Masuk~Axel’s POV~“I’m still waiting for it.”I frowned, glancing sideways at Lolo, who was flying steady at my shoulder like she had appointed herself my personal conscience for this leg of the walk. “Waiting for what, exactly?”“The reason that actually makes sense for why you abandoned her at her lowest. For five whole months.”The frown dug in deeper. “Didn’t you hear me before? She lied to me from the start. Destroyed the mating bond. And she was going to keep lying, keep pretending, if I hadn’t found out the truth myself.”“Everything you just said was noise in my ear, because the part that actually landed was this: you took her virginity. That part I’m not blaming you for, obviously there was a full moon involved and it was consensual. But then she told you that she was thrown out the very next morning, by a man who made it sound like you saw her as nothing more than a whore. So she did what she had to do to protect herself. She had no idea the damage the suppression spell would ca
~Axel’s POV~“Should we wake him?”“And how exactly do you propose we do that? Tap him with your hands and say, ‘hey there, welcome back’?” A different voice answered, female, dry, something about it tugging at a recognition I couldn’t quite place through the fog still sitting thick behind my eyes. I tried to force them open, because right now all I could register was darkness, so surely they had to be closed. Right?And who, exactly, were the two voices doing all the talking?The first one picked up right where it left off. “You know, sometimes, Lolo, you really hurt my feelings with your words.”Weirdly, I recognized that voice too but still couldn’t place either of them. And still, infuriatingly, my eyes wouldn’t open.“I wouldn’t have to hurt your feelings if you didn’t ask stupid questions, Bob.”It clicked all at once.Bob? BOB?Whatever had dragged me back to this place had to be joking, because there was no version of reality where it made sense to bring me back to deal with
~Amber’s POV~What the hell just ha—‘I swear, if you even try to finish that stupid statement when it is very obvious that you were not only stabbed in the back by that bastard but in the front and every other place altogether, I will make it possible to tear myself out of you, stand in front of you, and give you the well-deserved slap you have coming. Because what the actual hell, Amber?’The force behind her voice, my voice, inside my own head was so strong it felt like she wasn’t me at all anymore. Wasn’t the reactive part that had spent months learning to recede into the background through everything that had happened, especially since I had become Queen. And unfortunately for me, she wasn’t wrong about a single word of it.But I deserved more than a slap. What I deserved was an outright beating, preferably to a pulp, and right there, like she had heard the thought, she picked the thread back up.‘You didn’t see the betrayal coming. That is the only part of this you have any ri
~Amber’s POV~“I don’t need to tell you how bad this is, do I?”Of all the times Councilman Xander had earned the right to snap at me, to let every ounce of hostility I had grown used to from him finally boil over, this would have been the moment. Because I had fucked up. I had royally, catastrophically fucked up. And yet the question came out of him almost gentle, stripped of the usual edge, like even he understood there wasn’t room for pettiness in whatever this had become.I didn’t get the chance to answer. The screech of tires cutting hard against stone tore through the courtyard before I could form a single word, and the man responsible for driving that recklessly was already out of the car and closing the distance toward us. I knew, in some distant corner of my mind still functioning properly, that he was an Alpha — I could feel it radiating off him even from here, but with everything in my head this disordered, I couldn’t have told which pack, or pulled his name out of the wre
~Amber’s POV~It felt like there hadn’t been a single point in my life when I wasn’t crying. I couldn’t even trace where the tears kept coming from anymore, because people always said that eventually a person cried themselves out, that grief had a bottom, that at some point the body simply ran dry.But I hadn’t. The tears were endless. The pain sitting in my chest was endless, and with every breath I took, it felt like something inside me was clenching tighter instead of loosening at all.A knock sounded against the door of my study, and through the blur of it I managed to get out, “I said I didn’t want to be disturbed. Whatever it is can wait. Just leave.”I expected footsteps retreating but what I got instead was the door swinging open.Roxanne, who had gone curled up in pain the moment I sunk the needle into him, and despite the blinding need I felt from her to fight against what I had done, hadn’t — had just curled up in pain and gone quiet all through this finally rose up and
~Amber’s POV~There wasn’t a need to ask, because I wouldn’t get an answer when I know that there was absolutely no one the question was directed at, but now, even more than the more than ever I needed before, I needed someone from those non-existent people I usually asked to materialize and shake me out of it.Or if not, I was still waiting for something to happen to show that this wasn’t just happening. That if I closed my eyes and opened them again, I’d be back in bed with him, and I wouldn’t have had to do the one thing that had shattered something in my chest I didn’t think could be put back together.I wouldn’t have had to fill a vial with silver, potent enough to do real damage, and empty it into him while he slept. I wouldn’t have had to call for Thomas and his most trusted warrior to carry him down here while I followed behind them like I was walking through someone else’s nightmare instead of my own life.I hadn’t slept at all. I had sat outside these bars all night, watch
~Axel’s POV~ Clicking.“Axel, I don’t—”Harder clicking.“It all just happened. I don’t know what—”My fingers ran through the keys of the laptop with even harder intensity, trying to drown out the rest of his words like I had been doing for the past five minutes, but this time my hand went right
~Amber’s POV~ My eyes narrowed, heat crawling up my neck. “Excuse me?”She didn’t even blink and went on as if she had not heard me. “And you were just about to storm out of here and prove my point. All I’m trying to do is get a better understanding so I can give you the best advice and get back t
~Amber’s POV~Shit. Shit. Shit.Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.That was a lot of cursing going through my head but it was all my brain could work up as I tried to turn Axel Edgewood over.Axel Edgewood who had just slumped to the ground with the growing chaos sounding outside that sounded like it was getting lo
~Amber’s POV~“I need you to suppress my wolf.”Never in my life had I thought there would be a time when those exact words would leave my lips, nor did I think that they would be the first words I would say to the man I hadn’t seen for three years.Surprise flashed across his face before it gave w







