The Mate Bond

POV: Marcella

"Not again…"

My carefully constructed world crumbles to dust. Four years of building a safe haven, four years of protecting my son and my heart, all shattered in a single second by the massive, scarred man standing before me. He stares down at me, his massive chest heaving, his lips parted as he forms that single, silent word. *Mate*.

The agonizing, blood-soaked memory of Brutus’s