Chapter Five

Chapter Five

POV: Sera Ashwood

I had not slept a single minute and I was not even going to pretend otherwise.

I was lying on this bed staring at this ceiling with Damien's proposal sitting on my chest and Kael's rejection sitting right beside it and the two of them together were doing absolutely nothing good for my mental state at six in the morning. The mate bond was still there, that was the thing nobody warned me about, rejection does not kill it, it just leaves it there bleeding at the edges, reminding you every single second of exactly what you lost and who took it from you.

Everything kept ringing through my head. Maybe he had the so called lady already and yes, that was his fucking excuse for rejecting me now. Putting me out like that in front of everyone. That was his loss anyway!

I rubbed my two eyes. It was morning already. I had to make it productive and not waste it thinking about someone who did not even think twice before rejecting me. Seraphine! Wasn't that crazy? After everything we shared from childhood. Every single thing we had been through together and he stood in that clearing and looked me dead in my face and said those words like I was nothing to him. Like twenty years of knowing each other meant absolutely nothing.

Then the news that had been sitting at the back of my mind since last night pushed itself right to the front where I could not ignore it anymore.

He got mated yesterday.

One single day. He rejected me and went straight back to his pack and bonded with someone else the very next day like the whole thing had been planned before he even walked into that clearing. Like I was just something he needed to cross off a list before he could get back to his real life. And the most painful part was not even the speed of it. It was the fact that he had clearly been ready. You do not bond with someone the day after a rejection unless that someone was already waiting. Unless they had always been waiting. Unless you had already made your decision long before you walked into that clearing and opened your mouth.

So what was I then? A problem he needed to handle publicly before he could go home to what he actually wanted?

"He must be so happy now," I said out loud to nobody, to the empty ceiling, to the morning air that did not care either way, and I laughed at myself because what else was I supposed to do with that information at six in the morning while lying alone in my bed with a proposal I had not answered yet sitting on my chest.

I sat up and pressed both palms flat against my eyes and breathed through it. The hollow space where the mate bond used to sit fully was doing that thing it did at night where it just ached without stopping, this low constant reminder of exactly what that clearing had cost me, and I was so tired of feeling it, so completely tired of waking up every morning and having it be the first thing my body registered before I had even opened my eyes properly.

He probably loved her the whole time. That was what I kept coming back to. The mate bond was just an inconvenience standing between him and the woman he had already chosen, and I was too powerful, too much, so he crushed me down in front of five hundred people so she would never have to worry about standing in my shadow.

That was his loss. Completely and entirely his loss and I was done, I was absolutely done, letting it eat my morning alive.

I threw the blanket off and stood up and went to the window and let the cold air slap me properly in the face and told myself today was about Damien's answer and nothing else and that was exactly when the knock came.

"My lady," Mira said from the doorway, already wearing that careful rehearsed expression she put on when the news was not going to land easily. "There are visitors downstairs. They came early. They are asking for your hand."

I stared at her.

"How many?"

"Three, my lady."

Three men. Before the sun had even finished rising. Assembled with their formal gifts and their carefully constructed speeches, ready to negotiate my entire future before I had looked at myself in the mirror even once, and somewhere across the territory Kael Dravon was waking up beside his chosen woman without a single thought in his head about any of this.

I almost laughed again.

"Tell them I will be down," I said.

The first two were exactly what I expected. Senior representatives from outer pack families with rehearsed speeches about alliance and strength and what my willing bond would mean for the right household. I sat across from them with my back straight and my face giving away absolutely nothing and I let them finish because my father raised me with manners even when manners were not deserved, and when they were done I told them both plainly and without cruelty that I was not available and showed them to the door myself.

The third one I heard before I saw.

That laugh. Low and performative and designed for rooms, designed to make whoever was listening feel like they had said something uniquely clever. I knew that laugh. I had been hearing it since I was fifteen years old in the corridors of the Alpha academy and it had never once in all that time meant anything good for whoever it was directed at.

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

Reuel Ashton was standing in my front room with a bouquet of white blooms in one hand and the smile of a man who had never once in his life genuinely considered that he might not be welcome somewhere, wearing formal visiting robes like this was a dignified occasion, like he had not spent three years of academy making my life significantly harder than it needed to be simply because he could and nobody stopped him.

He saw me and spread his arms wide like I was supposed to be thrilled about this.

"Seraphine, you look absolutely extraordinary."

"What are you doing in my house Reuel."

It was not a question. He answered it like one anyway, stepping forward with that unearned confidence of his, something about genuine connection and meaningful friendship and how he had thought about me often since the academy, and I stood there at the bottom of those stairs and let him finish every single word of it and then I said,

"The same way you thought about Priya Venn before you moved straight on to her sister? That kind of thinking about someone?"

Something shifted in his face. Not shame, men like Reuel did not do shame, but a recalibration, a slight adjustment of approach.

"That was years ago," he said. "People change, Seraphine."

"My answer is no," I said, picking up my wrap from the side table and moving toward the door. "Show yourself out."

I was two strides down the path when his hand closed around my wrist and spun me back around and suddenly we were face to face and close enough that I could see the exact moment his expression dropped the charm entirely and became something considerably less comfortable to look at.

"Remember you once loved me right?" His voice was low and entirely too certain of itself. "You once wished you could have me and now I am here coming to you myself and you are just walking away? How easy do you think that is for me? I want you now and I am getting you."

I pulled my wrist from his grip hard enough that he actually stumbled backward and I looked at him with every single thing I was feeling sitting right behind my eyes and said,

"Suit yourself. Stay as long as you want. I will not be here."

I turned and walked and did not look back once.