Chapter Four: I Raised A Monster

CIARA

I held onto Damien’s body with everything I had—my fingers bruising against his trembling frame as he dangled over the edge of the rooftop. My arms were on fire, shaking with the strain, the skin of my palms torn raw from the concrete ledge, but I refused to let go. Not now. Not him.

He was slipping. Not just from my grip, but from life itself.

Below us, the city glowed like a thousand dying stars—beautiful, distant, uncaring. The lights looked too small, too far away to be real. Like we were floating in a nightmare too cruel to wake from.

The wind howled around us, cold and biting, screaming in my ears as it pushed against my back. It felt alive—like it wanted him to fall. Like it wanted to take him from me.

But I wouldn’t let it.

I couldn’t.

His weight pulled harder with each second, his body limp and unconscious, a dead weight in my arms. My shoulders ached. My muscles quivered. My breath came in sobs as I screamed his name, trying to reach him through the darkness.

“Damien! Please—please, hold on—”

But he couldn’t hear me.

And then—sirens. Distant at first, like a promise. Then louder. Closer. The red and blue lights painted the rooftop in flashes of color as firefighters shouted from below, their voices urgent.

“Just a little longer!”

They scrambled like ants beneath us, setting up safety cushions and calling instructions I could barely understand through the ringing in my ears.

I held on.

Even as my grip slipped.

Even as the world narrowed to the sound of my heartbeat and his silence.

Even as my strength—

—gave out.

We fell.

The world spun in a blur of wind and sky and pain. The air tore past us like a scream, my lungs burning, my thoughts a jumbled mess of fear and him. My only thought was Damien. Would he survive? Would we survive?

I didn’t get to find out.

Because everything went black.

When I woke up, panic exploded in my chest like a detonated bomb. The antiseptic scent of the hospital was thick in the air, suffocating. The ceiling above me wavered and spun, but I didn’t care. Pain pulsed through my body with every breath, but I shoved it away, forcing myself upright.

“Damien,” I whispered, my voice raw, broken. “Where is he?”

I ripped the IV from my arm and stumbled into the hallway, my legs barely able to hold me up. Nurses called after me, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.

I had to find him.

I searched blindly, tearing through corridors until I saw him—finally saw him—lying in a hospital bed, still as death.

But I wasn’t the first to find him.

She was already there.

Eve.

Her presence hit me like a punch to the gut.

She sat beside him, her delicate fingers brushing his hand with a tenderness that made my stomach churn. Her lips moved in a whisper I couldn’t hear—but I didn’t have to. I knew her words weren’t for me.

They were for him.

And even unconscious, he looked peaceful in her presence.

Like she belonged there.

Like I didn’t.

I should’ve been at his side. I had bled for him. I had fallen for him.

But when his eyes finally fluttered open, it was her face they found first.

And from that moment, everything changed.

Damien, the boy who had once looked at me like I was his entire world, started dating Eve. As if I’d never existed. As if what we’d shared on that rooftop—the terror, the closeness, the desperation—meant nothing at all.

He drifted further away each day, his smiles no longer mine. We still passed each other at university, still moved in the same spaces—but it was like watching a stranger wear his face.

And Eve... she fit into his life with such ease. Too easily. I watched, helpless and hollow, as she became his new center.

But their perfect little world didn’t last.

Not even six months later, it all fell apart.

The truth came out like a plague—ugly, undeniable.

Damien’s mother hadn’t simply given up. She’d been pushed. Driven to the edge by a husband who broke her piece by piece, until there was nothing left but a final fall.

The media devoured the story. The Miller name, once revered, was dragged through filth and fire. The Consortium crumbled as if it had always been waiting to collapse. Investors fled. Allies vanished. The wolves turned on their own.

And in the middle of it all—Eve walked away.

No goodbye. No explanation.

Just gone.

Damien never spoke about it. But I saw the way he looked at her empty chair in class. The way his gaze lingered on empty doorways. He had loved her. And she had left.

Still—he paid for her to study abroad. Quietly. Generously. Like she was the one who needed saving.

Six months later, I heard she had married someone overseas.

And as for Damien’s father... the weight of guilt, scandal, and disgrace crushed him. One night, he climbed to the same rooftop where his wife had died—and jumped.

That was the night the Damien I knew died, too.

He stopped speaking unless it was necessary. Stopped smiling altogether.

The softness, the light, the vulnerability—gone.

In its place stood a man carved from pain and vengeance. The warmth in his eyes turned to frost. The arms that once held me beneath the clinic lights now held nothing but power.

And that was when I confessed.

I told him everything.

That I had loved him from the very beginning. That I never stopped. That I would wait for as long as it took.

He said nothing.

But he didn’t walk away either.

So I stayed.

I went to my parents and begged. I dropped to my knees—their only daughter, heir to a legacy generations in the making—and pleaded for them to help Damien.

They didn’t understand. They never approved.

But I wouldn’t let them ignore him. I made them see the boy beneath the ice. The man who had lost everything, yet refused to shatter.

Eventually, they gave in.

With their money, their connections, their influence—we rebuilt the Miller name. Brick by agonizing brick. And Damien, once brought low, rose again. Not as a boy, but as a king forged from the ashes of betrayal.

By graduation, he wasn’t just respected.

He was feared.

Two years later, fate struck again.

My parents boarded a private car for a weekend getaway.

They never came back.

The crash was instant. Final.

Just like that—I was alone.

But even in death, they had made one last decision. One final vow.

They arranged my marriage to Damien.

They trusted him with our legacy.

And in honoring their wishes, he finally opened the door he had locked so tightly.

He let me in.

Marriage didn’t melt him.

It didn’t bring back the boy who once whispered my name under flickering hospital lights.

But it gave me something else.

Power.

As Luna of the Miller Pack, I became untouchable. My voice carried weight. My presence demanded respect.

And though Damien still kept his heart hidden behind steel walls—I didn’t mind.

Because I was finally by his side.

And I believed—I hoped—that time would make him mine.

But fate wasn’t done with us yet.

It started with the nightmares.

Dark, twisted things—images of blood, of fire, of screams I couldn’t explain. I’d wake drenched in sweat, heart thundering, the scent of something unnatural clinging to my skin.

Then came the whispers.

At first, I thought I was imagining them—fragments of dreams. Echoes of pain I hadn’t dealt with.

But they grew louder. Sharper.

“You were never meant to be his.”

“You stole what was never yours.”

“You’ll never have his heart.”

I told myself they were lies.

That my fears had a voice, and that was all.

But when the full moon rose—the whispers turned into screams.

And I realized...

The past wasn’t done with Damien.

And it had never forgotten me.