Lyra
“I’m going to die soon, Kael,” I croaked. “I want to see you.”
Kael’s voice came back through the phone, and I could practically hear his sneer. “Why don’t you call me when you’re really dead?”
A metallic tang coated my tongue. A mouthful of blood bubbled up, and I squeezed my eyes shut, swallowing it down with effort.
“Kael, I really am—”
“That’s enough, Lyra. I’m tired of these childish games of yours. I have the Alpha inheritance ceremony to prepare for and I have no time for your bullshit.”
Before I could answer, the line went dead. Hot tears continued their steady path down my cheeks.
My fated mate was going to let me die, and there was nothing I could do about it.
With trembling fingers, I set aside my phone and drew in a ragged breath. Each inhale was like glass cutting the inside of my throat, and when I tried to sit up, a cry ripped through me from the sudden pain.
I fell back onto the pillows and squeezed my eyes shut.
Ten years.
Ten years I had loved Kael.
But he never felt the same way. It didn’t matter to him if we were fated mates. It didn’t matter now, at twenty-three, that we had been married for five years—long enough for most couples to know they truly loved each other, perhaps even have a family.
For five years, I had completely devoted myself to him as his wife. And what did I get in return?
Not his heart, but rather lungfuls of blood and excruciating pain on our wedding bed.
I was going to die Wolfless and alone and completely unwanted.
After everything Kael and I had been through together, he still only saw me as a burden.
At thirteen, my entire family—my entire pack, Silvercrest—was slaughtered right in front of my eyes. I was the sole survivor, found running through the forest, barefoot, my nightgown covered in blood and ash.
Kael had been the one to find me. Kael had been the one to take me home. Kael’s family had adopted me, and Kael had been the one to stay by my side throughout all of the nightmares.
He had pulled me out of the shadows, and I had fallen for him because of it.
I never thought that he would be the one to shove me back into that dark abyss.
But that was my own damn fault, wasn’t it? Kael had been kind at first, but he had shown increasing disdain for me over the years, treating me as more of a nuisance than the frightened girl he had rescued.
And yet, even as his hatred for me grew, I continued to bend over backwards to please him. Even when it cost me my own dignity, I thought that if I could just be perfect, then he would accept me as his mate.
But Kael didn’t want a wolfless mate. Especially not when he was supposed to become the next Alpha of the Northern Territories.
The King of the North, they would call him. Those were big shoes to fill.
And a Luna with no wolf? That was the biggest disgrace for a man like him.
After discovering that we were fated mates, Kael reluctantly married me, but only because of his parents’ pressure. He forbade me from revealing our relationship to anyone and treated me like a stranger even though we were wed.
For five years, that became my new reality: being distant from my husband, trying desperately to gain his approval, and never being enough.
And then two weeks ago came.
Kael would inherit the Northern Territories on his twenty-fifth birthday. It was a momentous occasion, one that couldn’t be ruined by anything.
Not even by me.
He put me under house arrest to keep anyone from finding out about me. Locked me away like a disgrace and forbade me from attending his crowning ceremony. That was when my health began to fade.
My body began to fail me. My organs stopped functioning properly, my bones and muscles started to deteriorate, and soon, I could hardly get out of bed.
No doctors came. No matter how many times I begged Kael for help, he refused to listen; he said that I was lying, that I wasn’t sick, that I just wanted attention.
I think he just wanted me to die so he could marry Bianca.
Bianca.
Just thinking her name made my stomach twist violently, another wave of pain washing over me.
