Broken Bond, Burning Vow

(Kaelen) I walk up the stairs to Dorian's private suite with the vial in my palm, the liquid inside pale green, almost glowing. Wolfsbane antidote. Three weeks finding the right herbs. Two more weeks brewing it without killing myself in the process. He'd been sick for a month. None of the pack healers could do anything. But I figured it out. I'm a good mate. I keep telling myself that as I reach his door. Good. Loyal. Patient. The door is oak. Thick. But not thick enough. I smell her before I even touch the handle. Lilac soap — the cheap kind from the village market. My sister has used that same soap since we were pups. I know it better than I know my own scent. My hand goes still on the handle. *No.* I'm imagining things. The brewing kept me up for nights, my nose is off, I'm tired, I'm— I push the door open. The guards are missing from their posts. That alone should've stopped me cold — Dorian *always* has guards unless he's sent them away on purpose — but I keep walking. My boots don't make a sound, not because I'm trying, just because my body already knows something my mind refuses to catch up to. The living room is clean. Too clean. A fire in the hearth, two glasses of wine on the table, one of them stained with red lipstick at the rim. I don't wear red lipstick. I tell myself to stop. To breathe. He loves me. He's my mate — the bond is real, I feel it every single day sitting right in the center of my chest. He wouldn't. But the bond feels different right now. Quiet in a way it's never been. Like a held breath. I walk to the bedroom door. Light bleeds out from under it. And sounds — soft sounds, a woman's laugh, low and familiar. The kind of laugh you don't forget. Lilac soap. My hand shakes when I grab the handle. I tell it to stop. It doesn't listen. I open the door. One lamp on the nightstand. The sheets — white ones, expensive — tangled and twisted and damp. Dorian on top of her. His back to me, muscles moving, completely lost in what he's doing, not a clue I'm standing here. My sister Lara beneath him. Legs wrapped around his waist, head thrown back, mouth open. She sees me first. Her eyes find mine. She doesn't stop. Doesn't scream or push him off or say a single word. She just looks at me — and smiles. Small, slow, like she's been waiting for this moment. Then Dorian feels it too, that shift in the room, and turns his head. Face sweaty, eyes hazy. He looks right at me. And he doesn't stop either. My wolf wakes up hard and fast, like something snapping open. She's been sleeping easy all this time — our mate was close, our mate was safe, our mate was *ours*. But now she sees. And the sound she makes isn't one that comes out of my throat. It comes from somewhere deeper. My chest. My bones. The place where the bond lives. The bond tears. Not all at once. Fiber by fiber. Every promise it ever made — safety, belonging, *forever* — breaking apart one thread at a time, and every single one is a fresh cut. My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Just air. Just a sound like something dying. My stomach heaves and I'm on my knees before I even realize I've fallen. The vial hits the stone floor and shatters, green liquid spreading everywhere. Five weeks of work. Gone. I vomit. I can't stop it, can't breathe, can't think — just shaking on my hands and knees while my wolf screams *kill them, kill them both, blood for blood* and my body refuses to move. Dorian pulls away from my sister without rushing. No shame on his face. Nothing close to it. He stands, walks toward me naked and unhurried, like he has all the time in the world, and looks down at me. His lip curls. "You were always too cold," he says. Flat. Bored. Like he's making a passing comment, not burning my entire life to the ground. Behind him, Lara sits up and doesn't bother covering herself. She wants me to see everything. Wants me to know. She tilts her head. "You should have seen it coming. He was never going to stay with someone like you." Someone like me. My wolf begs me to shift. To tear his throat out, to make them both bleed. My body won't listen. The pain takes up too much space. There's no room left for anything else. Dorian turns away, climbs back into the bed like I'm already gone, and Lara curls into his side. His arm goes around her. Right in front of me, while I'm still on the floor covered in my own sickness. He glances over once more. "You can leave now," he says. "Close the door." And that's when the cold comes. Not the kind in the air. The kind in my chest — the last piece of me that still loved him, still hoped, still believed I could fix whatever was broken between us. It goes still. And then it shatters, same as the vial. I pull myself up. My legs barely hold. I grab the doorframe and I don't look at them again, because if I do, I'll kill them, and killing your mate — even a broken bond, even after this — costs you everything. Takes you down with them. But I'm not done yet. I turn my head just enough that my voice can reach them. It comes out quiet. Low. Like a prayer with teeth. "You'll both rot," I whisper. Then I run. Not walk — *run.* Down the hall, down the stairs, past the guards who were never at their posts, past pack members who stop and stare, past the gate, past the border, into the dark. The storm hits me the second I clear the tree line. Rain soaks through my dress. Wind whips my hair back. Thunder tears open the sky above me and I keep running — into the mud, through the trees, with my wolf still howling somewhere behind my ribs. But underneath the howl, something else takes root. Hot. Red. Stubborn. "Revenge". It plants itself in my chest like a seed, and I don't fight it. I let it grow.