2. The Bond
1194 Words
I did not leave immediately.
Onyx had ordered me off Cedar Moon land before midnight, but the clinic was still full. He could threaten me. He could humiliate me. He could carry Mona out like I was the danger.
He could not make me abandon my patients before my shift ended. No command could do that.
I walked into Mara’s old private office, my swollen cheek pulsing with every step. From the bottom drawer of her desk, I pulled the envelope she had told me to open only as a last resort.
BOND SEVERANCE AGREEMENT.
I read the clause twice even though I knew it by heart.
At the end of the seventh year, the bond would sever automatically. No consent needed. No appeal. No Alpha command strong enough to drag me back once the date arrived.
Ninety days.
I folded the document into my bag, sent the remaining staff home early, and finished the shift alone.
Midnight passed, and no guards came to drag me off the land. Onyx always preferred hollow threats when there was no audience to witness them.
By the time I walked from the clinic to the house, the sky had turned the flat gray of early morning.
I placed the agreement on the bedroom vanity and removed my ring. The pale mark beneath it looked worse than the gold ever had.
Then, I sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
With every passing minute, the mate bond stirred, punishing me. It didn't care that the man tied to me was a monster; it only knew he was drawing closer.
The front door opened downstairs.
He appeared in the bedroom doorway with damp black hair from the rain and his shirt untucked and open. He noticed my marked cheek first, then the ring on the vanity.
“Still performing your little victim act?”
I stood, pointing at the envelope. “I want a divorce. I’m activating the bond severance clause. We have ninety days to divide our assets.”
He stepped into the room, looking more inconvenienced than angry.
“You’re upset. Sleep it off, Ember. You’ll feel fine by your next shift.”
“I am serious, Onyx.”
“You think paperwork changes what you are to me?” He crossed the room.
Before he even reached me, his wolf pushed through our bond. A wave of unwanted, sickeningly familiar heat surged under my skin, turning my knees weak.
He knew it. Of course he knew it. He had spent seven years pretending the bond meant nothing until he wanted my body to answer his.
“Careful, Ember.” He stopped close enough that I had to smell his wolf and the rain on his skin. “You are shaking.”
“Only because I am angry.”
“No.” He leaned closer. His breath brushed the side of my neck where his mark should have been. “Because you know what happens when I come home. And you know I always come home.”
I gripped the edge of the vanity. “Do not touch me.”
He ignored the warning and caught my chin between his fingers. The contact shot through the bond so fast my breath failed. He was certain my body would answer. Certain I would fold because I always had.
“You can act out your dramatic divorce theater routine in the morning.” He turned my face toward him. “Tonight, you can remember you are my wife.”
Before I could turn away, his mouth slammed down on mine.
It wasn't a kiss of affection; it was a punishment disguised as a claim. He forced my lips open as the bond tore through me, hot, demanding, and utterly wrong.
My body betrayed me instantly. My fingers, meant to push him away, curled helplessly into the damp fabric of his open shirt, my wolf clawing toward him in a starving, trained response.
He felt my body's surrender and smiled against my lips. A soft, victorious sound that turned my stomach. “There she is. There's my wife.”
At his words, something inside me went cold. Not broken, not numb, but lethal and clear.
Using every ounce of my strength, I shoved him back.
Onyx stumbled, more from surprise than the force of my hands. His eyes flashed with an angry amber before settling back into cold control.
“Do not ever do that again.” He wiped his mouth with his thumb. “Your body knows who you belong to, no matter how brave your mouth gets.”
“Only because you signed documents you never bothered to read.” I picked up the severance agreement with trembling hands. “Your grandmother made sure I had a way out. I am taking it.”
I thought he would have some reaction to that. Instead, he looked completely bored.
“If you care so much, get a lawyer to draft whatever papers make you feel important.” He turned toward the door. “I have no patience for this tonight.”
“That is all you have to say?”
He stopped at the threshold. “You always do this, Ember.”
I forced my body to stay still. “Do what?”
He glanced back at my marked cheek. “You will calm down. You always do.”
Then he left. The door closed downstairs a minute later.
I stayed beside the vanity until my legs stopped threatening to give out.
Once, during the first year of our marriage, I had stupidly believed intimacy could save us. Onyx had come home drunk the night before an overseas Pack trip, full of heat and grief and a loneliness he never admitted to me in daylight. He had touched me like the bond finally cracked him open.
Two months later, I had flown to New York with a pregnancy test hidden in my coat pocket and hope making a fool of me.
Onyx had opened his hotel door in a pressed shirt, already impatient.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
He did not reach for me. He did not ask if I was scared.
“A child won’t fix this marriage, Ember. Don’t make that mistake.”
I had gone back to my hotel and thrown up until sunrise.
After that, I made the only choice left. I used herbs to mask the change in my scent. I worked until my hands shook. I crossed into the Moonridge Pack before my body could betray me and gave birth with Kano outside the door, Harlow holding my hand, and no husband waiting for news.
Lily Reid came into the world furious, loud, and alive.
I kept her that way by keeping her from him.
My phone lit beside me.
"Lily - Mama, I drew you and me and the moon. Uncle Kano says my wolf looks like a potato."
I wiped my face, placed my wedding ring inside the envelope, and sealed it with the bond agreement.
Onyx thought I would calm down.
He thought I would stay because I always had.
He was about to learn the difference.
- Writer
