Not yours to reclaim , unclaimed and unbothered

Berlina POV The whole room was watching me. I could feel their gaze the way you felt the weather before it arrived. A change, a shift in the air, every set of eyes in Moonspire Tower's grand ballroom turned in my direction. Alphas in tailored suits. Betas in their careful best. Pack members I had known my whole life and pack members I had never seen before tonight, all of them watching me stand at this podium in a dress I had chosen six months ago while the man I had loved for four years said words I was going to spend the rest of my life trying to unhear. "I, Thorne Silverfang, reject you, Berlina Armandi, as my fated mate." He said it formally, without emotions. The traditional words that activated a bond severance, words every wolf knew and nobody said at galas. The silence lasted three seconds. I counted. One. Two. Three. Then the murmurs started, low and rolling like the beginning of a storm, and somewhere behind me I heard my mother's sharp intake of breath, and I felt, for the first time in four years, the mate bond that had always lived warm in the center of my chest begin to c***k. It felt like a rib breaking inward. I had not known it would feel like that. Nobody tells you. It is one of those things the pack knows collectively and discusses with nobody individually, like how much it costs to challenge an Alpha or what it sounds like when a wolf loses their mate to death. You know it happens. You do not know what it is until it is yours. I stood very still. Not because I was in shock. I was shocked only in the first three seconds. I stood still because I was deciding something. Everyone was watching. The cameras were running. There were forty-seven people in this ballroom who would remember every detail of the next thirty seconds for the rest of their lives and tell the story at every pack function for the next decade. I was deciding what story they were going to tell. I looked at Thorne. He was looking back at me with something in his eyes I didn't quite recognize. It wasn't relief. It was definatly not pride. I had expected relief, or at least the signs of it, but there was none. There was something else that he was working hard to keep below the surface, and for one single second I almost asked him what it was. Then I remembered where we were. What he had just said. What I had felt c***k open in my chest. I straightened my spine. I turned, not toward the exit, not toward the door at the back where I could have disappeared quietly into the kind of dignified grief the pack would have found appropriate for a rejected Omega, but toward the room. Toward the people. Toward the master of ceremonies still standing at the front with his microphone, looking like a man who had never needed a crisis protocol and was now desperately wishing he had one. I held out my hand. He gave me the microphone. The murmuring stopped. The room went quiet. All of them staring at me. Some in suprise, some in curiosity. I swallowed and I said, "Since we are making announcements this evening, I have one of my own." My voice was steady. I had expected it to tremble but I was thankful it was steady. . "The heir to Armandi Holdings is also seeking a mate. I am now in search of a new mate. All interest can be directed to my office." I smiled and handed the microphone back. Picked up my champagne glass from the table beside me, and took one sip. Then set it back down. "Enjoy the evening." I walked out at a completely normal pace. I did not look at Thorne again. I did not look at my father, who I could feel watching from somewhere near the east wall with an expression I was not ready to see. I did not look at Selene, Thorne's stepsister, who had been standing three feet to his left all evening and I certainly did not look at anyone in the room. I walked through the ballroom. Through the corridor. To the elevator, where I pressed the button and stood with my hands loose at my sides with the expression of a woman who had somewhere else to be. The doors opened. I stepped in. The doors closed. I pressed my back against the elevator wall. And I let out a trembling breath as tears gathered in my eyes. I blinked them back rapidly. I pressed my hand flat against my chest, against the place where I could still feel the bond between us. That was the worst part. Not that it was gone. It wasn't. I could still feel him. The elevator reached the lobby. The doors opened. I walked out into the Tarr night and did not let my hands shake until I was around the corner and out of sight of the building's cameras. Then I stood in the lobby of the tower with the bond cracking open in my chest and then I clenched my hands into a fist. Then I straightened my spine again. I called my driver.