"Something is wrong," I muttered to the empty upper hallway of the Pack House.
I stopped mid-step. The scent hit me like an open-handed slap across the face. Cedar and rain-soaked pine—Damian's scent, the one that had lived under my skin for six years, the anchor to my entire existence—was drowning.
Right now, it was buried under something sickly sweet. It coated the back of my throat, smelling exactly like overripe fruit left to rot in a hot car.
My stomach dropped violently.
I didn't bother knocking. I shoved the heavy oak door hard enough that it flew open and cracked against the drywall with a gunshot fracture.
The sight froze me. One long, stupid second ticked by.
Damian's bare shoulders flexed in the dim moonlight filtering through the blinds. The charcoal sheets—the ones I picked out myself three days ago—were tangled around another woman's legs.
Wren.
The girl who braided my hair just this morning. The girl who cried happy tears at my wedding dress fitting yesterday.
The sounds coming from the bed were low, animal, and completely unmistakable.
"What the hell is this?" My voice came out flat. Dead.
Damian jerked upright. He tore himself away from her, blinking heavily at the doorway. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, swimming in a haze like a man who just woke up inside someone else's dream.
"Elara—?" He said my name like a question. Not an apology. Just pure, raw confusion.
"Get off her."
"I..." He rubbed his temple, squinting at the dim lighting. "What are you doing here?"
The mate bond seized hard in my chest.
I nearly doubled over. This wasn't only emotional—it was physical, a sudden crushing pressure that stole the air from my lungs.
"What am I doing here?" I asked, gripping the doorframe to keep my knees from buckling. "This is my room, Damian."
"Your room?" His brows knitted together. He looked down at his own bare chest, then at the girl beside him, as if seeing her for the very first time. "Wait. Why are you in my bed?"
"Don't play dumb," I snapped.
"I'm not playing anything. My head is splitting."
Mates don't lie. Scents don't lie. Yet here they were, tangled in my sheets.
"Elara, please," Wren choked out.
She scrambled for the charcoal sheet, pulling it up to her collarbone. Her mouth opened and closed, but nothing useful came out.
"Save it, Wren."
"You don't understand," she stammered, her voice shaking. "We didn't..."
"You didn't what?" I demanded, pushing off the doorframe. "You didn't mean to strip naked? You didn't mean to climb on top of my mate?"
"It wasn't like that!"
"The sounds coming from this room say otherwise."
"Elara, listen to me," Damian interjected, his voice thick and sluggish. "I don't remember coming up here. I was downstairs. We were going over the border patrols."
"And then you tripped and fell into my best friend?"
"No! I swear to you, I don't know how this happened."
"Wren," I said, my tone turning eerily calm. "You braided my hair this morning."
"Elara, I'm sorry."
"You cried at my dress fitting yesterday. You told me how lucky I was."
"I am your friend! I didn't want this!"
"Then why are you naked in my sheets?"
Wren reached out, her hand trembling as she gripped the edge of the mattress.
That was when I saw it.
A black, jagged mark sat on the pale skin of Wren's inner wrist. It didn't look like a normal tattoo. It rippled once, shifting like living ink, before it sank directly under her skin and vanished completely.
I stared at the blank skin for half a second. I filed it away. My brain refused to process magic tricks right now. Bigger shit was breaking.
"Elara, wait," Damian said, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. "Don't walk away from me. Let me explain."
"Explain what? The fact that you smell like rotting fruit?"
"I don't smell like that!"
"Yes, you do."
I didn't scream. Pride wouldn't let me give them the satisfaction of my hysteria.
I turned on my heel, locked my spine perfectly straight, and walked out.
"Elara!" Damian yelled.
I ignored him. I marched down the grand staircase. My bare feet slapped the hardwood.
"Come back here!" he demanded.
The Alpha command laced his tone, but it sounded weak, fractured. It didn't hold me.
I pushed through the heavy front doors into the cold courtyard air.
The second the freezing wind hit my face, my knees gave out.
This wasn't only emotional—it was physical, a sudden crushing pressure that stole the air from my lungs.
The pain spiked, sharp enough to turn the edges of my vision blindingly white.
"Why?" I whispered to the empty courtyard.
Why was it still there? Why did my own body keep choosing him after what he just did?
Behind me, the heavy front door creaked open.
That wrong-sweet scent drifted out, cutting through the crisp night air.
"Elara? Where are you?"
Damian was calling for me from somewhere upstairs now, his voice rough, frantic.
"I didn't do this!" he shouted into the night.
"Liar," I muttered to the grass.
I forced my legs to straighten. I didn't look back. I already knew the bond was going to make every single step away from him feel like ripping skin right off the bone.
I took a step anyway.
Agony flared up my calves.
I took another. My vision blurred.
"Elara!" His voice cracked, echoing out of the open window.
I kept walking. Into the tree line, into the dark, away from the Pack House.
Hours later, the moon hung high and mocking outside the window of the abandoned line-shack near the border.
I lay curled on the dusty floorboards, pressing my knuckles against my chest.
The bond didn't just ache anymore. It was changing.
It started to pulse in a new, wrong rhythm. A heavy, syncopated beat that didn't match my own heart.
*Thump-thud. Thump-thud.*
"Stop," I whispered, clutching my shirt.
It didn't stop. It felt like something foreign, something entirely alien, was trying to ride the exact same line connecting me to Damian.
A cold sweat broke out over my forehead. The sickly sweet smell of overripe fruit suddenly filled the tiny shack, even though I was miles away from the Pack House.
Something else was inside the bond with us.
