Chapter 2
554 Words
The next morning, while I was sorting through my parents’ belongings, my phone lit up with call after call until I finally answered.
“Mary, please don’t be dramatic,” John’s voice snapped through the line, sharp with irritation. “Susan and I are here for business, not your games. Can you please stop harassing her?”
My chest tightened, but his next words sliced deeper.
“She told me you want to break the mate bond… and that you accused her of seducing me.” He let out a heavy sigh, his tone shifting to tired annoyance. “She cried all night, Mary. Can’t you just give her a break?”
Whatever Susan said, he believed. Every time.
Her lies were clumsy, obvious even—but to him, they were gospel.
The old me would have panicked, tried to explain, maybe even begged him to listen. But Mary was gone. Let him believe what he wanted.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “When are you coming back? We can go to the Bonding Sanctuary and break the mate bond.”
He didn’t answer right away. For a moment, I thought he was calculating how much of his empire I might try to take from him. I added softly, “Don’t worry. I won’t take a cent.”
I wouldn’t be alive long enough to need his money. His wealth meant nothing to me now.
His voice shifted, a trace of panic creeping in.
“Stop being so dramatic. We’ll talk when I get back.”
And just like that, he hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand, stunned.
Before he left for Paris, we had fought bitterly over Susan. He’d thrown my grief in my face like it was nothing.
“You and your parents knew Susan didn’t want to go. Why did you send her? If you keep harassing her, Mary, we’ll break the mate bond!”
He said those words after Susan broke the urn that held my child’s ashes.
I had tucked it quietly into the corner of the living room, a small sacred space where no one was meant to touch it. That day, Susan waltzed in, wrinkled her nose, and said the air was “stuffy.” Then—carelessly, deliberately—she knocked the urn over.
The ashes spilled across the carpet like cruel snow.
For one frozen second, I couldn’t breathe. Then I lunged forward, my palm cracking across her face.
She stumbled, eyes glistening with tears.
“I-I didn’t know!” she stammered. “How was I supposed to know it was ashes? It’s just dust, Mary. Just a little dust. Why make such a scene?”
John walked in just as her tears began to fall. He looked at the ashes scattered on the floor, his brow furrowing—not with grief, but with annoyance.
I’ll never forget his words.
“He’s dead, Mary. Why are you keeping him? Doesn’t it hurt to look at this every day?”
Then he shoved me aside and bent down—not to gather the ashes of his child, but to wipe Susan’s tears.
And at that moment, I understood.
My pup, the one I fought so hard to bring into this world, wasn’t worth as much as a single tear from Susan.
- Writer
