Chapter 2: The vow
1261 Words
(Kaelen)
I collapse in the forest clearing.
Knees in the mud, hands sinking into wet leaves, rain hammering my back. I can't feel any of it. The only thing I can feel is the hole in my chest where the bond used to be.
Not broken,not cracked,gone. Like something reached inside me and ripped out a piece I didn't even know I needed until it wasn't there anymore. The space where Dorian lived is just... hollow now. Aching in a way I didn't know a body could ache.
My wolf howls — not in my head, out loud, the sound tearing up through my throat and into the trees. High and long and ugly with pain. The forest doesn't answer.
Revenge, she screams. Blood. Burn them both.
I want to. God, I want to go back there. I want to shift and use my teeth and make it hurt. But I can't move, because the bond break has left me raw in a way I've got no words for — every nerve lit up like a live wire — and worse, so much worse, I can still feel him.
Dorian.
His pleasure bleeds through the broken ends of the bond like poison. He's still with her. Still inside her. The bond is dead but the echo isn't, and I feel every single thing he feels — every thrust, every sound he makes, the way he presses his mouth to her neck and says good girl in that low voice that used to be for me.
I press my forehead into the mud and scream until my throat is raw. The mud fills my mouth. I don't care.
My sister. My own blood. She watched me fall apart on that floor and she smiled.
The rage comes roaring back. My wolf shoves hard against my skin, wild with it, ready to hunt.
Kill, she says. Now. Go back. Rip—
My human mind grabs her by the throat.
No. Death is too fast. Too clean. He doesn't get to feel a second of pain and then just... escape. That's not enough for what he did. That's not close to enough.
She snarls. Then what?
I raise my head. The rain washes the mud off my face. Lightning splits the sky, and I look up at it and let myself actually think — not react, not grieve, just think.
What do I want?
Not his death. A bullet is a moment. One second of fear and then nothing. He'd barely have time to understand what was happening before it was over.
I want him to suffer slowly. I want him to watch. I want him to see me standing next to someone better, someone who looks at me like I'm worth looking at, and I want something to die in his chest the same way something died in mine tonight. And then — when he's desperate enough, when he's been living with it long enough — I want him on his knees in front of everyone. Crying. Begging. Swearing he'll change.
And I want to look at him and feel absolutely nothing.
That's revenge.
My wolf goes quiet. She doesn't love it, but she stops fighting me.
I think about who could hurt Dorian more than I ever could. Not me — he already threw me away without blinking. His friends are carbon copies of him. His mother's been dead for years.
There's only one person. One whose betrayal would cut all the way to the bone.
His father.
Alpha Theron Vayne.
I've seen him before, at pack gatherings and treaty signings. Tall, broad, silver threaded through his hair. Eyes that look like they've already decided they don't like you. He's been alone for years — his mate abandoned him, walked away and left him behind — and everyone says he's closed off now, unreachable, that he'll never let anyone in again.
I don't need him to let me in. I just need his mark on my neck.
If I become Theron's Luna — if Dorian has to watch his own father claim the woman he threw out — it'll break something in him that won't ever heal.
I close my eyes, and for the first time since I ran out of that bedroom, I let myself imagine it.
Not the ceremony. Not the title. Him.
Theron's hands — big, rough, built for violence — wrapped around my throat. Not hard enough to hurt, just enough to hold. His thumb pressing up under my chin, tilting my face up to his. His eyes dark, hungry, completely focused on me.
And Dorian somewhere behind us. Watching. Unable to look away.
Theron leans down and says something low against my ear, words I can't quite hear, but Dorian can. And Dorian comes apart.
My stomach pulls tight. Not anger this time. Something else, something warmer, something I'm not ready to give a name to.
I shove the image aside. But it doesn't go far. It hovers at the edge of my mind like a blade I've just realized I'm holding.
Good. I'll use it.
I open my eyes. The rain is letting up, the storm moving on, but I am not the same woman who walked into that bedroom holding a vial and believing she was loved. That woman is gone. I'm not sure she's coming back.
My mother's ring is still on my finger. Gold band, tiny diamond. The only thing she left me.
I pull it off.
It sits warm in my palm, like she's still here somehow, like she's watching me make this decision and hasn't walked away yet.
I bite down on my palm. My teeth break the skin and the pain comes sharp and immediate and real — grounding, the way pain can be when everything else has gone numb. Blood wells up fast. I hold my fist over the ring and let it fall, red drops hitting gold, mixing with the rain until most of it washes away but enough stays. Enough to mean something.
I lift my face to the sky. To the moon, to whatever's up there that made me a wolf and gave me a mate and let this happen.
"I will seduce Alpha Theron Vayne."
My voice cracks on his name. I don't stop.
"I will wear his mark."
The blood drips steadily now. The ring has gone red.
"And I will make his bastard son crawl."
The words land heavy. Final. Like a door shutting.
I close my fist around the ring and feel the wet metal bite into the wound. I don't flinch.
My wolf is still. Not happy — she wants blood, she'll always want blood — but she accepts what we're doing now. She's smart enough to understand a long game when she hears one.
Tomorrow I'll clean up, cross into Theron's territory, and become someone else entirely. Someone soft and wounded and worth protecting. Someone he won't see coming.
I press my bleeding hand flat against the earth. The mud takes the blood. I leave a print behind in the dark.
Not a cry. A promise.
I get up. My legs hold. The hole in my chest is still there — I don't think it's going anywhere — but I've packed something into it now. Something cold and useful.
Purpose.
I walk out of the clearing without looking back.
Dorian will pay. Lara will pay.
And Theron Vayne is going to be the instrument of it, whether he knows it or not.
I just have to make him fall first.
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