Chapter Thirty-Four: Broken Angel
I woke to a wrongness.
Sunlight streamed through the tall windows in the same lazy, golden stripes. The bed was just as soft. But the air… the air was dead.
I blinked, the remnants of sleep clinging. And I listened.
Nothing.
No scrabble of claws on hardwood. No muffled thump of a fuzzy body rolling off a chair. No inquisitive chirps or sleepy growls. No tiny, persistent presence vibrating at the edge of my awareness.
Just… silence. A heavy, accusatory silence.
I sat up slowly, my heart beginning a slow, sickening thud against my ribs.
Maybe they're downstairs. The thought was a child's hope, flimsy and desperate.
I got ready mechanically, my hands performing the rituals of normalcy—brushing hair, smoothing clothes—while a hollow cavity opened up beneath my sternum. I would not ask him. I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing the cracks.
But stepping into the kitchen was like walking into a tomb. The highchair was empty. No tiny bowls with dribbles of milk. No cheerful chaos of spilled kibble. The house was pristine, orderly, and utterly lifeless.
I checked the living room, the hallway, the sun-drenched playroom he'd had furnished for them. Each empty space was a fresh blow.
I didn't ask. My pride was a brittle shield, but I clung to it. Yet the ache in my chest was a physical thing, a tightness that made it hard to breathe. Had he seen? Had he noticed the way my eyes softened when Leo rested his head on my foot, the way I saved the last piece of chicken for Toro? Was this his punishment for my coldness last night? For the fortress of silence I'd built between us?
That bastard.
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, anchoring myself to that sharp pain. No tears. Not for this. Not again.
But my hands trembled as I gripped the back of the sofa, staring at the spot on the rug where they used to wrestle.
Where are my little monsters? Where are my babies?
---
Taehyun: "They belong to the zoo, anyway."
His voice came from the archway behind me, cool, detached, as if commenting on the weather. It slid into the quiet room like a scalpel.
I didn't turn. I couldn't. If I faced him, he would see it—the glassy sheen in my eyes, the treacherous wobble of my chin. He would see the pathetic, exposed nerve.
He continued, his tone conversational, utterly reasonable. "They needed their vaccinations. A proper health check. The environment there is more suitable. They'll be well cared for. That's where they're supposed to be."
Supposed to be.
The words echoed in the hollow of my chest. Is that how it worked? He decided where things belonged? He decided when something that had become ours—a fragile, unexpected 'ours'—was no longer convenient?
My arms folded tightly over my chest, a meager defense against the cold spreading from my core. He hadn't said a word. Not a warning. Not a discussion. He hadn't even allowed the fiction of a goodbye.
He just… erased them. Like smoothing a wrinkle from a sheet. A piece of my new, confusing world, neatly excised because it didn't fit the blueprint.
I asked no questions. I let none of the tremors show. He didn't deserve to know the devastation. He didn't earn the right to see how deeply the roots had grown in such a short time.
I was accustomed to people leaving. But this was different. They hadn't chosen to go. They had been taken. And I hadn't realized how much the sound of their breathing, the weight of their trust, had filled the silent spaces of this gilded prison until it was gone.
The house wasn't just quiet. It was empty. A museum of what briefly was.
And he hadn't even thought I might want to say goodbye.
No closure. No consideration. No care.
Perhaps he assumed I was like him—capable of detachment, of seeing living things as assets to be managed. Practical. Cold.
But he was wrong. I felt everything. I just buried it deep where no one could use it as a weapon. That was the difference.
I didn't speak. He didn't either.
Good.
I couldn't bear to hear his calm, logical voice justify this new heartache. I didn't want logic. I wanted the chaotic pitter-patter of paws. I wanted a lie, even—a gentle "they'll be back soon."
But they wouldn't. I knew it in the new, permanent stillness of the air. And maybe, in some secret part of himself, he knew that too. Maybe that's why he said nothing—because he understood that some goodbyes, even unspoken, have the power to shatter.
I hated him. A fresh, clean hatred, hotter and purer than before.
Not just for taking them.
But for the cruel reminder, etched now in the silence: Nothing stays. Not even the innocent things that curl against your heart and make it beat for something other than survival.
---
I moved through the day like a ghost. I should be heartless, I told myself. They were wild animals. Temporary guests. Not mine. Never meant to be.
Then why did the sight of their empty food bowls feel like a punch to the gut? Why did the sunlit corner where they napped seem shrouded in shadow? Why did I still, instinctively, listen for the click of claws on tile?
Pathetic.
I scoffed at my own reflection in the dark window, arms wrapped tightly around myself. They belonged in the zoo, he said. For their health. Their safety.
Then why did I feel so utterly unsafe? So unmoored?
I bit down hard, using the pain to dam the hot pressure behind my eyes. No weakness. No attachment. This was what happened when you cared. It was always, always ripped away. No warning. No courtesy.
I used to be an expert at numbness. At the elegant performance of indifference.
But those little cubs… with their clumsy affection and silent understanding… they had tunneled past my defenses into places I thought had been sealed off forever.
And he had opened the gate and let them out.
As if it were nothing.
So I performed. Silent. Cold. Impenetrable.
If he sensed the hurricane of grief behind my placid face, he gave no sign. Good. I had no words for him anyway. Only this vast, echoing silence.
---
Night deepened. The mansion felt like a cavern. I sat at the kitchen island, fingers curled around a cold mug of tea, just for the solidity of it.
His footsteps approached, slow and measured. He paused in the doorway, a dark presence I felt rather than saw. I didn't look up.
Let him stand there. Let him drown in the silence he'd created.
"I didn't want to wake you," he said finally, his voice uncharacteristically rough. "It was early. They needed their shots. They were… agitated."
I remained a statue.
"I was going to bring them back."
My heart clenched, a sharp, painful spasm.
Liar.
"You should have told me." The whisper scraped from my throat. I still didn't look at him. "I woke up and… I looked for them. I walked through this empty house like a lost child. You took something, and you didn't even offer me the dignity of a goodbye."
He took a step into the room, then halted, as if the space around me had become charged. "I didn't think you'd get this attached."
My head snapped up. The dam cracked.
"Because I'm heartless, right?" The words were a brittle laugh. "Because I'm cold, so I must not feel? Is that what you think?"
His eyes, usually so sure, flickered with something uncertain. "I didn't mean—"
"You never do," I cut him off, my voice trembling now from the effort of control, not from fear. "You never mean to hurt me. Yet you're the only one who consistently finds a way."
The silence that followed was thick, suffocating.
I stood up, the stool scraping sharply. I walked past him, close enough that the familiar scent of him—sandalwood and something inherently Taehyun—was a fresh agony. I ignored it.
"I'm not angry about the cubs," I said, my voice cold and clear as ice cracking. "I'm angry because I let myself care. And I shouldn't have. Not about them." I paused at the threshold, finally turning my head just enough to let the words land. "And certainly not about you."
His hand shot out, fingers closing around my wrist. His touch was warm, firm, a brand.
I didn't fight. I simply went utterly still, then looked down at his hand with such utter, frozen contempt that he loosened his grip. I pulled my wrist free, the motion final.
"No," I whispered, the sound carrying in the vast, silent kitchen. "You don't get to hold me when you're the architect of every fracture."
And I walked away, leaving him alone in the gleaming, empty heart of his home.
---
I left without a sound. No note, no slammed door. Just the whisper of my departure swallowed by the night.
I needed air that wasn't tainted by his presence, space that wasn't defined by his walls. Each step away from the mansion was a step towards breathing again.
When I reached my best friend's dorm, my knocks were soft, desperate.
The door opened. Her face, familiar and full of uncomplicated concern, was my undoing. She didn't ask. She just pulled me inside and shut the world out.
And there, on her worn, cozy couch surrounded by textbooks and half-empty mugs, I finally broke.
I cried—silent, shuddering tears for the little lives that had become my secret solace, for the trust that felt so brutally betrayed, for the terrifying realization that I had, despite every oath, begun to care for the man who held the power to break me so completely.
I wanted to be strong. I had built my entire identity on not needing, not leaning, not feeling this deeply. But the ache was a truth I couldn't outrun. It whispered that I had already fallen, even as I'd been scrambling up the cliff face.
I thought I was prepared for abandonment. It was my oldest companion. But this… this loss of something pure and simple, used as a pawn in our silent war… it carved a new kind of hollow.
I clenched my fists, nails biting into my palms, willing the old numbness to return. To make me a fortress once more.
But the truth, wet and raw on my cheeks, was simpler:
I was tired. So desperately tired of pretending the hurt didn't exist.
I wiped my face, the gesture weary. I didn't want to be weak. I didn't want to be this vulnerable, aching creature.
But maybe… maybe it was okay to be broken. Just for a moment. Maybe the pieces had to come apart before they could be reassembled into something stronger, something that was wholly mine.
Because for the first time, in the quiet safety of my friend's dim dorm room, I admitted the most terrifying truth of all:
I didn't want to fight alone anymore.