Afterward, it became heavier.

There was no one left to pull me back when I started spiraling or to stop me from chasing ghosts.

No one left to remind me that there was still a world beyond grief.

The funeral ended. People went home. The casseroles stopped arriving. The phone stopped ringing.

And for the first time in my life, I realized there wasn’t a single place left where I belonged without conditions attached to it.

Lawrence was gone.

My children were gone.

My mother was gone too.

I remember standing in the middle of my kitchen a week later, staring at two coffee mugs in the drying rack.

One was mine. The other had been hers.

I couldn’t bring myself to put it away.

That was the year something in me hardened, slowly and quietly, like a door closing and never opening again.

Vanessa became impossible to reach. The Alpha House closed ranks around her.

People began looking at me differently. I caught conversations stopping when I entered rooms. I noticed concerned looks. Nobody said it to my face at first. Then they did.

“Maybe you’re holding on to this because you need someone to blame.”

“You’ve been through a lot.”

“You should let yourself heal.”

Heal.

The word followed me everywhere.

I hated it.

Healing required acceptance. And acceptance felt too much like surrender.

The restaurant didn’t survive my mother’s death. I tried for nearly a year. But my mother had been the heart of the place. Customers came as much for her as they did for the food.

When she died, people drifted away. Bills piled up, equipment broke, and staff left for steadier work. Eventually, the landlord sold the building to a developer who wanted the property more than the business.

I stood across the street on the day they changed the sign. I don’t remember stepping off the curb.

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Thundred and twenty five

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A horn blasted and tires screeched. Someone grabbed my arm and yanked me backward hard enough to nearly knock me off my feet.

The woman behind the wheel was furious. She demanded to know whether I was blind, distracted, or actively trying to get myself killed.

I couldn’t answer.

Looking back, I don’t think I heard half of what she said. The world felt far away, as though I were watching it through thick glass.

Later, I found myself sitting beside her on a bench with a paper cup warming my hands. At some point, she stopped asking questions and started listening.

I don’t remember how long we sat there. I only remember that when she finally left, she squeezed my hand and told me where to find her if I ever needed someone who understood.

That should have been the end of it.

Instead, it became the beginning of everything that followed.

A woman cut loose from everything.

No mate, no child or position, and no reason to trust the institutions that had failed her was my ticket into the Daughters of the Moon.

At the time, all I knew was that somebody finally believed there might be more to the story.

The answers came in fragments and patterns, enough to prove I wasn’t crazy.

The Veiled Meridian existed.

Vanessa belonged to it.

The discovery made me sick.

Vanessa had loved Kieran. I never doubted that. But love wasn’t the only thing involved. The Veiled Meridian never relied on love alone.

They strengthened attachments and turned ordinary emotions into chains.

When I finally confronted Kieran with evidence that his wife belonged to a cult, he looked at me as though I were

crazy.

“You need help.”

The words nearly made me laugh.

When I tried again, lawyers became involved. Then came the restraining order.

A formal document informing me to stay away from Luna Vanessa and her household.

I remember staring at the paper in my kitchen.

The man I had once loved thought I was a threat.

The Daughters told me something that explained Nolan. My son had shown unusual resistance to bond manipulation, and children like that were dangerous and difficult to control.

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They disrupted plans.

I never learned whether Vanessa knew any of that, nor did I ever learn whether she understood what the Veiled Meridian intended.

The only thing I knew was that she had opened the door, willingly or not.

Years later, when the opportunity came to strike back, I took it.

I gave the Daughters everything I had left. And when Kieran was dragged toward Dominion, I fought for him too. Not because I forgave him or trusted him, but because despite everything, I couldn’t watch another

lose person

themselves the way I had.

The cruelest part was that Vanessa finally tried to fix it. By then, the damage was already done.

She died attempting to undo things that should never have happened in the first place.

The grief remained, and the anger remained.

The life I should have had didn’t.

That was why seeing Lisa hurt more than it should have.

Every time I looked at her hand resting over her stomach, I saw roads my own life never got to travel.

A child still alive. A mother still fighting. And a chance that hadn’t been stolen yet.

And every time I looked at Kieran, I remembered how many opportunities he had been given to stop all of it before it reached this point.

That was the part I never forgave.

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