The Alpha King's Reluctant Bride (Ava and Grayson) novel Chapter 198

-Grayson’s POV-

“So this is how we all end? How we are going to die?”

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Those were the first words she had spoken since I told her what our inevitable fate was to be. Her first words in the last 3.502 seconds—yes, I had been counting. My brain didn’t seem capable of doing much else except tallying the hours, minutes, and seconds until our doom.

I guess I was permitted to be a tad dramatic.

“Are you going to do something? Anything?” she said again. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it sliced through the berry silence like a blade. I turned to face her, my movements still sluggish, though the effects of whatever drug Liam had used on us were starting to wear off.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked tiredly, dragging my gaze to hers. Her glare was sharp enough to cut

“Anything. I mean, you’ve gone missing more times than I can count, and you always come back alive. You’re supposed to be invincible.”

Her words hit me like a slap. I forced myself to look away from her accusing eyes and stared at the cold, gray walls of our prison. “I’m not invincible,” I muttered. “I’m just a person.”

She let out a short, humorless laugh. “If it was Ava you were trapped here with, would you just be sitting there, like you’ve given up on the world? Or would you be trying to get us the hell out of here?”

Her words made my stomach twist painfully, and I closed my eyes as if that would shield me from the raw wound her name -Ava—left behind. Guilt swirled inside me, black and suffocating. I wished she’d drop it, let the subject rest. But Elaine didn’t stop.

“Really? After everything? You’re just going to give up like this? Grayson Blackwood. Does that name mean anything to you anymore?”

The truth? No, it didn’t. Not anymore.

There had been a time when that name stood for something. When I believed I could do anything, be anything. I had once sworn I wouldn’t let myself fall. I had told myself I wasn’t standing at the edge of a cliff anymore, but firmly on solid ground. And yet here I was, not just falling, but having already hit rock bottom.

She went quiet, and the silence between us stretched so long I thought maybe she’d given up. But then, her voice came again, breaking through the stillness like a crack in ice.

“Do you know why I never liked Ava?”

I turned my head toward her. She wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze was fixed on some distant, invisible point, her expression unreadable.

“At first, it was because of her features, obviously,” she continued. Then she let out a bitter laugh, shaking her head. “I didn’t understand why someone would be created to look so…perfect.”

I didn’t respond.

“Maybe I would’ve let the jealousy go,” she went on, her voice softening, “but then you changed for her. She got the version of you that had been mine. You were my cousin, my family. We were happy and then things changed. You changed but she

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came out of nowhere and suddenly, you were hers. The Grayson that had been my cousin, I never got to see him anymore but you let her. You picked her every single time. And I resented you for it.”

My throat tightened painfully.

She shook her head again, her movements jerky and uneven, like she was fighting to hold herself together. “I was hurt when I found out about the fire sixteen years ago,” she whispered. “I couldn’t believe you’d done something like that. But I wasn’t mad at you.”

She turned to me then, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. “I don’t even know why. Maybe I should’ve been furious that you started the fire that made my parents die and started this constant hate for the entire world in me, but I wasn’t. I just…hated that even after everything, after all you had done to me, you still couldn’t find a place in that cold heart of yours for me.

There wasn’t anything I could do. So I just sat there… listening to how much damage I had truly done to her in the past and in the present.noveldrama

“The more I realized you didn’t care about me-not really-the more it broke me. And that’s why…” Her voice faltered for a moment. She swallowed hard before continuing. “That’s why I became this version of myself. The one you can’t stand. The one I don’t even like. I was miserable, Grayson. And I wanted everyone else- Ava, the Omegas, everyone-to be as miserable as I was.”

Her voice cracked on the last word, and she buried her face in her hands, her shoulders trembling.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words so quiet I barely heard them. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

Her hands dropped to her lap, and she looked at me with tear-streaked cheeks, her voice trembling with pain. “I can’t believe Liam is actually doing this to us. To me.” She paused, her lips trembling. “I’m not going to have

a baby. I’m not going to have a family. Nothing was ever real. No one…….no one really loves me.”

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