Mag-log inMona POVMom came home early on the third day.I was still in the guest room, curled on my side under the blankets, when I heard her voice downstairs. The rejection sickness had settled into a grinding, low-grade misery—fever that came and went, constant ache in my chest and limbs, a hollow exhaustion that made even sitting up feel like work. Alessandro had barely left the house. He moved through the rooms with the same controlled quiet he used during pack crises, but the strain showed in the tight set of his shoulders and the way he sometimes stopped mid-step, as if the missing bond had left him off-balance too.I heard them talking in the kitchen. Mom’s tone started light, then shifted.Footsteps came up the stairs. She knocked once on the guest room door and opened it without waiting.“Mona?” She stopped in the doorway. Her eyes moved over me—pale face, damp hair, the way I was still in bed in the middle of the afternoon—and her expression tightened. “You look awful. Why didn’t any
Mona POVI tried to leave again the next morning.The rejection sickness had eased just enough that I could stand without the room spinning, and the hollow ache in my chest had settled into a constant, manageable throb. I told myself that was progress. I told myself Alessandro would be better off if he didn’t have to watch me suffer through the consequences of my own choice. I packed the same small bag, moved as quietly as I could, and made it all the way to the front door before his voice stopped me.“Put the bag down.”He stood at the top of the stairs, barefoot, wearing only low-slung sweatpants, arms crossed. His expression was calm in the way that always meant trouble. The gold in his eyes was duller than usual, still marked by the same pain I carried, but the authority in his posture had not faded.“I can’t keep doing this to you,” I said. My voice sounded thin. “You barely slept. You’re still hurting because of what I did. Let me go somewhere else until it’s over.”“No.”He cam
Mona POVBy the second day the rejection sickness had settled into my bones like a fever that refused to break.My skin felt too tight. Every joint ached. A low, constant nausea sat in the base of my throat, and the place in my chest where the bond used to live burned with a cold, empty fire. My wolf remained silent—curled in on herself, refusing to speak or surface. The claim mark on my thigh had faded to a dull, ordinary bruise. Looking at it made my eyes sting.Alessandro refused to let me leave the room for long.He brought food I could barely eat. He forced water into my hands. When the shaking got bad he pulled me against his chest even though the contact now carried a strange, wrong edge—close but no longer complete. The absence of the mate pull made every ordinary touch feel like a reminder of what I had destroyed.On the afternoon of the second day I tried to put distance between us anyway.While he was downstairs taking a call with the Beta, I dressed in loose clothes, packe
Mona POVThe pain did not stop when the bond snapped.It only changed shape.I lay on the bedroom floor with Alessandro’s arms locked around me, both of us shaking, both of us struggling to breathe through the raw, open wound where the mate pull used to live. Every heartbeat felt wrong. My wolf was silent in a way that terrified me more than her earlier screaming. The claim mark on my thigh had gone dull and cold, like something vital had been drained out of it.Alessandro’s chest heaved against my back. His voice, when it finally came, was wrecked and furious.“You had no right.”I couldn’t answer. The rejection sickness was already settling into my bones—nausea, weakness, a deep bone-deep ache that made even lying still hurt. Tears kept leaking from the corners of my eyes no matter how hard I tried to stop them.He shifted us carefully until I was on my back and he was braced over me, still trembling. His eyes were bloodshot and gold-rimmed with pain. When he spoke again the anger w
Mona POVI waited until the first gray light of morning filtered through the curtains.Alessandro still slept deeply beside me, one arm thrown across my waist, his face turned toward my shoulder. The claim mark on my thigh pulsed quietly under the sheet. Every part of my body still carried the memory of him. That was what made the next part so hard.I slipped out from under his arm carefully. He stirred but didn’t wake. I stood at the edge of the bed, bare feet on the cold floor, and looked at him for a long time. The witch’s words sat in my chest like a blade.*If you love him, let him go the only way that will keep him alive.*My wolf began to growl the moment I formed the intention. She knew. She had always known he was hers. Forcing the words out felt like tearing something vital out of my own ribs.I closed my eyes.“I reject the bond.”The first wave of pain dropped me to my knees.It was not sharp. It was total—an agonizing, full-body rupture that started at the center of my ch
Mona POVI fell asleep still feeling him inside me.Alessandro had carried me upstairs after the kitchen, cleaned me with a warm cloth, and pulled me against his chest like he could physically stop the world from reaching us. His breathing had eventually evened out. Mine never did. The fear I had tried to bury under his refusal kept rising every time I closed my eyes.When sleep finally took me, the dream was waiting.The chapel was colder than before. The broken stained-glass windows let in a harsh white light that didn’t belong to any moon I knew. The witch stood in the center of the cracked floor, black coat hanging still in air that had no wind. Her eyes were the same endless dark.“You tried to leave him,” she said. Not a question.I wrapped my arms around myself even though this body was only a dream. “I was trying to protect him.”“And he refused. Of course he did. The bond is real. It has its claws in both of you now.” She tilted her head. “But real things can still destroy th







