Third Person's POV As Aysel animatedly described what had happened, her voice rising and falling with dramatic flair, Magnus couldn't help the way his lips curved upward. Now he finally understood why, when the steward had followed her back earlier, the old man's fear had still been written all over his face-hesitant, panicked, and at a total loss for words. Magnus lifted a hand and lightly pinched Aysel's cheek. "If my mother were still alive," he said softly, "she would have loved you." Aysel blinked at him, then answered with complete confidence, "Your mother already loved me." Watching her proud, smug little expression, Magnus's mind drifted back to the day-after the matter with Anna had ended-when the two of them went together to visit Raya's resting grounds. The sky that day had been spotless, not a trace of cloud or wind. Yet after they finished speaking to his mother, to Raya, and to Raya's parents, a single wildflower drifted down on the breeze from nowhere at all. Aysel had said that it was a blessing from the elders. Magnus smiled faintly. Only when he was with Aysel did he ever notice a single flower, or a single blade of grass. Not because those things held meaning on their own- But because Aysel gave them meaning. What had once been nothing but heavy, suffocating visits to the dead now felt, with another person beside him, more like a lighthearted visit to relatives in another world. "Aysel." He suddenly called her name. Aysel looked up at him in blank confusion- And met the soft kiss he leaned in to press against her lips. The touch was brief and light. Magnus pulled back with a quiet smile and lifted his hand to stroke her cheek again, gentleness filling his touch. "Aysel," he called her once more. It meant nothing in particular. He simply wanted to say her name. How could anyone in this world not love Aysel Vale? Meanwhile- Celestine's hospital bed was pushed into the operating chamber. Outside the surgical doors, the three men of the Moonvale Pack stood in exhausted silence. Luna Evelyn had already been sedated and was now sleeping. But that was not the most dangerous issue. Tonight, before countless witnesses, Celestine had taken up a blade. Even if it had been a strike driven by mental collapse after extreme stimulus- Even if her pack claimed she had lost control- It had all happened in public. There was no covering it up. And beyond what outsiders might think, Celestine herself was now the greatest unknown. In the past, they might have brushed it off as a family accident, something forgiven and forgotten. But the current Celestine? None of them dared to trust her completely. After her release, after all they had seen during the Moonvale Pack's crisis- They had gradually realized the truth. Celestine was no longer the gentle, warm-hearted, generous woman they once remembered. When life is easy, anyone can play the role of a good person. And back then, she still depended on the Moonvale Pack to survive.But now? With benefits stripped away, would she still hold onto that so-called mother-daughter bond? No one knew. For the first time, they found themselves not knowing whether they hoped she would wake- Or never wake again. Unlike Alpha Remus and Fenrir, who were silently calculating gains and losses, Lykos was haunted by the truth delivered earlier at the banquet by Jackson's report. His gaze stayed fixed on the glowing red numbers above the operating room. Then he suddenly spoke. "Father... Brother... Was Aysel really framed?" He hesitated, then added- Even that version of Celestine's mother, the one remembered by the elders as gentle and kind... At that time, she had even tried to take Aysel with her when she left. For so many years, Lykos had believed Celestine to be fragile, pitiful-someone easily wounded by the sharper edges of Aysel. He had always been closer to the more "understanding" Celestine. But now- Now that he knew Aysel had been forced to shoulder the weight of a death for seventeen years- His entire body felt wrong. Inside the Moonvale Pack, no one understood better than he did what kind of life that single blood debt had condemned her to. Alpha Remus and Fenrir pressed their lips tightly together. Neither answered. Lykos wasn't truly waiting for one anyway. His thoughts drifted back to the images of a little boy and a little girl once laughing together in the pack grounds.His voice fell softly, almost detached. "Do you think... she really doesn't want us anymore?"