Chapter Ten: Ghosts in the Lower Cottage

The noise of her cell phone vibrating against the wooden tea table cut through the heavy silence of the guest suite.

Asha lunged for it. Her screen lit up with three missed calls and a harsh text message from her landlord: Rent was due yesterday, Asha. If I don't have the cash by tomorrow evening, your stuff is on the curb.

Asha squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her forehead against the cold glass of the window.

"Tomorrow," she whispered to the empty room.

Back in the border district, five hundred dollars meant the difference between having a roof over her head and sleeping in her car. Here, in this massive marble fortress, people threw away thousands on crystal teacups and silk dresses. They looked at her shredded denim jacket like she was a stray animal, completely oblivious to the fact that her entire life was collapsing while they debated whether to execute her.

She looked at the silver key Kadence had left on the table. He said she wasn't a prisoner, but four armed guards were standing right outside her corridor. She couldn't leave, she couldn't go to work, and she couldn't pay her bills.

A fierce, burning knot of resentment tightened in her throat.

He thinks he's saving me, Asha thought, staring at her hands. He isn't saving me. He's destroying the only life I worked so hard to build.

At the southern edge of the Thornwell territory, where the manicured lawns gave way to overgrown pine thickets, sat the lower cottage.

It was a dark, rundown stone house that smelled perpetually of sour wine, damp wood, and decay. It was the place where Garrison Thornwell, once the proud Alpha of the grandest pack in the region, had been banished to rot.

Kadence pushed the heavy wooden door open without knocking.

The smell hit him first, a foul, familiar stench that made his stomach turn into an immediate knot. Empty glass bottles littered the wooden floorboards, clinking together under his heavy boots as he stepped into the dim living room.

Sitting in a stained leather armchair near a cold fireplace was Garrison Thornwell.

He was only fifty-two, but he looked seventy. His graying beard was unkempt, his eyes bloodshot and glassy, his broad shoulders, once built to carry the weight of a nation, hunched over a glass of amber cheap whiskey.

Garrison didn't even look up when his son entered. "You're stepping loud today, Alpha."

Kadence stood near the doorway, keeping his distance, his jaw set so hard it pained him. "The elders are invoking Article Seven, Garrison. The Castellanes are threatening to pull their border patrols."

Garrison took a slow, trembling sip from his glass, letting out a raspy, wet laugh. "Let them pull them. Let the whole damn territory burn. Tobias and Meredith have been waiting forty years to take the crown anyway."

"I am trying to keep this pack together!" Kadence snapped, his voice dropping into a harsh, vibrating growl that made the empty bottles on the floor rattle.

"Then sign the paper with the Castellane girl," Garrison said, finally lifting his hollow, sunken eyes to look at his son. "She has good blood. She'll give you strong pups and keep the elders quiet. What's the problem, Kade? You're twenty-six. You need a Luna."

Kadence’s hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. The urge to smash every bottle in the room was overwhelming, but he forced his posture to remain rigid.

"I met her," Kadence whispered softly.

Garrison froze, his hand stopping mid-air with the glass. "Met who?"

"My fated mate," Kadence said, every word burning like acid on his tongue. "Last night. At The Velvet Hide."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Garrison slowly set his glass down on the stained end table. A strange, twisted look crossed his aged face, a mix of bitter pity and dark humor.

"A border club?" Garrison murmured, a dry chuckle rising in his throat. "The Moon Goddess has a sick sense of humor, doesn't she? After everything you said about me, after every time you looked at me like I was dirt for loving a dancer, the universe handed you a girl from the exact same gutter."

"She is not a gutter!" Kadence roared, his Alpha aura exploding into the cramped cottage with such sudden, violent force that the glass in Garrison’s hand shattered into a hundred pieces.

Garrison didn't even flinch as the whiskey spilled over his trembling fingers. He just looked up at his son, his eyes dark and empty.

"Then why aren't you wearing her mark, Kade?" Garrison asked softly. "If she's so noble, why did you come down here smelling like a broken bond?"

Kadence breathed heavily, his chest rising and falling, his irises flashing gold in the dim light of the cottage. He couldn't answer. He couldn't admit out loud that he had looked at Asha and seen his father's ruined legacy staring back at him.

"I rejected her," Kadence gritted out, turning his back on his father.

"Then you're a bigger fool than I ever was," Garrison called out after him, his raspy voice echoing off the damp stone walls as Kadence stepped out into the sunlight. "Because a rejected mate bond doesn't die, Kadence! It rots inside your chest until it turns you into a monster!"

Kadence slammed the cottage door shut behind him, cutting off his father's voice, and stood in the cold morning air, gasping for breath as the phantom pain in his ribs burned hotter than ever before.