Chapter 655
The ash still drifted in the air, like burnt snow, as the doors creaked open.
King Roland stepped in and stopped so suddenly that his boots scraped against the marble.
His eyes swept the room.
The shattered glass.
The burn marks licking up the pillars.
The throne still glowed red-hot beneath its ancient symbols.
And beside it was a pile of soft, grey ash.
Rose stood before it like a statue carved from fire and grief.
Her hair still glowed faintly, ember-red at the tips, her breathing ragged and feral. Everyone else: Coral shaking, Belle smirking; even Cherry was trembling. Hildegard was pale.
The guards, lying half-conscious, looked like they had survived the end of the world.
Roland’s throat bobbed once, hard.
“Wh… what just
His voice cracked.
“What happened?”
No one answered.
It was as if even the air feared Rose.
She slowly turned. Her eyes were still tinted with flames, glowing like two dying suns.
She stared at him, silent, shaking, her entire body trembling with suppressed rage and devastation.
And then, the fire began to fade, and she slowly moved towards him.
She looked as though she were coming to attack him, and he skipped a heartbeat.
But instead of receiving a blow, she fell into his arms.
Even though he could feel the heat of the fire that had now extinguished from her body, he held her close.
Despite it hurting.
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “We locked up our granddaughter.”
And she began to weep on his shoulders.
He was confused as he looked around.
“What?” He asked as he gently held her hands to look into her eyes. “You’re mistaken. All our granddaughters are here and-
The eyes he saw haunted him.
“Auburn was an imposter.” She said with venom.
He blinked in disbelief.
“What?” He asked again.
Rose regained her composure as she sniffed her nose.
“All this time. She was never our granddaughter. She was an imposter.” She told him.
He blinked at her, lost for words. “Wh what are you saying?”
He scoffed at the eyes of everyone present.
Their silence told him something that terrified him.
“Auburn shifted. We saw it. We felt it.” He said and turned to the guards he had come with, “Where is she? Let her come to our presence. Guards get Auburn.”
No one said a word.
The eerie silence terrified him, and he looked up at the throne where
Roland swallowed again, staring at the ash.
“Is that… Auburn?”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Rose inhaled sharply, her chest rising and falling as though keeping her wolf caged by sheer force of will.
She didn’t need to speak; he knew instantly.
He was shocked as he pushed her off.
He looked at her, his eyes trying to understand what she had just done.
Had she lost her mind again, that she had killed our own granddaughter?
“She was an imposter.” A female voice that he didn’t know said.
He turned and saw a young woman with wavy dark hair approaching him.
He hadn’t even noticed her in the first place.
He blinked at her. “Who are you?”
“A mage.” She said.
He became tense. “Users of magic aren’t allowed.”
His class began to take form.
“Hmmmm, considering you already have magic in this place. How ironic.” She said, startling him. “That girl was nothing but an imposter.”
And the woman handed Auburn’s emerald necklace to Rose.
“Your royal Throne rejects false bearers, doesn’t it?” She asked him with a cocked brow. “The Queen put her on it, and it rejected her.”
Ronald froze, and as he looked at the throne with the ashes beside it, he realized that she was right.
He fell weak to his bones.
Felt stupid that he had been fooled for so long.
Felt stupid that he had even been fooled at all.
He rubbed his face in shame.
Rose rummaged her hand over the emerald necklace and then tossed it aside in rage.
It shattered into a million pieces.
“I knew all along. All along I knew it!” Rose said, closing her eyes. “I knew that something was off about her, and instead, my hunger to find her blinded me. Now look what has happened to me.”
She stared down at the fake pieces of emerald and shook her head. “From the moment I saw the emerald necklace was complete and not chipped, I should have known.”
Hildegard looked sharply at Rose. “Jasmine nanny Nia said something about her having a chipped necklace.”
Rose went white.
“She said something about how she had had it her entire life. From the moment she was born. It had been a gift from her mother before she died.” Hildegard explained.
“Jasmine?” Roland said, lost, trying to make sense of what they were saying. “What does that harlot have to do with this?”
Rose turned to him sharply. “You’re calling your own flesh and blood a harlot?”
He blinked as he looked at Rose.
“Flesh and blood, what are you talking about?” He snapped.
“Jasmine is our granddaughter. She was Scarlett’s daughter,” Rose said.
He scoffed. “Haven’t we had one enough imposter? You want to bring in another? Sweet goddess Selene. You don’t learn, do you, Rose?”
Rose shook her head at him. “That’s why you would never change. That’s why we would always suffer. Because you refuse to see things differently.”
Rose turned to the mage. “She was the one who discovered Scarlett had given us a child. She is the reason why we know we have a granddaughter.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Goddess Rose. Do you ever learn? We keep getting robbed by these fortune hunters. You’re so desperate that someone came here ready to tell you Jasmine of all people. The mannerless and biggest harlot of the moonlight pack is our granddaughter? How original.”
Rose’s eyes widened in hurt.
He hated to break it to her, but it was the truth.
The fact that Auburn had been an impersonator hurt his feelings.
And now to hear that someone as untrained and retard as Jasmine was his own granddaughter.
He could never believe it.
Rose matched up to him and gave him a dirty slap.
The slap came with an imprint of burns.
She had used her red flames to burn his face.
“You sick bastard!” She screamed. “After everything! And you still won’t see the truth.”
And she paused.
She grabbed his arms. “Where is Jasmine! You went to look for her! Where is she?!”
He shook his head. “We’ve searched the grounds, but it is nowhere to be found. The omegas will find her.”
Rose fell to her knees, crumbling. “I had her. We had her. And we sent her away. We locked her up.”
The doors opened.
The last person Roland expected to see came in.
Xaden.
Alpha Xaden