The Alpha Faked Depression to Win My Love Chapter 09

The Alpha Faked Depression to Win My Love Chapter 09

LYRA 

By the time everything had been cleaned, it was 

three in the morning. 

I turned off my phone. 

There was not much time left. 

Before I surrendered, I had things to arrange. 

I found a motel and took a quick shower. 

Then I asked Mira to meet me. 

The moment she saw how pale I was, worry filled 

her face. 

“Lyra, you have to take care of yourself.” 

“Even if we can never avenge Rowan, you cannot 

keep living in a haze.” 

“He wouldn’t be happy if he saw you like this.” 

I nodded and smoothed my tangled hair. 

I had no intention of telling Mira what had 

happened the night before. 

Let her believe heaven had finally opened its eyes. 

I took the gold card Kieran had given me from my pocket. 

I had placed every dollar I owned in the same 

account until the balance reached one hundred and twenty thousand. 

“Take this.” 

Mira tried to refuse. 

I shook my head. 

“You are one of the only people who ever treated Rowan and me with a sincere heart.” 

“We didn’t receive much kindness growing up, so perhaps I don’t know the right way to return it.” 

“When we were children, we often heard our 

parents say they should have drowned us in the 

toilet when we were born.” 

“Back then, those words only frightened me.” 

“Lately, I’ve started to wonder whether children 

even their own parents did not want alive should 

ever have existed at all.” 

“So…” 

So perhaps Rowan and I had only struggled 

through the mud until twenty, still covered in its 

filth. 

The person I wanted to protect had been torn 

apart. 

The person I chased after to save had never been 

real. 

In the end, we had only stolen a few extra years from a world that had never wanted us. 

Mira suddenly seized my hand. 

Her grip slowly reddened my wrist. 

“Don’t think like that.” 

“Meeting you and Rowan was the luckiest thing 

that ever happened to me.” 

“There is no one in this world who should not 

exist.” 

“Especially not the two of you.” 

I looked at the certainty in her eyes and smiled. 

It still felt like a kind lie. 

Mira’s fingers remained skeletal around mine. 

Her clothes hung loose from her frame. 

If she had never met us, perhaps her life would have been brighter. 

The end of summer was near. 

The cicadas had begun to quiet. 

I brushed the loose hair from her forehead. 

“When this summer ends, begin a new life.” 

“Forget Rowan and me.” 

After leaving Mira, I went to see Sabrina. 

She stirred the ice in her drink without looking at 

1. me. 

Her father had vanished the night before. 

When I searched Marcus’s phone, I had seen. 

Sabrina calling. 

I had declined it. 

Her mother died when she was young. 

Marcus raised her alone. 

She must have loved him more deeply than most daughters loved their fathers. 

I did not say much. 

No matter how understandable her reasons had 

been, Sabrina and I were enemies. 

She had stolen Rowan’s painting. 

That fact could not be erased. 

I only handed her an old phone and the key to 

Marcus’s study. 

I had destroyed the other keys. 

The phone held the recording of Marcus drunkenly 

confessing at the Voss Hotel. 

It held the video of what he did to Rowan. 

It held the location of the backups. 

And it held photographs of the early pages in 

Rowan’s diary, written when his time with Sabrina 

had still been happy. 

She stared at the phone. 

“Why are you giving me this?” 

I lowered my eyes and smiled. 

“The password is Rowan’s birthday.” 

“You remember it, don’t you?” 

Sabrina nodded. 

“030209.” 

Then at least some of what she had told me was 

true. 

Even now, she remembered Rowan’s birthday. 

“Rowan left only four things behind.” 

“One of them was the Midnight Echo album you 

gave him.” 

“When you see what’s on that phone, you’ll 

understand everything.” 

“Before he died, he did think of you as someone 

important.” 

“As a very good… friend.” 

The hope that rose in her eyes was almost frantic. 

She reached for the phone. 

I did not stop her. 

I did not stay. 

As I walked out of the cafe, a terrible scream rose 

behind me. 

Sabrina finally understood. 

Rowan had not chosen death because accepting 

her was worse. 

He had believed his own fated mate had delivered 

him into that Alpha’s hands.