Severed Ties Novels & Stories

[Sera] Liora didn't sit. She leaned against the wall opposite the ICU window and crossed her arms. The cat settled on the floor between us like a referee. "His wolf isn't dead," she said. "Dead would be simpler. What happened is worse. It shattered. The trauma, on top of months of depletion, broke it into fragments. Those fragments are scattered through the residual channels of your old bond." "Our bond was severed. I was there. You were the one who severed it."

Severing more. One hundred bonds cut. One-fifty. Two hundred. The network screamed. Lyra screamed. We screamed. And then—silence. Every bond. Gone. Severed. Dead. The network collapsed. Completely. Utterly. I fell to my knees. The emptiness crushing me. The absence destroying me. Beside me, Kade collapsed too. His hand still in mine. The mate bond the only connection left. Everything else. Everyone else. Gone. "No," I whispered. "No no no no—"

“Valkyrie, maybe now isn’t—” “No,” I snapped, turning to her with desperation clawing at my chest. “I need to know.” I turned back to him. “Did the ritual… fail?” His hands clenched at his sides. “The bond is still severed.” His voice was clipped, detached. The words hit me. Still severed? I shook my head, my body trembling. "No… that’s not possible.” “I don’t know how it happened,” he said, his tone strained, as if forcing himself to remain calm. “But it’s gone, Valkyrie.”

I clung to him, pouring all my relief, fear, and love into that moment. When we broke apart, Mason rested his forehead against mine. “It’s over,” he repeated, as if trying to convince himself, too. I nodded, my fingers tightening around his. “Then let’s go home.” For the first time in a long time, Mason smiled. A real, unguarded smile. “Yeah,” he murmured, lacing his fingers through mine. “Let’s go home.” The drive back to Mason’s apartment was quiet, but not in the way that made me anxious. It was a silence filled with unspoken understanding, the kind that came after surviving something life-altering. I sat close to Mason, our hands loosely intertwined as he drove through the empty streets.

“They’re breaking apart again. Prime’s coming this way!” Sure enough, Unit Prime had torn itself free from the Forsaken and was charging after us, moving with terrifying determination despite missing an arm and half its body. “Primary Alpha target acquired,” it said. “Emotional bonds will be severed.” Liora stopped suddenly and turned. “You want to sever our bond? Come try it, you heartless piece of shit!” Prime changed direction toward her. I had to intercept, slamming my good shoulder into its chest. We crashed to the ground in a heap of claws and fury.

I said ruthlessly, "You forget? The severance decree. Signed by your hand. It was sealed with the blood of your pup." "Lies repeated," I added softly, "risk becoming truth. You wouldn't want the Moon Goddess to hear... and grant you that poisoned decay you faked, would you?" His golden eyes dilated, the frantic hope within them guttering out like a dying ember under my frozen stare. The bonding ceremony proceeded, but as Terrence convulsed under the despair of losing me, a torrent of dark, steaming blood erupted from his jaws. Fur bristled along his spine like shattered quills before he collapsed, half-shifted and twitching, dragged bodily from my bonding ceremony like felled prey.

I was screaming at the overwhelming pleasure as he focuses on the spot I told him. There is a shift in the scenes again. I am telling him again that we need to separate because my presence in his life is doing more harm than good in the meantime. I will also stop teaching because of what happened between us. Yet, he snaps with a, ‘Your mate is no longer the Duran King.’ ‘I know.’ ‘Why would you know that? Did you get a hold of him?’ ‘Because my mate's bond with him got severed yesterday. And it’s not due to death.’

“You don’t get to leave like this. You don’t get to vanish into a law and call it destiny.” ​ ​My chest burned with a sudden, fierce heat. “Then we don’t let it lock.” ​“You heard the system,” he reminded me. “Severance was marked irreversible.” ​“I don’t care what it marked,” I said. “It marked us impossible once too, and yet here we are.” ​​I clutched my chest, feeling the tension. “I feel you. You’re holding on. You isn't gone.” ​The man’s eyes widened as he looked at me. “The bond is still under tension. That means... he’s resisting the integration.”

" I am cutting ties you, " " From now on, you and I shall have nothing to do with each other." The blade was already pressed on my wrist as I stated, ready to complete the blood tie severing ritual " I am sorry. "

The sound echoed with finality. "It's done," he announced, sliding the two severance certificates toward us. "You are now officially unbound." Aaron and I stared at our respective certificates, neither of us immediately reaching for them. Mine lay before me, the black ink stark against the cream-colored paper. Such a simple document to represent the end of something so complex. I felt a strange tingling across my skin as the mate bond magic dissolved completely, severing the last threads that had connected us. My hand moved unconsciously to my shoulder where Aaron's mark had been, now fading to nothing.