My Mate Put Me in Chains

I gasped awake, my lungs burning as if I'd been underwater. The world came into focus with a clarity I hadn't experienced in years—sharper, brighter, more real than the soft-edged dreamscape I'd been living in. My heart hammered against my ribs as something wild and familiar stirred inside me.

'About time,' Mist's voice growled, filling my mind with a presence so strong it made me dizzy. 'I'm here, Liliana. I'm finally here.'

My wolf. My Mist. The part of me that had been missing for three years was suddenly, violently awake, and with her came a flood of memories—not the gentle, childlike ones I'd been living with, but the real ones. The Mate Ceremony. The ambush. The pain that shattered everything.

'Get up,' Mist urged, her voice thick with rage. 'Follow the scent.'

I didn't need to ask what scent. It hit me the moment I sat up—a nauseating mixture of arousal and betrayal wafting from down the hall. The mate bond pulled at me, a biological imperative I couldn't ignore, but now I could feel the wrongness of it, the way it had been twisted and corrupted.

My legs carried me forward before my mind could catch up. I moved silently down the plush hallway of the Pack House, following the scent that made my stomach turn. The Alpha's master suite loomed ahead, its heavy oak door slightly ajar.

I shouldn't look. I should run. But Mist pushed me forward, and I pressed my eye to the crack in the door.

The sight before me froze my blood. Hunter—my Hunter, the man who had cared for me, protected me, loved me—had Amaya Morris pinned beneath him on the massive bed. Her pregnant belly strained against his thrusts as he knotted with her, their bodies locked in the most intimate act possible. Her face, twisted in ecstasy, was the same face I remembered from the night of the attack—the night she'd destroyed everything.

'No,' I whispered, my fingers flying to my neck where the mating mark should have been. It was there, but faded, incomplete—a cruel mockery of what should have been sacred. 'No, no, no.'

'Never completed the bond,' Mist snarled. 'He never made you his Luna. He kept you like a pet while he fucked her.'

I stumbled backward, my legs hitting the wall. Three years. Three years of believing I was living in a fairytale when I'd been living a lie. The woman who'd run me off the road, who'd put my wolf into a coma and stolen my memories, wasn't locked in a dungeon. She was in my mate's bed.

I pressed my hand against my mouth to stifle the scream building in my throat. Somehow, I made it back to my room, locking the door behind me with shaking hands. I sank to the floor, my back against the door, as the full weight of the betrayal crushed down on me.

'He's going to know,' Mist said, her voice suddenly calm. 'Your scent has changed. He'll know I'm back.'

I closed my eyes, trying to remember how to be the compliant, childlike version of myself that Hunter had kept for three years. But it was like trying to fit into a dress that no longer belonged to me. The fog was gone. The memories were back. And with them came a rage so pure it burned away every last trace of the broken girl I'd been pretending to be.