Chapter 86: Chapter 86: VENUS THE FORSAKEN

VALORIA WILDEROSE

“My background is nothing special. I’m the only girl besides five sons who are all tall, powerful, red-haired warriors that hunt with their bare hands and love playing the bagpipes a little too much.” She wears a displeased look on her face describing them.

“My father needed to strengthen his claim to the alpha title back home, so I was sent. Plus, a girl wasn’t needed in his strong family of hunters.” She ends her tale, resting her chin in both palms and slouching.

There’s a heaviness in her posture that wasn’t there before. Like the weight of being unwanted never quite left her shoulders.

The mood around us turns sober quickly. I’m instantly hit with a wave of guilt for asking.

“I’m sorry about that,” I offer, but she shakes her head and waves her hand—a silent gesture not to bother with it.

“Tell us about your family, Valoria?” Calliope looks toward me, bright-eyed and leaning closer.

On cue, the other two do too, becoming fully interested in my story.

I expected this the moment we began sharing, so I take a deep breath, preparing myself for questions too, recalling the barest minimum version of my tale so as not to bore them.

“It’s nothing interesting or special like yours. I’m the sixth out of seven girls, and for some reason my family hated me for as long as I remember. So when Azrael’s demand for a daughter came, my little sister got pregnant for my mate so she wouldn’t go, and I got shipped off instead. I don’t know much about my pack because I was locked in and worked under the maids for all my life.”

I leave out the intricate details I had too easily told Azrael days before.

I don’t know why it had been so easy to bare my soul to him. Maybe because he already saw me at my worst. Maybe because something about him made me feel like I didn’t need to hide.

For some reason, sitting here and sharing my story feels nowhere as freeing as that moment had been—when my blood had run hot and he was in front of me, ready to listen and take in as much fire as I needed to breathe out.

I look up again at the three of them watching me with terror in their eyes, turned to stone.

“Wow. Talk about gloomy. I think I finally get why you’re always so quiet,” Elodie stares back at me with guilt.

“You make Elodie’s story sound like a kid’s fairy tale,” Yara looks at me with concern.

“Hey!”

Calliope rises from her soft bean bag chair and settles right next to me, taking both my hands in hers. Her eyes watch me carefully and cautiously.

“Are you okay?”

If I had been asked this question a week ago… or they had looked at me the way they do now, maybe I would have burst into tears and clung to them. But now things are different.

I’m different.

Stronger. Louder. Less afraid of my own voice. I don’t know when the shift happened exactly, but I’m grateful it did.

I offer a genuine smile, squeezing her hands.

“I’m fine. Better. All of it got resolved, so I’m good,” I reassure her.

She smiles as well and nods, pulling away back to her spot.

Elodie grabs another bottle all of a sudden, fired up again. She rises to her feet, raising it in the air high above her head.

“Cheers to a life without shitty wine-stealing sisters!” she screams at the top of her voice without a care in the world.

“And more wine!” Calliope yells even louder.

More drinks are poured before we clink our cups together and take it all down in unison, bursting into laughter as the slumber party resumes in full swing.

We talk about other things and share secrets—like how Elodie had a rebellious phase and cut all her hair at fifteen, and Calliope ran away with a boy she just met at twelve only to be caught before they could leave the pack.

Even Yara shares a rare story about stealing her mother’s ceremonial spear as a child and accidentally setting fire to a sacred tent. She tells it with a straight face, but there’s a glimmer of mischief in her eyes that makes us all howl with laughter.

I’m laughing hard until my vision starts to spin, and their chattering fades into the background until I remember something important.

I crawl over to Elodie, asking before my thoughts blur and my chance fades away.

“H-Hey, Elodie,” I slur.

She sluggishly looks at me with drooping eyes.

“Yeah?”

“In the legend of the death god, what was the name of the warrior werewolf chosen by the goddess to defeat him and curse Azrael?”

“That’s a random question.” She chuckles even though it’s not funny.

I shake her back and forth to keep her on track.

“C’mon, focus.”

Elodie stops laughing and looks at me, thinking for a while before her eyes glisten again.

“I think her name was… Venus? Yeah, it was Venus. Venus the Forsaken.”

“Forsaken?”

“Yeah. It’s told that her family met their demise a few years after she won the war for her people… They all died mysteriously from some kind of illness. She never had kids either, which sucked, so they call her Forsaken because even though she fought for the goddess, she was abandoned. But…” She pauses, staring off into the distance.

Her train of thought lost.

“But?” I try to keep her on track.

She blinks, looking at me again.

“But some say a descendant of theirs survived. Mysterious, right?” She chuckles again, drinking another cup of wine.

I nod slowly.

“Yeah… It is.”

The words linger in my mind long after Elodie passes out beside me. Venus the Forsaken. A descendant who survived. I don’t know why, but something about the story feels less like a legend and more like a warning.

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