The Shattered Bond

~FREYA~

The tires of the cab crunched against the gravel driveway, rolling to a halt in front of the pack house. Evening shadows stretched across the manicured lawn. I pushed the door open. The driver, a young guy from the pack, rushed around the hood. He reached out, his eyes lingering on my cane, offering a hand to help me out.

"I've got it," I said, my voice sharp. I waved him off and tightened my grip on the carved wooden handle. I planted the rubber tip onto the pavement and hauled myself out of the backseat.

I hated that look. The pity. Because my right leg didn't work like it used to, people treated me like spun glass. I was a warrior Luna. Six months ago, I proved it. I had been running to the Opal Region to see my best friend, Blythe, when I crossed paths with a pack of rogues tearing into a defenseless teenager. I didn't hesitate. I shifted and threw my wolf into the bloodbath. I ripped throats and snapped bones, fighting off five massive rogues until my own body gave out and my back legs were crushed under their weight. I saved the girl. Her name was Elise.

I dragged her to our borders, mind-linking my husband Gael for help right before I passed out. I woke up in the pack clinic days later with my leg shattered beyond the healing capabilities of my wolf. It was a permanent limp. A crippled leg. But I didn't regret it. I even took Elise in, treating the orphan like a little sister, giving her a home in our pack.

I leaned my weight on the cane and limped toward the grand wooden doors. Gael’s black SUV was parked near the fountain. He was home. A flutter of anticipation pushed back the dull ache in my knee. We had been married for seven years. It started as a business transaction—my father trading me to Alpha Gael to settle debts, spurred by my stepsister Nadia’s vague visions of chaos—but it turned into something real. My father hoped the Alpha could tame my rebellious spirit. Gael did more than tame me. He nurtured me. He taught me pack politics, trained with me in the mud, and elevated me to a true Luna. He loved me. Or so I thought. Lately, a cold distance had crept into his eyes.

I climbed the grand staircase. Every step sent a jolt up my thigh, but I ignored it. I wanted to surprise him. Maybe we could salvage the evening, rekindle the fire that had been lacking since my hospital stay.

I turned the corner toward the master bedroom.

A sound slipped through the crack in the heavy oak door.

My breath hitched. I froze in the hallway. It was a high-pitched cry, followed by a low, guttural grunt. Moans. Skin slapping against skin.

My bad leg buckled. I leaned heavy on the cane, the wood digging into my palm. No. I told myself the TV was on. I told myself my ears were playing tricks on me. My heart slammed against my ribs.

Curiosity and a sick need for the truth dragged me forward. I pushed the door open just an inch.

The air in the room smelled like sex, heavy and thick with sweat.

My vision tunneled. It felt like a silver blade plunging straight into my chest.

There, right in the center of our matrimonial bed, was my husband. Gael lay flat on his back, his broad, tanned chest slick with sweat. And straddling him, riding him with wild abandon, was Elise. The girl I bled for. The girl I crippled myself to save.

She was naked, her head thrown back, a loud, ragged moan ripping from her throat. Her hips snapped down hard. I could see everything. No blankets. No shadows to hide the truth. I watched Gael’s hands grip her bare hips, his fingers digging into her flesh as he thrust upward. His cock slid deep into her pussy, pulling out before slamming back inside her with a wet slap of flesh.

"Fuck, Elise," Gael grunted, his hips bucking off the mattress to meet her downward stroke.

Elise rode his dick hard, her breasts bouncing with every thrust. The friction of his cock driving in and out of her pussy filled the room, a grotesque soundtrack to my ruined life. Gael groaned loud, his face contorted in raw sexual pleasure, his eyes shut tight as he pumped his cock deep into the girl I had welcomed into my home.

They didn't see me. They were too wrapped up in their raw, explicit rutting. Elise leaned forward, bracing her hands on his chest, grinding her wet pussy down hard against the base of his shaft.

Bile rose in my throat. I couldn't breathe. My lungs forgot how to pull in air. Seven years. Seven years of loyalty, of love, of building a pack together, and he was fucking the girl I almost died to protect. Right where I slept.

I took a step back, my vision blurring with hot tears. I pulled the door shut, ensuring the latch didn't click. I turned my back on the bedroom. I didn't scream. I didn't attack them. The betrayal was so massive, so suffocating, it crushed every fighting instinct I had. I was empty.

I practically dragged my ruined leg down the hallway, taking the back stairs to avoid the pack members in the lobby. My mind was a static mess. Where did I go wrong? Was it the cane? Was I no longer attractive because I couldn't run with him through the woods anymore? Was I just broken goods in his eyes now?

I stumbled out the side exit and made a beeline for the garage. The pack doctor had strictly forbidden me from driving, warning me about the lack of reaction time in my right foot. I didn't care. I grabbed the keys to my old sedan off the hook, threw myself into the driver’s seat, and cranked the engine.

I floored the gas pedal. The tires spun on the concrete before catching, launching the car into the darkening night.

The engine roared as I hit the highway, weaving recklessly between lanes. My phone buzzed in my pocket, probably the pack house security logging my sudden departure, but I ignored it. I cranked the radio up, trying to drown out the echoes of Gael's grunts in my head. It didn't work. The image of their naked bodies tangled together on my sheets was burned into the back of my eyelids.

Tears poured down my face, hot and fast, blurring the winding road ahead. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. I had no destination. I just needed to put miles between me and the sound of Gael fucking Elise.

Gael had been my anchor. When my father sold me off, when my own family treated me like a pawn, Gael was the one who pulled me up. He made me Luna. He gave me a voice. And now he was stripping it all away, leaving me to bleed out from a wound I couldn't even see.

The city lights bled into view as I hit the downtown strip. I pulled into a tight parking spot right outside a dive bar. It was a Monday night, so the crowd was thin. Just a few rough-looking humans shooting pool and a couple of lone drinkers hunched over the sticky mahogany. It was loud, chaotic, and smelled like stale beer, cheap smoke, and poor decisions. The perfect place to disappear.

I pulled a thick scarf from the passenger seat, wrapping it high around my neck, and grabbed a pair of dark sunglasses from the glove box. Shoving them on my face, I grabbed my cane and limped into the dim, neon-lit room. Nobody looked twice at a crying woman in a bar.

I dragged myself to a sticky stool in the darkest corner of the room, far from the pool tables and the jukebox.

"Whiskey," I told the bartender when he approached. "Leave the bottle."

He raised an eyebrow but didn't argue. He set a heavy glass and a half-full bottle of cheap, burning whiskey in front of me.

I poured a generous amount and threw it back. The alcohol scorched my throat, but it was a welcome distraction from the agonizing pain tearing through my chest.

As I poured my second glass, my mind started spinning, piecing the nightmare together. How long? How long had he been burying his cock inside Elise while I smiled at her across the dinner table? How long had they been laughing behind my back?

A sudden, horrifying realization hit me like a freight train.

The phantom pains.

Ever since I got out of the hospital five months ago, I had been waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. My body would throb with a dull, echoing ache. A phantom pressure deep inside my chest, a weird twisting sensation in my gut. I had brought it up to the pack doctor. He brushed it off as trauma. He told me it was just my mind processing the near-death experience. The rogue attack manifesting in my sleep.

I gripped my glass, my hand shaking. It wasn't trauma.

It was the mate bond.

Even though Gael and I weren't true fated mates, our seven-year bond, marked and sealed, was strong. Strong enough to transmit physical sensations. When he was fucking her, when his heart rate spiked, when he climaxed inside another woman, the bond reacted. It sent shocks of his infidelity straight into my sleeping body. I had been feeling him betray me for months, passing it off as night terrors.

He had been deceiving me right under my nose, and my own body had been screaming the truth at me, but I was too blind to see it. Too trusting. Six agonizing months of lies.

A choked sob escaped my lips. I downed the second glass, slamming the thick rim against the bar top. I poured a third. Then a fourth.

I didn't drink. I was a Luna; I always kept a clear head. But tonight, I wanted to drown. I wanted the whiskey to wash away the image of Elise bouncing on my husband’s dick. I wanted to burn out the memory of his groans.

The cheap liquor mixed with the salty tears dripping down my cheeks. The loud bass from the bar's speakers faded into a dull hum.

I poured another glass. My hand was numb. The edges of my vision started to turn black, the neon signs blurring into meaningless streaks of color.

"Just one more," I slurred to no one in particular. I brought the glass to my lips, the harsh liquid spilling down my chin.

The crushing weight of my ruined life pressed down on me until I couldn't sit up straight anymore. My grip failed. The glass slipped from my fingers, shattering on the dirty floor. I rested my heavy head on the sticky wooden counter. The pain in my chest dulled into an empty ache. The noise of the bar faded into silence. The darkness rushed in, pulling me under, and then... nothing.