Our Toxic Fated Bond

The silk sheets beneath me felt like a shroud as I jolted awake, my heart hammering against my ribs with the violence of a caged bird.

For a moment, I couldn't breathe—couldn't think—as the familiar weight of my childhood bedroom pressed down on me like a tomb.

But it wasn't the room that made my skin crawl. It was the memories.

They crashed over me in waves, each one more devastating than the last. Lucius's hands on my throat as he marked me. The suffocating pull of the mate bond that had turned my own body into a prison. The endless nights feeling his pleasure with other women through our connection, each sensation a knife twisting in my chest. The miscarriage—God, the miscarriage—bleeding out alone on the bathroom floor while I screamed his name into the void, knowing he wouldn't come, knowing he was probably buried between someone else's thighs.

I pressed my palms against my eyes until stars burst behind my lids, but the memories wouldn't stop. They never stopped.

Twenty-three years of hell condensed into crystal-clear recollections that felt more real than the silk pajamas clinging to my sweat-dampened skin.

The graduation cap hanging on my closet door caught my eye, and reality hit me like a physical blow. June 15th.

The day before my coming-of-age ceremony. The day before everything went wrong.

I was eighteen again.

My fingers flew to my neck, searching for the raised scar tissue where his mark had branded me as his property. Nothing. Just smooth, unmarked skin that had never known his teeth. But I could still feel it—phantom pain that made me want to claw at my throat until I drew blood.

"This isn't happening," I whispered to the empty room, but my voice cracked on the words. "This can't be happening."

But it was. Somehow, impossibly, I'd been given a second chance.

The Moon Goddess's idea of mercy, perhaps—or maybe just another cruel joke.

Either way, I wasn't going to waste it.

I stumbled to my feet, legs shaking like a newborn colt's, and caught my reflection in the vanity mirror. Eighteen-year-old Claire stared back at me—round-faced and bright-eyed, still soft with the naivety that Lucius would systematically destroy. She looked so young. So hopeful.

So fucking stupid.

"Never again," I told my reflection, and this time my voice was steady as steel. "I will never be your victim again."

The next morning found me standing outside my father's study, my hand trembling on the brass doorknob. Arthur Ashbourne sat behind his mahogany desk, silver hair gleaming in the morning light as he reviewed pack documents. He looked up when I entered, his weathered face creasing into a smile that would have warmed me once. Now it just reminded me of how easily he'd handed me over to Lucius like a prize heifer.

"Claire, sweetheart. You're up early. Nervous about tomorrow's ceremony?"

If only he knew. "Actually, Father, I wanted to discuss something with you. Something important."

He set down