Page 149 of Mystic's Sunrise

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

I HADN’T SPOKENto Mystic in days.

I hadn’t touched him, hadn’t looked him in the eye, hadn’t let myself get close enough to breathe the same air.

I knew how to survive on silence. I had spent years perfecting it—letting quiet fill the spaces where screams used to live. When the world took everything from you, silence became a shield. A way to keep your insides from spilling out.

And now? I was using it again. Not because I wanted to hurt him.

Because I didn’t trust myself not to break.

Because if I opened my mouth—if I let even one word out—I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop. The grief, the betrayal, the acheof loving someone who’d hidden something so big... it all sat in my chest like fire trapped in glass. One crack, and it would all shatter.

So I said nothing.

And I stayed curled up in the farthest corner of the common room, where the noise wasn’t so loud and the shadows gave me space to disappear. Or at least try to.

But disappearing never worked around Chain.

I didn’t notice him sit down at first—not until the weight of his stare cut through the fog in my head.

“You’re gonna have to talk sometime, you know.”

His voice wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t cruel either. It was steady, like he didn’t expect me to listen, but he wasn’t leaving until I did.

I exhaled slow, keeping my eyes on the floor. “I don’t have to talk to anyone.”

“No. You don’t.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “But I think you need to hear me out.”

I frowned at that, just enough to glance his way. “Why?”

Chain shrugged like the answer was obvious. “Because I think you’ve got a half-finished story in your head, and you’re filling in the rest with shit that ain’t true.”

I said nothing.

What was there to say?

He sighed, like he wasn’t surprised by my silence. “You want to know about Chelsea?”

Her name made my stomach clench. I didn’t say yes. Didn’t say no. But he kept going.

His gaze drifted past me, distant now. Like he was seeing another time, another version of Mystic.

“She got her claws in him young,” Chain said flatly. “Way before he had a chance to figure out who he even was. Hewas just a kid. And she… she was already poison wrapped in something pretty.”

My breath caught before I could stop it.

“She started small,” he continued. “Little comments. Little manipulations. Took him apart piece by piece until he didn’t know what parts were his anymore.”

I didn’t want to hear this. But I couldn’t look away.

“She told him she was pregnant when they were seventeen.”

My head jerked up.

“Made him think he had no choice but to stay. That he had to step up. Be a man. Support her. And you know him—he took that shit seriously. He enlisted before graduation to make sure she’d have what she needed.”

I whispered the question before I could stop myself. “Was she really pregnant?”