Chapter 4
674 Words
The day I discovered Liam's affair was our fifth wedding anniversary.
I was at the house putting together a surprise for him when I stepped out and saw him on the street with his arm around a striking blonde with painted red lips, kissing her as they walked.
I sat alone in the house from afternoon into evening.
At 8 p.m., Liam came home, carrying a ruby bracelet. The very same one I had seen on that woman's neck.
"Mia, happy fifth anniversary." He came over smiling and tried to kiss me. I turned my face away.
"Where were you?"
"Something I had to handle. I'll let you know in advance next time."
The thread inside me snapped clean. Something feral tore loose, and I screamed and smashed everything in the room.
"Why are you doing this to me? You lied to me!"
The image of my mother in her last moments rose in front of my eyes. I couldn't bear it. My mate, just like that animal of a father, had cheated.
Liam held me tightly on the floor, kneeling, crying as he apologized.
"I'm sorry, Mia. I'm sorry. She and I, it was an accident. I've ended it with her. Please don't do this."
I was such a fool. I actually believed him.
After that, Liam banished Sofia from the pack, and I worked at forgetting, at finding the man I had married again.
Until the photos arrived in the mail.
Dozens of pictures of Sofia and Liam, in every possible position.
Your husband is so wicked. He told everyone he banished me, when really he just wanted me as his secret mistress.
I confronted Liam. He rubbed his temples with weary irritation.
"Mia, every Alpha has a few mistresses. It's normal. I told you, body and soul can be separated. The one I love is still you. Will you please stop making a scene?"
I felt as if I were meeting Liam for the first time, plunged into a freezing well.
I filed a petition with the Elder Council, hoping to expose what Sofia had done. Liam crushed it. He personally propped up her family's company. He took a small failing business and fed it resources step by step until Vance Holdings climbed into the front rank of its industry, on the verge of an IPO, and he made Sofia the most envied heiress in Stoneshire Pack.
And when I asked for a divorce, he stripped me of everything. Ashford Legal made me give up even the rights and income from my own photography.
"Mia, you'll get nothing from a divorce. Why bother fighting over any of it? If you want, you can still be Stoneshire Pack's Luna."
For 276 days after that, every day felt like the day I would die.
I couldn't sleep for nights on end. My hands shook without warning, I threw up, I sobbed until my chest gave out. I couldn't pick up a camera anymore. I had lost my ability to record life.
I bit my own wrist into raw, ruined flesh, and scrolled through more than 2,000 of Sofia's i********: posts on a loop, hunting for glimpses of Liam in every photo, trying to pinpoint when they had begun.
I cursed them dead on every corner of the internet.
I hadn't broken the glass, yet I was the one made to walk it, again and again.
Until the day I left the hospital with my Wolfsbane Diagnosis Report in hand and crossed paths with Liam, who was there with Sofia for some checkup.
I was gaunt, hollow-eyed, almost ghoulish. They looked radiant together.
"Mia, you don't look well." Liam frowned, his expression unreadable.
The tears spilled instantly.
Fear had defeated everything else. I was terrified of dying the way my mother had, in the rented room with no one to know.
I needed something, anything, to prove I was still alive, even a love that was already rotted through.
So I said, "Liam, I was wrong."
He gave me a satisfied smile.
We remarried.
- Writer
