“I’m going to grab lunch,” he announced, the moment passing as quickly as it had arrived. “You want the usual?”
“I can get my own.”
“Wasn’t what I asked.” He pulled on his jacket, the same brown wool he’d worn every day since the temperature dropped. “Tuna on white, or you want to live dangerously with the egg salad?”
“Tuna’s fine. Thanks.”
He paused at the door, keys jangling. “For what it’s worth, kid, whatever you’re running from, it gets easier. Not better, maybe, but easier. The secret is to stop looking back long enough to see what’s in front of you.”
The door chimed as he left, and I sat alone with his words echoing in the empty office. Through the window, I watched him navigate the sidewalk with the careful steps of someone who’d learned that moving forward was the only direction that mattered, even when every instinct screamed to turn around.
12
— • —
Damon
The Lycan King’s room had become a mausoleum of insomnia, and I haunted it like my own ghost. Three months since the rejection, and the mate bond refused to die quietly. Instead, it rotted inside me, sending spikes of agony through my nervous system at unpredictable intervals. The worst attacks came without warning. Mid conversation, mid meal, mid thought, fire would race through my veins like molten glass, dropping me to my knees.
Dr. Faye visited daily, his medical bag full of suppressants that did nothing except make me vomit. He’d taken to arriving at dawn, knowing I’d be awake anyway, pacing the floors or curled in whatever corner the pain had found me. This morning he discovered me on the balcony, gripping the railing hard enough to bend metal, riding out another wave of agony.
“The medication should help with the physical symptoms.” Dr. Faye maintained his professional tone despite the sweat beading on his forehead. Even being near an alpha in bond rejection made other wolves nervous.
“Nothing helps.” The words came out rough, scraped raw from hours of grinding my teeth through pain.
He adjusted his glasses, a nervous tell I’d noticed over countless visits. “The bond is fighting the severance. Your wolf refuses to accept the rejection, which causes these episodes. In most cases, distance helps. Time helps.”
I didn’t tell him that distance made it worse. That every mile between us felt like hooks in my flesh, pulling. She was out there, and every cell in my body screamed to find her. The bond might be officially severed, but my wolf recognized no such bureaucracy. He wanted his mate. He wanted her now.
My bed hadn’t been slept in properly for weeks. The California king felt too large, too empty, too much like a grave. Instead, I collapsed wherever exhaustion won. The office couch bore permanent indentations from my body. The library floor knew the shape of my spine. Once, staff found me in the bathroom, unconscious against cold marble. They whispered behind their hands now. The Alpha who rejected his mate. The King slowly going mad.
The whispers weren’t wrong.
Board meetings had become exercises in endurance. I conducted them with sweat beading my forehead, hiding tremors behind clenched fists. The conference room’s air conditioning couldn’t combat the fever that came with bond sickness. Yesterday, I’dzoned out completely during quarterly projections, lost in the phantom pain of a connection that wouldn’t die. When I’d come back to myself, twelve board members stared with mixtures of pity and fear.
They could smell the wrongness on me.
Sleep, when it came, brought no relief. The nightmares started the same way every time. Laziel’s laughter echoing through corridors, that infectious sound that could lighten any room. Then the laughter would shift, distort, become screams that raised every hair on my body. In the dreams, I watched through Rhea’s eyes as she tore into my brother, her claws extended and dripping crimson.
The detail was what made it unbearable. I could see each claw, elegant and lethal, designed by nature for exactly this purpose. I watched Laziel’s shock transform into terror as he realized what was happening. My baby brother, who’d trusted her, who’d never harmed anyone without reason, trying to defend himself against heat-mad fury. His hands came up, defensive, pleading. It never mattered.
In the dreams, she was magnificent and terrible. A wolf pushed past all restraint, all civilization, reduced to pure instinct and rage. The copper scent of blood filled my nostrils. The sound of fabric tearing mixed with sounds I couldn’t let myself name. Wet noises. Final noises.
“Brother, help me!” Laziel always found my eyes at the end, confused and betrayed.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I woke up choking on the words, sheets soaked with sweat that smelled like fear. And too much like guilt.
The master bathroom mirror reflected a stranger. Hollow eyes sunk into gaunt cheeks, the look of a man being eaten alive from inside. I’d lost ten pounds in three months, muscle mass deteriorating despite forcing myself through training routines. My body consumed itself, burning through reserves in its desperate attempt to maintain a bond that no longer existed.
My wolf, when I could manage to shift, looked worse than my human form. Mangy and half feral, ribs showing through patchy fur that had lost its shine. He’d pace for hours, whining low in his throat, searching for something he’d never find. Sometimes I couldn’t shift back for hours, lost in the wolf’s simpler agony. At least he didn’t understand why she was gone. He only knew of the absence.
Every night I watched her kill him, and every night I failed to stop it. The dreams never varied, never offered alternative endings. Just blood and screams and my brother’s eyes asking why I hadn’t saved him.
My mother arrived unannounced, as had become her habit, letting herself into my room with her emergency key. The click of heels on marble announced her presence before her scent did. Three in the morning meant nothing to my mother. She operated on her own schedule, one that revolved around managing disappointments.
She found me in the corner, trying to force down a protein shake that tasted like chalk and failure. My hands shook so badly I’d given up on glasses, drinking straight from the blender pitcher. Dignity had become a luxury I couldn’t afford.
“You look pathetic.” She set her purse on the granite counter with a click of disapproval, each movement calculated for maximum impact.
