Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 164

Eve

I felt my hope wane, fear saturating every cell in my body as I raised one hand in surrender, the other dangling uselessly from my shoulder, twisted so horridly that even the slightest movement sent white-hot pain lancing through every muscle. The gun’s exterior gleamed a deadly silver. It resembled Kael’s gun. My mind was in overdrive, each desperate thought scrambling to formulate a solution to escape this situation.

Jules hissed, and my heart lurched. "To think I almost didn’t take this fucking gun. But I couldn’t put it past you to hand my ass to me. So now, here we are." She smiled—a bloody, macabre gesture—her mouth coated in blood, further intensifying the sinister gleam in her eyes.

"Jules." It hurt to speak, my body teetering on the brink of shutting down from shock and agony. I wanted so badly to let my drooping eyes close, but my blood was pumping so hard and fast that my pulse sounded like war drums in my ears. "Please, don’t do this."

Jules’ lips curled into a twisted smile, a manic glint in her eyes as she kept the gun trained on me, blood dripping freely from her side. The wound I had inflicted should have slowed her down, should have made her hesitate—but it hadn’t. If anything, it had only deepened the madness etched into every fiber of her being.

"You know I love him," she said, her voice thick with something bordering on obsession. Her fingers twitched on the gun’s grip, caressing it like an old lover. "Any sane person would see that I worship him. And why wouldn’t I? He was the sun in my darkness, the light at the end of my tunnel, the torch in my grave."

Her laughter was hollow, a chilling sound that echoed off the battered walls. I swallowed hard, my pulse hammering in my ears as I forced myself to stay still, to not let the fear paralyze me.

Jules’ gaze turned distant, glassy, as if she was seeing something far beyond this room. "Back then, he was just Alpha Leon’s enforcer, his Beta. But to me?" Her expression softened for the briefest second before it darkened again. "He was my savior. He gave me a gift, Ellen—a sacred thing I’ll never forget."

I watched, frozen, as she lifted the gun slightly, her grip possessive. Her voice dropped to a reverent whisper, filled with a sick kind of devotion. "It was the first time I touched a weapon. He gave us a chance to kill that tyrant Alpha who subjugated us until we were nothing but animals. I took the gun."

Her fingers flexed around the trigger, and I tensed, ready to bolt despite the agony tearing through my body.

"It was power," she murmured, eyes alight with a feverish gleam. "It was mine. And he gave it to me." Her expression twisted, her smile sharp and venomous. "The most beautiful thing I ever saw was that bastard’s head blown clean off. And he did that for me. I’ve loved him ever since. He was mine then, and he’s mine now."

She took a slow, deliberate step closer, and I struggled to breathe past the suffocating weight of her words. Her voice wavered, but the madness in it never faltered. "But you—" she spat, eyes narrowing, rage boiling beneath her surface. "You just had to crawl into his world, didn’t you? Had to weasel your way in, thinking you could mean something to him. Pathetic."

The gun in her hand trembled slightly, but I knew it wasn’t uncertainty—it was excitement. She was relishing this, feeding off the fear that hung between us like a thick fog.

I licked my lips, tasting sweat and blood, forcing my voice past the knot in my throat. "Jules," I whispered, my tone pleading but careful, "I’m sorry they hurt you. You didn’t deserve that. You were a child."

Her lip trembled, but her gaze remained hardened. "He saved me when my father refused to. I was his prinză without him even having to say the word," she rambled. "Only for you..." she growled, spitting blood, "to come."

"A mutt, an abomination, a pathetic excuse for a challenge," Jules snarled, her voice cracking with the weight of fury and something else—something dangerously close to heartbreak. Her grip on the gun tightened, the barrel steady despite the tremor in her bloodied hands. "He doesn’t love you. He can’t love you. You don’t belong in his world, Ellen. You never did."

Her words cut deep, but I refused to let them sink in. Not now. Not when my survival depended on keeping my head above the flood of emotions threatening to drown me. I swallowed against the bile rising in my throat, my body trembling from the agony of my twisted arm.

"I know you think that," I said carefully, every syllable a struggle. My vision blurred with sweat and exhaustion, but I forced myself to stay focused, to stay alive. "But love isn’t control, Jules. It’s not about who owes who, or who saved who."