Chapter 1

Three months after Adrian returned, he completed the acquisition of my family's company.

With the business ruined, my father went to beg him for mercy.

"Adrian, for old times' sake, please. Have mercy on me."

Adrian crouched down in front of him with a cold smile.

"When you came to my school and called me low-born—when you said a man whose inner wolf had barely awakened wasn't worthy of your daughter and forced me to drop out—did you ever think of showing me mercy?"

"I heard your creditors found you. They said if you can't pay them back, they'll cut off both your hands."

My father panicked. Pride forgotten, he pleaded in a low voice.

"Mr. Shaw, we were family once. For Grace's sake, please save me."

At the sound of my name, Adrian's expression turned ice-cold.

"Grace Carter? How could I ever forget her?"

"You and your daughter are exactly the same. Faithless, heartless people."

Adrian tossed his phone onto the floor in front of my father.

"You want me to save you? Then tell Grace Carter to come and ask me herself."

My father held the phone in trembling hands.

"I don't know where she is. I can't find her either."

"I've been looking for her for years, and I still can't find her."

My father broke down in front of everyone, sobbing openly.

Adrian was unmoved.

"You're still the same as ever. You can't bear to see your daughter suffer even a little."

"But putting on this little performance won't help you."

His voice hardened.

"When I find Grace Carter, I'll have a generous gift waiting for the two of you."

With that, Adrian waved for his men to drag my father away.

"Do whatever you want to him. Just keep him alive. I still have a use for him."

My father tried to shout, but one of the bodyguards reached out.

Crack.

His jaw was dislocated.

I tried to shove those men away, but my translucent arms passed straight through their bodies.

I tried to follow, but it was as if some invisible force had trapped my soul. No matter what I did, I could not leave Adrian's side.

Watching him stand there, outwardly calm and inwardly consumed by hatred, hurt me in a way I no longer had a body to contain.

The gentle man I had once known had become someone capable of this, and I could not pretend I had played no part in that change.

Back then, after his car accident, his inner wolf had also been badly injured. I was the one who brought another man to his hospital room.

I was also the one who said I wanted to sever our mate bond.

How could he not hate me?

Adrian took Hannah to a class reunion.

Adrian had become the most successful of their former classmates, and people crowded around him, eager to flatter him.

Someone asked, "I heard you're getting married?"

Adrian nodded.

"We're holding the mating ceremony on October first."

Hannah took his hand and smiled.

"Don't forget to come, everyone."

Their intertwined fingers hurt more than I wanted to admit.

In the end, someone else had taken the place beside him.

When I divorced him, all I had wanted was to put on a temporary act and fool my father.

Once I had the money to save Adrian's life, I planned to come back, tell him everything, and ask him to form the bond with me again.

But I never imagined that the day we signed the bond-severance papers would be the last time I ever saw him.

By the time we met again, I was dead, and five years of hatred stood between us.

Once the drinks had been flowing for a while, someone tactlessly brought me up.

"Back then, you and Grace Carter were so in love. She even got thrown out of her family for you. We all thought the two of you would last forever."

"Who would've thought that even a love like yours would lose to a childhood sweetheart in the end?"

Another classmate hurriedly cut the speaker off and apologized to Adrian.

For a split second, the color left Adrian's face. Then his expression smoothed over.

He smiled with practiced ease.

"Everyone misjudges someone sooner or later. Fortunately, it isn't too late to see certain people for who they really are."

Hannah smiled gently as well.

"I should thank Grace Carter too. If she hadn't severed the bond, I never would have had the chance to marry the person I love."

Adrian spoke calmly.

"By the way, Grace Carter and I still have some unfinished business. If any of you hear anything about her, come to me."

Someone across the table spoke up.

"I heard her father arranged for her to enter another mate bond with the eldest son of the Hayes family. After that, the two of them went abroad, and no one heard from her again."

"Grace borrowed quite a bit of money from me before she left. Now I don't even know where to find her to get it back."

That opened the floodgates. One person after another began calling me cold-blooded, selfish, and greedy.

Adrian sat off to one side and listened, occasionally adding a cutting remark of his own.

Of course.

Adrian should be glad to hear those things.

Adrian hated me.

He hated that I had promised to love him forever, then turned around and stood beside someone else.

He hated that, while he was barely clinging to life, I had brought my supposed new lover to his hospital room and forced him to sign the bond-severance papers.

In his heart, I was a liar, a piece of trash who had betrayed my fated mate.

I almost laughed at myself.

Maybe hatred had been easier for him to survive than the truth would have been.