All Chapters of The Sister He Never Chose : Chapter 171 - Chapter 179

SEREIAI woke up to quiet — the good kind, the kind that doesn’t make you brace for what comes next. Sunlight cut through the gap in the curtains in one long gold bar across the bed, and past the window the lake sat flat and bright, catching the light in scattered pieces like someone had tipped a handful of coins across the water.I stretched without hurrying, in no rush to start moving. The other side of the bed was empty, sheets still holding Valerian’s warmth, and somewhere out past the window I could hear him — a chair scraping, the deck boards giving under his weight. I smiled at nothing, at no one, then got up, pulled a blanket around my shoulders, and went to find him barefoot.He was out on the deck already, a mug in each hand, the lake behind him doing that thing where the morning light turns everything pink and gold at once, like it was staged just for him. He glanced up at the sound of the door.“Morning.”“Morning.”I took the coffee, my fingers catching his for a second,

SEREIA The garden was alive with fairy lights and laughter, the kind of warm, golden chaos that felt like it belonged in a movie rather than my own backyard.I stood near the edge of the lawn, just watching everything unfold, and I couldn’t stop the smile that kept tugging at my mouth no matter how many times I tried to look composed. The white tablecloths caught the candlelight. Flowers spilled out of every centerpiece. The band’s soft, unhurried music drifted out over the grass, and everywhere I looked, someone I loved was laughing at something.Gracie had already cried three separate times. She stood by the punch bowl now, dabbing at her eyes with a cocktail napkin and insisting, badly, that she wasn’t crying at all. Sarah seemed to exist in four places simultaneously, phone permanently raised, documenting the night like she’d been personally hired for the job. And Marcus — Marcus had actually worn a suit, which felt like its own small miracle — he stood near the bar with the di

SEREIAThe house felt like it was holding its breath.I sat on the couch with my hands pressed between my knees, eyes locked on the front door, and every creak of the old wood made me jolt upright. Every shifting shadow across the wall made some stupid, desperate part of me think there, she’s there — and every time it wasn’t, the hollow place under my ribs widened a little more.Marcus had been gone twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of nothing. Twenty minutes where the only sound in the room was Valerian’s shoes against the floorboards.Gracie had retreated to the kitchen, where I could hear her filling a kettle no one was going to drink from. Sarah stood near the window, phone pressed to her ear, murmuring something low and urgent to someone I couldn’t identify. And Valerian just kept walking — six feet one way, turn, six feet back — like if he stopped moving his body might do something worse.“Valerian,” I said.He didn’t slow down.“Valerian.”That one landed. He spun toward me, eye

VALERIANThe gunshot cracked through the cabin like something splitting in half, and I felt it before I understood it — my whole body going rigid even with my fist still buried in Lucas’s jaw.I looked up. Sereia was already falling. Selena stood over her, the gun still smoking in her hand, and for half a second the room just stopped — Marcus already surging toward Selena, Annabelle screaming somewhere on the floor with blood soaking through her sleeve — but none of it registered. There was only Sereia, dropping to her knees in slow motion that felt like it would never end.Blood was already spreading dark across her dress. Her eyes were open, but something in them had gone distant, unfocused, like she was looking at me from somewhere far away.“Sereia!”I shoved Lucas off me without thinking. He hit the floor and didn’t move again. I didn’t care. I was already across the room, dropping down beside her, my hands finding her shoulders.“Sereia. Look at me! Loom at me.”Her eyes found

EPILOGUE- SEREIAOne year later, the cliffs of Santorini dropped straight into a sea so blue it looked unreal, and Valerian had bought out the entire stretch for the day — a private clifftop estate normally reserved for heads of state, white canopies lining a path carved into the rock, rose petals scattered the length of it.“You ready, child?” Gracie asked, gripping my hand like she was the one getting married.“I’ve been ready for a year.”She laughed, already crying. “Then go get him.”The quartet shifted into something slower, strings rising over the sound of waves below, and I walked.Valerian stood waiting at the end of the path, dark suit, no tie, his hair slightly windblown. He looked at me like the sea and the hundred guests behind us had simply ceased to exist.“You’re beautiful,” he said when I reached him.“You say that every time.”“Because it’s true every time.”The officiant’s words blurred past until I heard the part that mattered. “Do you, Valerian, take Sereia to be