My Mate’s Cruelest Festival Shattered Our Bond

I pushed open the door to my dorm room. It was empty.My roommates were still at the festival, still buzzing from the "amazing show."I walked to the bathroom mirror.The reflection made me freeze.My once-glorious golden hair was now a butchered mess.Patches were sheared down to the scalp, leaving nothing but prickly stubble.Other strands hung in long, awkward clumps, dull and lifeless under the lights.I looked like a pathetic, ridiculous clown.My stomach churned. I gripped the cold sink, took a deep breath, and forced the nausea down.Fighting the urge to cry, I opened my closet and pulled out my largest duffel bag, laying it on the floor.I started packing.One item.Then another. And another.Clothes, folded neatly.Books, stacked evenly.Toiletries, packed into a waterproof pouch.My movements were steady and methodical. Just like the countless times over the last eighteen years I’d cleaned up Damon's messy rooms and picked up his discarded training gear.I had blocked our min

My car flew down the highway, the road stretching into the distance.The world outside was a blur—mountains, sky, everything smearing into a stream of color.Just like my life at the academy, torn out by the roots, and the eighteen years that came before it.I didn't cry. I didn't even feel much sadness.There was just a hollow space inside me, like someone had carved out a piece of me and left the wound exposed to a cold, numbing wind.My phone had been vibrating on the passenger seat for a long time. I didn't pick it up.I knew it was Damon. No one else would be trying to reach me so desperately.I leaned my head against the window, looking at my reflection in the glass.The butchered, animal-chewed hair was ugly and ridiculous, but it also gave me a sense of clarity I'd never had before.How much had I given, how much had I endured, just to maintain my relationship with Damon?He was arrogant and always getting into trouble. I was always there to clean up his messes.He slacked off

Damon's POVThe moment I walked through the door, I knew a storm was brewing. The air was thick with my father's rage.Alpha Marcus stood in the center of the living room, his back to me.He was an immovable mountain, his presence radiating a suffocating pressure."Father, I—"CRACK!A sharp slap cut me off.My head snapped to the side, my cheek burning. That was the full force of a Prime Alpha. My ears screamed."You have the nerve to come back?"My father's voice was like thunder.I held my cheek, staring at him in disbelief. He had never, not once in my life, hit me."Do you know what you've done?" His eyes were burning with fury. "You fool!""Father, I was just—""Just what?" he roared, cutting me off. "Just humiliated your fated mate? Just to impress some rival Alpha's daughter? Just held her down and cut her hair with silver?"Each question was a knife twisting in my gut, but I still tried to defend myself."It was just a game! For the alliance—""A game?" My father's voice went

Damon's POVThe pain of the severed mate bond was so intense I could barely stand.I was sprawled on the stone steps of Elena's house, gasping for air. My chest felt like a hollow, gaping wound.Empty. Cold. Hopeless.I don't know how long I lay there. Minutes, maybe hours.Neighbors started peeking out their windows, pointing and whispering.I forced myself to my feet and staggered toward my car.I had to go home. I had to report this catastrophic failure to my father.I drove slowly, my hands trembling on the steering wheel.My Alpha power was raging inside me, unstable and volatile without the balance of my mate. My wolf was restless and feral, mourning its loss.When I pushed open the door, the living room was dead silent.My father sat on the sofa, his back ramrod straight. My mother stood beside him, her eyes red and puffy.The moment they saw me, they knew."You failed?" My father's voice was terrifyingly calm.I nodded."She rejected me," I whispered, my voice raw. "The bond is