Chapter 185

ELORA’S POV Is this how it feels? To know your own daughter doesn’t give a shit about you, but you still can’t give up on her. To love someone so deeply it hurts, yet every attempt you make is met with silence, distance, or rejection. I tried. Moon Goddess, I tried. I bent myself into shapes I didn’t recognize, swallowed my pride, buried my pain, all in the hope that one day she’d look at me the way a daughter looks at her mother. But she didn’t. Over the past year, I told myself I had no child anymore. It was easier to live with that lie than to accept the truth that my daughter preferred my half-sister as her mother. That she chose Maya over me. Saying I had no child hurt less than loving one who didn’t want me. “Elora,” Aiden called softly. “You’re not going inside?” I stared at Lucian's mansion in front of us. Ten feet. That was all that separated me from her. Ten stupid feet. “I wish I could,” I whispered. “I really want to.” My hands trembled in my lap. “But what if I go in there