Shattered Mate

Chapter 6

Grace pov

The Colorado mountains had a way of stripping a person down to their core and rebuilding them from the ground up. I discovered this truth within my first week at the Silver Ridge Pack, when my grandfather—Alpha Thomas Grey—had looked at me with steel-gray eyes and said, "Tears won't keep you alive up here, child. Learn fast or die slow."

He hadn't been exaggerating.

Now, three years later, I stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking the valley below, my breath forming small clouds in the thin mountain air. The weak, frightened girl who had fled Washington in shame was gone, replaced by someone harder, stronger, forged by altitude and adversity into something entirely new.

"Still brooding about tomorrow?"

I didn't turn as my cousin Marcus approached, his footsteps silent on the rocky ground despite his massive frame. At twenty-five, Marcus was my grandfather's second-in-command and had been instrumental in my transformation from victim to warrior.

"Not brooding," I replied, adjusting the weight of the pack on my shoulders. They'd just finished a twelve-mile run through terrain that would challenge a mountain goat, and I wasn't even winded anymore. "Planning."

Marcus chuckled, the sound echoing off the canyon walls. "Planning your revenge, you mean."

I finally turned to face him, and Marcus stepped back slightly at the sight of my eyes. Three years in the mountains had changed more than just my physical strength—there was something predatory in my gaze now, something that made even dominant wolves think twice about challenging me.

"It's not revenge," I said quietly. "It's justice."

The letter had arrived two weeks ago, bearing the official seal of the Moonrise Pack. The Rank Games had finally been rescheduled, and all eighteen-to-twenty-one-year-olds from allied packs were invited to participate. It was supposed to be a gesture of goodwill, a chance for young wolves to prove themselves on neutral ground.

I knew better. It was Jace's way of showing off his pack's dominance, now that he'd officially taken the Alpha title from his father six months ago. He probably expected me to cower in the mountains forever, too broken to ever show my face again.

He was about to learn how wrong he was.

"Your grandfather's worried, you know," Marcus said, settling onto a boulder beside me. "He thinks you might be doing this for the wrong reasons."

"And what would be the right reasons?" I asked, though I kept my tone neutral. I had learned to respect Marcus's opinion over the years—he was one of the few wolves who had never gone easy on me because of my tragic backstory.

"Proving yourself to yourself, not to some asshole who treated you badly." Marcus studied my profile. "The Grace I know doesn't need anyone's validation. Especially not from her mate."

My jaw tightened at the word. Even after three years, the mate bond hadn't faded. If anything, it had grown stronger, a constant ache in my chest that reminded me of what I had lost—or rather, what had been stolen from me.

"He rejected me," I said flatly. "Whatever bond existed between us died that day."

"Did it?" Marcus's voice was skeptical. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like everything you've done for the past three years has been about him. Every training session, every challenge you've conquered, every limit you've pushed—it's all been leading to this moment when you get to face him again."

I was quiet for a long moment, watching an eagle circle high above the valley. Marcus wasn't wrong, exactly. My drive to become stronger, to become someone who could never be dismissed or humiliated again—it was all connected to that morning in Brittany's bedroom, to the look of disgust on Jace's face, to the way he'd rejected me like I was nothing.

But it was also more than that.

"I need to know," I said finally. "I need to know that if I'd been stronger three years ago, if I'd been who I am now, would things have been different? Would he have believed me about Brittany? Would he have protected me instead of destroying me?"

"And if the answer is yes?" Marcus asked gently. "If you prove that you're everything he thought you weren't, and he comes crawling back with apologies? What then?"

I turned to face him fully, and Marcus saw something in my expression that made his wolf whine with unease. It wasn't hatred, exactly—it was something colder, more final.

"Then I'll have the satisfaction of rejecting him the way he rejected me," I said. "And this time, it will be his choice that destroys the bond forever."

The formal rejection of a mate bond could only be completed by both parties. Jace had tried to reject me three years ago, but without my acceptance of that rejection, the bond remained intact, albeit damaged. If I formally rejected him in return—now that I was strong enough to survive the severing—it would be over permanently.

No more aching. No more dreams. No more wondering what might have been.

Freedom.

---

The flight to Washington felt both endless and too short. I had insisted on going alone, despite my grandfather's offer to send a contingent of Silver Ridge wolves for support. This was something she needed to do by myself.

The plane descended through familiar cloud cover, and I caught my first glimpse of Moonrise Pack territory in three years. It looked smaller than I remembered, less intimidating. The forests that had once seemed vast and full of hidden dangers now looked manageable, ordinary.

I had changed in ways that went beyond the obvious physical transformations. Gone was the soft roundness of adolescence, replaced by lean muscle and sharp angles carved by mountain living. My dark auburn hair was longer now, usually braided back in a practical style that kept it out of my face during combat. But the most significant change was in my bearing—where once I had moved like prey, now I moved like a predator.

The taxi driver who picked me up from the airport kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror, his human instincts picking up on something dangerous even if he couldn't identify what it was.

"First time visiting?" he asked, attempting conversation.

"No," I replied, watching familiar landmarks pass by the window. "I used to live here."

"Moving back?"

My smile was sharp enough to cut glass. "Just visiting. I have some unfinished business to take care of."

The hotel I had booked was in neutral territory, close enough to the pack lands to be convenient but far enough away that she wouldn't accidentally encounter anyone before the games began. I had timed my arrival perfectly—check in today, attend the opening ceremony tomorrow, and then three days of competition that would determine once and for all who I really was.

As I unpacked my single duffel bag, I caught sight of myself in the hotel mirror. The woman looking back at me bore little resemblance to the frightened eighteen-year-old who had fled this place in shame. This woman was a weapon, honed to perfection by three years of relentless training.

My grandfather had been right about the mountains being hard. What he hadn't mentioned was how they would remake me completely.

The Silver Ridge Pack didn't coddle their members or make allowances for tragic backstories. From my first day, I had been expected to pull my weight or be cast out to survive alone in the wilderness. I had chosen to fight for my place, to earn respect through action rather than sympathy.

The training had been brutal. Combat sessions that left me bloodied and bruised. Endurance tests that pushed me far beyond what I had thought possible. Strategy exercises that forced me to outthink opponents who had decades more experience. And through it all, my grandfather had watched with those cold gray eyes, never offering praise, never accepting excuses.

"Strength isn't just physical," he'd told me during one particularly punishing session. "It's mental, emotional, spiritual. Your enemies will try to break you in every way possible. If you want to survive, you need to be unbreakable."

I had taken those words to heart. I had forged myself into something unbreakable.

Tomorrow, I would put that to the test.

Tomorrow, I would face the pack that had cast me out, the Alpha who had rejected me, and the she-wolf who had orchestrated my downfall. But this time, I wouldn't be the victim.

This time, I would be the storm.

Grace Evans was done being prey. It was time to hunt.