My Alpha Rejected Bonding, He Cried After I Died

Chapter 2 Mom's Gift

At some point, I must have passed out.

When I came to, I changed into a turtleneck to cover the bond site. The skin around it had already begun to darken, turning pale brown like the singed edge of paper. Even the lightest touch sent pain shooting through me.

I knew what that color meant. My inner wolf was dying.

A woman stood in front of the full-length mirror in the living room.

It was the woman who had been sitting on Damian's lap the night before.

She was wearing a white wedding dress.

It was my wedding dress, the one my mother had left me.

I was twenty-one the year my mother passed away. She knew she did not have much time left, so she had started sewing the dress a year in advance. She said only a handmade wedding dress had a soul.

When her fingers swelled too badly to thread the needle, she asked the nurse to help her. When her eyes grew too dim to see clearly, she put on her reading glasses and leaned close to the lamp.

Stitch by stitch, thread by thread, she sewed for an entire year.

She was gone before the dress was finished.

I sewed the last stitches myself. I did not cry while I worked because I kept telling myself, "It's okay, Mom. I will wear it to marry someone wonderful. Someone who will take good care of me. Someone who will mark me and make me the happiest Luna in the world."

"Take it off." My own voice sounded dry and raw.

"Damian said he would throw this dress away if I didn't like it. I thought it looked pretty, so I tried it on." The woman tilted her head and smiled, pleased with herself.

I reached for her shoulder, but a hand clamped around my wrist from behind. The grip was like an iron vise.

It was Damian.

His voice was quiet, but the Alpha aura behind it slammed into me with suffocating force, and my knees buckled before I could stop them.

"She's wearing..." I gasped for air. His presence was like a stone on my chest. "She's wearing my mother's wedding dress. Damian, that was the last thing my mother left me."

I looked into his eyes.

Damian said nothing.

His mistress seemed to sense the tension between us. As if she were desperate to prove how much she mattered to him, she grabbed a pair of scissors and started cutting the dress apart.

I lunged at her in a frenzy, trying to stop her.

The scissors slashed across her arm, and blood spattered.

She let out a piercing scream.

I froze.

In an instant, Damian's scent exploded outward and crashed over me without restraint. I could not stay upright. I dropped to my knees, and a metallic taste flooded my mouth.

Something warm slid down my face.

I reached up and touched my skin.

Blood was seeping from my eyes, my nose, and my ears. An excruciating ache burrowed into my bones.

In that moment, I understood. He truly wanted me dead.

Damian said, "I told you not to touch her. Try it again, and I will kill you."

I watched him lift the woman into his arms and turn away.

The pain was so intense that my thoughts began to scatter. This woman seemed to be the one who had lasted the longest by Damian's side. Perhaps he really had fallen for her this time.

Before Damian left, his eyes met mine. There was hatred in them now. Those same eyes had once been full of love for me.