When His Mistress Hurt Our Daughter, I Ended the Bond

I lit the second candle at eight o'clock, then blew it out at nine, then lit it again at ten. By eleven, the wax had pooled twice and hardened twice, and I told myself a calm woman would not keep relighting a candle for a man who was clearly running late.

A calm woman, of course, would also not have spent the afternoon pressing rosemary into a roast she knew Owen barely tasted. But seven years of marking anniversaries teach you certain rituals, and I had not yet learned how to stop performing them.

My name is Abigail Warren. Seven years ago I was the youngest wolf ever admitted to the Lycan King's Healer Corps. Tonight I was a woman in a soft gray dress, smoothing the same napkin for the fourth time, listening to the heater click in an empty pack house.

Thea had gone to sleep at seven. She liked the same lullaby on a loop, and I had lain beside her until her breathing slowed and her small hand uncurled from mine. My daughter is six. Her wolf has not yet woken. The pack does not know what to do with a pup like her, but I do, and that has always been enough for both of us.

The Blackthorn pack house was quiet in the way only an Alpha's house can be quiet, the kind of quiet that has rooms in it. I sat at the head of the table with my hands flat on the wood and waited.

Midnight came. Then one in the morning.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

I did not move at first. I thought, if it is him, I will let him send another. If it is not him, it does not matter. The buzz came again. Then a third time, in a quick, stuttering way that meant photographs.

I walked to the counter. My thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist before I knew I had moved it there.

The message was from Marla, a Delta's wife who had been kind to me when Thea was born and quieter to me ever since. She had written only one word.

'I'm sorry.'

Then the photos.

The Silverpeak Pack's banquet hall. The white pillars. The Mate Ceremony dais I had read about for years and never been invited to. Owen in the dark suit I pressed last week. His hand on a young woman's neck the way a man's hand sits when he means it.

Nylah Taylor.

I knew her face. She was one of his trainee warriors, twenty-three, polished in the way ambitious wolves polish themselves. I had served her tea in my own kitchen.

In the next photo, Owen's mouth was open mid-word. Marla had captioned that one too.

'He said the full vow. All of it. I'm so sorry, Abigail.'

I scrolled. I made myself scroll.

A video clip, twenty-six seconds long. I tapped it with a finger that did not feel like mine.

Owen's voice came