I look at Emerson, but he’s just as lost as I am, his brow pulled tight, lips parted like he wants to ask—but can’t quite believe he doesn’t already know.
“She gave you her name?” Em finally asks, tension tightening his voice.
Ronan shakes his head slowly, a cruel, knowing smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. “She didn’t have to,” he says. “Because Irecognizedher.Iknew.The second I looked at her, I knew exactly who she was. Mysoulmate. The one thing in this world that wasmine. Just like you should’ve known.”
His voice cracks at the end, and something breaks loose inside me. A memory. A voice. A flash of blue eyes and shy laughter. A storm of blood and smoke and betrayal—and her face at the center of it all.
My heart drops like a stone in my chest, the air vanishing from the room as every piece slams into place.
My mouth goes dry, features slack.
Ronan sees it.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice quieter now but no less lethal. “You’re getting it now, aren’t you? Finally, putting it together.”
He looks between us, his glare cutting sharper than any blade. “Itoldyou,” he breathes. “This entire fucking time. I said it again and again, and neither of you believed me. Wouldn’t even listen.”
Emerson curses under his breath, fists clenched at his sides. “Just spit it out already, Ronan. Enough of the goddamn riddles.”
“Oh, right,” Ronan says with a wicked grin, pain and fury dancing behind his eyes. “Guess you’re too dense to figure it out on your own after all. Let me enlighten you, since clearly,I’mthe only one paying attention.” He leans in, voice low and sharp, and speaks two syllables that hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. “Berkley.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Berkley
I take a deep breath, slow and deliberate, holding it until the pressure in my lungs forces me to let go. The tremble in my hands fades, and the buzzing in my ears dulls just enough for me to focus. I let the breath ground me, anchor me back in my body, and when I open my eyes again, the room comes into sharper clarity—no longer a haze of memory and emotion, but a real, physical space I can finally confront.
My first instinct was right.
The room is pristine. Immaculate, almost disturbingly so. Nothing has been moved or touched, but it’s clear someone still comes in here. Dust doesn’t settle on any surface. The air doesn’t hold the weight of time or neglect, just a strange sort of curated stillness—like a shrine rather than a bedroom. It’s untouched yet deliberately maintained, preserved like something sacred and dangerous all at once.
It hasn’t been lived in for a long time. That much is obvious.
And in that realization, I know I was right—she hasn’t been here. Not in any meaningful way. Not in years. The hollowness that wraps itself around this room like a second skin tells me everything I need to know. Reign has been gone—reallygone—for longer than they’ve let on, and they’ve kept this room like a secret, suspended in time.
My eyes drift over the details, each one hitting harder than I expected. The blinds are drawn halfway, slanted just enough to let in thin strips of silver moonlight that stripe across the hardwood floor. They cast long shadows across the bed, the dresser, the empty chair by the window. The walls are still covered in photos—perfectly framed and hung with intention. Some are black and white, stylized like old magazine covers, while others are candid, blurred around the edges, almost too personal. Her face stares back at me from nearly every frame, frozen in moments of laughter, reflection, defiance.
And then there’s the bed.
It punches the breath from my lungs.
The bedding is the same.
Crisp white sheets tucked tight, a pale gray comforter folded with almost military precision, not a single wrinkle out of place. But it’s the pillows that stop me cold—because they’reexactlywhere they were that night. Angled just the same. One slightly askew. One indented, as if someone had just been there and gotten up too fast. My vision wavers, chest tightening, because that image has haunted my nightmares for too long. This bed. That night. The way everything spiraled. Blood that shouldn’t have been there. Words that should’ve been spoken.
I stand there for what feels like hours, taking it all in. The stale perfection and curated silence. The aching absence ofsomeone who’s supposed to be part of this family but instead feels like a ghost lingering in plain sight.
This room was never meant to be revisited.
And now that I’m standing in it, I can’t help but wonder if I’m trespassing in something sacred… or if I’ve just stepped into the center of the lie they’ve all been carefully protecting.
Either way, I’m not leaving this room until I find what they don’t want me to see. I didn’t come this far to turn back empty-handed, not after everything I’ve endured just to get to this point. Something about this place—it’s too perfect, too curated, like someone’s gone to great lengths to make sure nothing feels out of place. But perfection has its own kind of silence, and I’ve learned that it’s usually hiding something.
I scan the room again, slower this time, careful not to miss even the smallest detail. But there’s nothing obvious. No loose floorboards. No drawers slightly ajar. Everything is exactly where it’s meant to be. Every book lined up on the shelf. Every picture perfectly straight. No jewelry scattered. No clothes tossed across a chair. It’s sterile. Too clean. Almost clinical. Like a hotel room no one ever checked into.
But I know her better than that.
She wouldn’t leave something important out in the open, not with this many eyes and secrets crawling through this house. No—if Reign wanted to keep something hidden, something meant only for me, she would’ve tucked it in a place even the others wouldn’t think to look. A place we used when we wereyounger—when secrets felt like stories instead of survival. Somewhere small, forgotten. Ours.