Before the Queen: 6

Lira (POV)

I didn’t scream. I didn’t move. I simply watched. I watched her fingers curl around the edge of the table like she loved being taken where I should have stood. Watched the way his body flexed behind her—perfect, practiced. Familiar. Mine. I watched his rhythm falter once and twice, then still completely as he let out a low, guttural groan.

His body tensed. His fingers dug into her hips. And then… he came inside her. And I felt it. Through the bond. Like being set on fire from the inside. My heart didn’t just break. It tore. Like sinew from the bone. Like a scream forced inward until it curdled into something bloody. The bond—that cursed, pulsing tether—twisted in my chest, confused. Torn. It didn’t know who to answer to anymore.

They stayed like that, locked together like I was nothing more than thin air. But I still waited, waited until he was done, until his breath slowed.

Then he looked up and smiled.

“You’re early,” he said. Still panting. Still inside her. Like I’d just walked in on a conversation instead of him gutting me in slow motion.

I stared at him—at the sweat slicking his skin, the raw flush on his chest, the cock he’d buried in someone who wasn’t his mate. Me. At the bond mark on his throat that still ached in mine like a rusted hook.

I stepped forward, and each movement thundered in my skull like an earthquake. He didn’t flinch; he simply tucked himself back into his pants like we were just catching up after dinner.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “The bond will fix it.”

The girl turned her head, still panting, and smirked like she’d won something. Her lips were kiss-bitten, her throat bare—no mark that glowed like mine. But she looked over her shoulder and smirked, wide and sharp and practiced. Too sharp. Almost like she didn’t believe it either. Almost like she hoped I was the end of it.

My eyes darted from her to him. “You mean nothing.”

His smile cracked, but just for a breath. “Lira—”

I couldn’t breathe, not because he looked guilty or because he felt remorseful. He didn’t. He never fucking did, even when my mother was burned at the stake.

I could still feel the bond pulling at me, tugging like a hook lodged deep in my chest, dragging me toward him, as if my body hadn’t yet caught up with what my mind already knew.

Rejection only severs clean when both mates accept it—or when one of them dies. Draven? He smiled through it like it was a game. So, the bond clings. Infected. Half-dead. Still pulsing in the hollows of my chest like a bruise that won’t fade.

I despised that I could still feel him. I hated that my wolf whimpered inside me. A sick, twisted, shattered part of me still wanted him to apologize and to take him back.

I didn’t let that part speak; instead, I reached into the place where the bond burned, wrapped my fingers around it like barbed wire, and ripped it away. “I, Lira Velen, reject you, Draven Vale.” I didn’t shout; I didn’t feel the need to.

I felt the bond crack. Like something inside me snapped, it felt like tearing a nerve from the flesh, but I didn’t scream. I didn’t yell; instead, I bled.

We’d been bonded for almost a year. I thought I was his fated, his mate chosen by the Moon herself. But it wasn’t fate—it was fucking strategy. I found out three months ago. Three months of clawing through the lie. Of burning every time the bond twitched. Of feeling him somewhere else, buried in someone else. I rejected him, and he smiled like I’d just declared a game instead of war.

Draven didn’t rage; he didn’t beg. Instead, he grinned. Slow, wide like a blade drawing across the skin. “You’ll come back,” he says. “You always do.”