Offered to the Triplet Alphas

[Xanthea]

A shroud of darkness enveloped me as his wings wrapped around us in an embrace that had never felt so hollow and full at the same time.

My entire existence had abruptly been reduced to a body.

My body felt alien. A hollow shell that carried my mother's sins in every fiber. I wanted to rip myself apart, strand by strand, and take my mother out of me.

But if I did that, what would be left of me?

Nothing mattered. Not my beliefs, not my identity, not my dreams.

Everything I thought I was - was a lie.

I shut my eyes, feeling Asher's hips pressed firmly into mine. His hardness against my arousal brought me a realization and acceptance - the truth that was shouted on my face several times and I refused to accept it.

'You are our breeder and your job is to give us triplets within a year. Nothing more and nothing less. You fail at your job, we discard you. Our relationship is as simple as that.'

Raven's voice echoed in my mind, stopping my desperate search for self within this body.

'Your only role in this family is as a breeder, for my sons will never see you as anything more than that.'

'I hope my brothers have drawn clear lines of your relationship with them, right? You are just a breeder for them...'

'Telling her the difference between being a lowly breeder and a luna.'

The voices of the High Lady, Nesryn, and Nyssa rang mercilessly in my mind, their words tearing through me - until Ezra's voice washed over it all, numbing me completely. 'Don't forget, she is our breeder and her only job is to bear our kids...'

That's what I was all along. A vessel, not to bear kids out of motherhood and affection, but to atone for guilt and shame.

That had been my identity from the moment I was born - and even that, it seemed, was more than I deserved.

I am have always been - and will always be a redemption for my mother and a breeder-

Before the loops of my thoughts could take me any deeper into the rabbit hole, Asher's grip on my arms tightened, saving me before I could sink any deeper into myself and never return.

His hand settled over my chest, his palm steady against my racing heart. The turmoil within me faltered, replaced by an unfamiliar serenity, like the first breath after drowning.

I took in a shivering breath, holding back my tears.

For a few seconds, I doubted if I deserved to feel this, but those doubts vanished, along with every other anxious thought, as soon as Asher pressed his forehead against mine.

The weight of emotions crushing my soul began to lift, leaving behind a soft ache that melted into something lighter - freer.

His nose slowly glided over mine, and I leaned in, drawn to his calm. With each nuzzle, each gentle nudge, I felt the ice freezing my chest thaw, drop by drop and I didn't even realize when my pain had turned into soothing flutters. Although this was the first time I was experiencing something so transcendental, this feeling wasn't new. I had felt this connection before - in half-remembered dreams and fleeting memories of my heats.

Asher had soothed the pain of my heats before. He helped me find home in the darkness. But right now, his soothing gestures just added to the restless anxiousness tightening in my chest.

I was shattering in every way, from every direction, all at once-like a sandcastle crumbling beneath relentless waves. Asher didn't try to hold me together; instead, he made it easier, less painful, to fall apart.

I tipped my quivering lips toward his. Our lips barely touched, hesitant, as though testing the fragile boundary between restraint and surrender.

His touch no longer felt like an assertion of dominance meant to demean my body. It was more a submission from his body to mine, and that unsettled me to the core.

Electric sparks ignited beneath my skin at his touch, as though my body were the black, blank night sky and he was the moon, the stars, the clouds and everything cosmic.

When his lips finally met mine, a weak smile quivered on my face as tears traced warm paths down my cheeks, every inch of my body breaking into a pleasure and pain so entangled I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Even though I knew that something as beautiful as this shouldn't be wasted on someone like me, I couldn't resist him.

Perhaps it was my greed for the comfort Asher offered, or the desperate need to hide my tears and emotions from him. But I wrapped my arms around his neck, arching my body against his firm muscles, deepening the kiss with a futile hope of finding peace - even if only for a second.

Asher's thumbs gently wiped away my tears as his palms cupped my face before he pulled himself away.

I gulped hard, feeling our shaky breaths collide

"Cry, love. It's ok to fall apart," he whispered, kissing my teary eyelids.

Just not in your arms, Asher. You don't deserve it.

My stomach churned at his words and my thoughts clashing frantically. I clenched my fists, forcefully stopping my tears.

"Don't do this to yourself, Xanthea," he said pleadingly.

"Stop this," I choked, my voice trembling. "Stop trying to save me-"

"I'm not trying to save you. I am just trying to share your pain."

"Why!?"

I grunted through my gritted teeth, trying to create whatever distance between us in the confined space of his embrace.

"Why are you trying to own what you don't deserve? This pain is mine. This guilt is mine! This fate is mine-"

"And so am I..."

My heart stopped at his words, reviving only when he spoke again.

"Am I not yours? Are you not mine?"

Tears stung into my eyes as my mind scrambled for words while my heart barely processed his own.

"No," I said thoughtlessly, fighting the emotions strangling me. "I don't deserve you, or your comfort. The only thing I deserve is-"

"Don't say it!" he said, breathing heavily as though he was terrified of my words. "I know you don't feel us the way I do. But our fates are connected. Love, I am your-"

Hearing him call me love snapped the last restraint, pushing me to the edge.

"Don't call me love ever again!"

My voice rose in a fractured yell, breaking beneath the crushing weight of conflicting feelings surging within me.

"I'm not love, I am..." My voice faltered, my gaze drifting to nowhere. "I don't even know what I am."

"You're everything," he said, his voice low, steady, but unwavering. "I've never known love, but I know you and if love doesn't feel the way you do... I don't want to know it at all. If you're not love, then nothing is." His words pierced through me like an accusation and a plea all at once.

"What do you even know about me?" I snapped, my heart pounding, daring him to answer.

"Everything," he replied without hesitation. "I know you better than you know yourself."

I exhaled sharply, trying to shake off the weight of his certainty.

"Love is an illusion," I whispered, my voice carrying the bitterness of a truth too raw to admit fully. "It makes us worship those who don't deserve our blind faith. You shouldn't do it."

"Then tell me what should I do, love?"

I clenched my fists, the storm inside me breaking loose.

"HATE ME! YOU SHOULD HATE ME! You should despise the mere sight of me!"

"Is that really what you want?"

"Yes! Right now, your love is hurting me more than your hatred ever will."

His wings slowly unfurled, drooping down my body, releasing both of us from the comfort of darkness. As he withdrew himself from me, his wings slowly folded inward, as though they too were retreating in defeat.

The distance between us was nothing, yet I kept my head low. Not because his aura had turned heavier, nor because I could feel his gaze searing into my soul, but because I was terrified. Terrified that this time, when I looked into his eyes, I would see the love I had only dreamt of.

After a long moment of weary silence, he stepped away from me, creating enough distance that allowed both of us to breathe. He ran his fingers through his hair, drawing in a deep breath before turning his back to me.

I pursed my lips together, blinking away my tears.

"I had a conversation with your mother before she left the Infernal realm to hide herself amongst the mortals," he said in a silent, calm tone. "And these were her exact words - 'I'll create a cure. When the time is right, you will find her. The cure will heal all that's broken. You'll know it's her when you meet her, until then keep looking.""

My body tensed up. I didn't want to hear a word more about my mother, but a word about her was enough to grab my complete attention.

"Cadence agreed to create the cure for the curse, but only on the condition that I let her leave the Infernal pack. Once the rumors about the forced activation of immortality genes in a weak blood spread, Infernal Alphas and Celestials were all looking for her. They wanted to use her and her knowledge. But Cadence was scared..."

He looked at me over his shoulder and I quickly dropped my gaze again.

"I planned to let her go, but she knew I would always monitor her. Time works differently across the three realms, and she used that distortion in time to hide from me and everyone else." "Time distortion?" I mumbled, frowning.

"Yes. When Cadence entered the mortal realm, she deliberately traveled back in time and hid in the past, while everyone searched for her in the present. I only realized it when I found you. Your mother ensured the events of past and present intertwined so that by the time I discovered you, you'd be mature enough to bear the weight of her responsibilities. But in doing so, she made it nearly impossible for anyone to find you." Don't tell me... Asher had been searching for me ever since.

The thought was enough to twist my insides with excruciating restlessness.

"Thirteen years, five months, twenty-five days, six hours, eighteen minutes, and thirty-nine seconds," he said, his voice a chilling mix of calm and intensity.

My eyes widened in shock, my hands gripping my dress as I tried to absorb the gravity of his words. But my chest bruised with every heartbeat, tears streaming incessantly down my face.

He didn't have to tell me. I just knew that's how long he waited for me, searched for me, believing in my existence, perhaps even before I was born.

"If not for my blind faith in you, I would have never found you," he said, closing the distance between us. "You... are my faith, Xanthea. And my faith was never blind, because I called, and you came from across the realms. Your soul found its way to mine on your first heat - and each one since."

He chuckled softly, his voice laced with warmth and nostalgia, though he swallowed hard, as if fighting to keep his emotions from overwhelming him.

"You never spoke a word to me, and your face was always a distant blur... except for your beautiful green eyes. You came to me. We danced, we made love, we spent so much time together. And... even though you don't remember any of it, what matters is that you came to me."

I clamped my hands over my mouth, frantically stifling the sobs trembling against my palms.

"You don't know how it feels, Xanthea. Pining for someone, not knowing if the mysterious wait would ever end. You feel two hearts beating in your chest. Everything blurs. Love. Hate. But no matter how many empty seasons pass, you can't let go of hope. But then, when the moment comes, when the wait is finally over... they look at you like you're nothing more than a stranger."

"Asher..." I whimpered, unsure if I wanted him to stop his steps or words.

"I am used to being invisible to everyone around me, but not you. Please, not you," he begged, his voice raw as he fought to keep his composure.

I shut my eyes, covering my face with my hands, hoping to gather myself, but I ended up falling apart. The weight of my emotions brought me to my knees before him.

My heart ached with the desperate need to apologize, knowing even a second's delay might be too late, but the sobs wracking my body stole my voice, my hiccups leaving me unable to form a single coherent word. Asher contemplated me silently, his scrutiny imploring me to not make him do something that both of us knew was the best for all of us.

My voice has failed me, Asher, so I hope you'll hear my heart.

You know this better than I do. My guilt cannot be eased. My pain cannot be soothed. I will have to live with it until the day I die. But even then, there may not be an end to it.

My perception of myself and my reality has been destroyed. I'm no longer in a state of understanding, reasoning, or even comprehending the vastness of our fate or purpose of my creation.

You have known me like I never knew myself - the self that I seem to have forgotten.

So, with all my faith, I entrust myself to you.

Please save me and help me save our family.

Like always, I know you already know what's best for me, for all of us.

It doesn't matter if it hurts. Make me into what I'm meant to be and break everything that doesn't align with my purpose.

I know I ask for too much while I offer too little, but please... help me.

I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath, and the time seemed to have stopped in that very moment, resuming only when I opened my eyes again, flowing faster than it did before.

Black slithered up Asher's white attire, gradually consuming every inch of the fabric and transforming it into pitch black clothes.

I lifted my head, my bleary eyes running over his towering figure.

Shadows coiled around his exquisite wings, devouring their purity. The fragile feathers dissolved into ash and disintegrated, revealing bat-like wings of jagged, leathery membranes that pulsed with dark energy.

And when our eyes finally met, all my emotions froze. His golden eyes, once burning with divine intensity, faded into a smoky gray, carrying a kind of pain I never imagined Asher was capable of feeling. A pain so foreign it made him look alive for the first time.

Asher lowered his gaze, his movements almost lifeless as he dropped to one knee before me.

I bit my lower lips, trying to stop my chin from quivering as he gently placed his hand on my head instead of pulling me into his arms. Perhaps he understood that his embrace would only make me hate myself even more.

"Don't hate yourself, love. I'll do it." His faint smile only deepened the pain in his eyes, a pain that slithered down his face as a lone tear.

His voice cracked, trembling with silent surrender to our destinies, where we were both bound to be each other's punishment.

"I will hate you enough for all of us. If... my hate can make you love yourself again, then... I'll gladly be your villain."