Chapter 369: Helpless

Soren stared at the fallen portrait for a long time, his heart beating loudly in his ears. The image of the woman—her soft smile, the faraway light in her eyes—remained etched in his mind even after the glow had faded.That face… He knew it.

He slowly crouched down, running his fingers across the cracked frame, as if touching it would make the memory clearer. And then it hit him like a wave.

That woman, he met her when he was just a boy.

He remembered how his mother would send him away, and that was how he met her. The hills were clear and cold, the night sky vast above him. He'd been too young to understand constellations back then, but he'd wanted to. She taught him everything he knew about astronomy.

He still remembered the first impression of her, with a telescope propped beside her, tracing the sky with her fingers.

He remembered her smiling when she noticed him. He remembered their last meeting, too. She was going to take care of her baby, and she had to leave.

Now, staring at her hidden portrait in Nicholas's mansion, it all twisted into something much darker.

"What were you doing here…?" Soren whispered, his voice trembling slightly.

He remembered more—the way she once told him she wasn't from there. "I don't belong to this place, little one." So how did she meet Nicholas... Was she the reason why Nicholas helped him? Did she ask him to?

He had so many unanswered questions.

She had told him once, "This baby is the only part of this world that will ever belong to me." Right, she told him this once.

Soren froze.

He blinked hard, and for a moment, the woman's face overlapped with another—Riven's. The same eyes, the same shape of jaw, even the same quirky smile.

"No…" he breathed out, shaking his head. But the thought had already rooted itself. It made sense. It made too much sense.

Could it be? Could she have been Riven's mother?

If that woman was truly Riven's mother, then what did that make Nicholas? The man who had kept her portrait hidden, who had written about tormenting Riven like a test subject, who had claimed to love her.

Soren felt bile rise in his throat. Nicholas had said once that he lost "everything" the moment "she" died. He never knew who he was referring to, but now he knew. Was that why he hated Riven so much? Because Riven was the last living trace of her? Because the child she'd loved more than him became a mirror of his failure?

He would talk about her loving someone more than she loved him, and he could not bear it.

He pressed a hand to his temple, his thoughts spinning. He did not think things would come around in a full circle like this.

The memory of the woman's kind eyes and the echo of her voice filled him with a strange ache. She was warmth. She was gentleness. And Nicholas… Nicholas was cruelty, bitterness, jealousy.

How did they ever... Maybe it was one-sided. Someone like her could not have been with someone like him.

Soren gulped, he seemed to have realised a parallel. He had many traits Nicholas exhibited, as jealousy, possessiveness and cruelty... He did not want any of these events to repeat.

Knowing that Elia's baby could be Riven made him smile. The only good thing that came out of this. He also felt better knowing he had a better lead than Leon did. His geographical location advantage was nothing compared to his lead.

So what if her bracelet was crafted in Leon's kingdom?

Riven—Riven was what she left behind.

It seems that she did not just give him a telescope, but someone to love and someone who loves him.

He looked back at the portrait.

Soren exhaled shakily. "Did you know?" he whispered to the empty hallway. "Did you know what he was doing to your son?"

The silence that followed felt heavy.

He looked down again at the cracked portrait, the faint traces of light that still lingered around it. "You loved him," he said quietly, almost to himself. "You loved that child more than anything."

And for the first time in a long while, Soren didn't know what to feel.

"I will protect him... Until my dying breath."

It was meant to be a vow. A promise to the woman in the portrait, to himself, to Riven.

But then—

"Hah… Will you?!"

The voice that answered him was thick with venom, distant and yet right beside his ear. It was not a whisper but a rasp, rough and resonant, like something that had crawled out of the deepest corners of his guilt.

"Will you protect him?" the voice hissed again, its tone sharp, mocking. "Or will you send him to his death again… And again… In an endless cycle of blood, hatred, and pain?"

Soren's entire body tensed. His claws extended instinctively as he turned sharply, searching the shadows. "Who's there?!"

Only silence greeted him—until laughter broke through, jagged and unhinged.

"Hahahahaa… You don't have a choice now, do you?" the voice sneered. "You had choices before, and look what you did with them."

The room trembled faintly, the flickering candlelight stretching long shadows across the walls. And then Soren saw it—himself.

Not his reflection. But... A memory? No...

He stood in front of Riven, he was hard-eyed, merciless, his expression a mask of cold detachment. The scene was hazy around the edges, but the cruelty was vivid.

He saw his past self, standing over a fragile, broken version of Riven. The man before him looked nothing like the bright, laughing wolf he knew. His skin was pale, his body was skinny, his cheeks were hollow, and his eyes were... Without light.

The cold version of him spoke, voice like frost:"Either it consumes you or you sever it. There is nothing else to discuss."

"Sever the mate bond," he repeated, his words sounded cruel. "And then we will see."

Sever the mate bond? He could not ask Riven to do that. That would be sending him to his death. Soren could not change what was happening in this vision, he could only watch helplessly.