Elena’s POV
I was jolted awake in the dead of night by a searing, burning agony ripping through my chest. The pillow was soaked through with my tears by the ti the worst of it passed. I crawled to the bathroom. I did not trust my legs to stand. Under the flickering bulb, I lifted the hem of my t-shirt with shaking fingers.
A bruise had blood below my ribs. Deep blue, almost black at the center, fading to a sick green at the edges. And in the middle of it, a split in the skin. Small. Weeping a thin, clear fluid tinged pink.
I hadn’t fallen on anything. Nothing had hit there.
I knew what this was.
I knew exactly what this was.
Tara whimpered inside my chest, a small broken sound, and I did not have the strength to shush her.
Sowhere, in so bed in so big clean room, Alpha Marcus had put his hands on Viviana. And the mate bond, the one he refused to honor, refused to break, had taken the brutal physical toll of his betrayal out on my body. My skin. My bones. My ribs.
I pressed my palm flat against the weeping wound and breathed through my teeth.
If I did this to him, he would kill . Publicly. As an example. A low-pack girl who dared to bleed her Alpha from the inside out.
I opened the cabinet under the sink. A half-roll of gauze. A strip of dical tape curled at the end. I dressed the wound the way my father used to dress mine when I was small and bled too easily. Fold. Wrap. Tape. Don’t cry where anyone can hear you.
I pulled my shirt down and went back to the couch.
I did not sleep again.
The sky was gray when I heard my mother moving in the kitchen. The kettle. A spoon against a mug. The soft sound of her sitting down in the chair that creaked.
I smoothed my expression into sothing neutral before I sat up.
“Morning.”
“Morning, baby.”
She was already dressed, looking utterly exhausted. The skin under her eyes was the color of old paper.
“Mom,” I said, watching her carefully. “You’re heading out to work again? Which one of your twelve different jobs is it today?”
She tried to smile, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “The diner this morning. Then the motel. Then Seraph tonight, if my feet hold.”
“Mom...”
“Don’t, Elena.”
She wouldn’t look at . She lifted her mug and held it to her mouth without drinking.
“I have so news,” she said finally. “I wasn’t going to tell you this morning, but you should know.”
“Know what.”
“Alpha Marcus raised the rent on this rotting trailer last week.”
Sothing cold slid down my back.
“How much.”
She swallowed hard.
“Twelve hundred a month.”
The mug almost slipped out of my hand.
“Twelve hundred?”
“Yes.”
“For this?” I gestured angrily at the walls. The cracked linoleum. The water stain in the ceiling over the stove. “He is an absolute bastard, Mom! An absolute—”
“Elena, keep your voice down,” she urged, reaching across the table to grab my wrist.
“There are no neighbors for miles.”
“There are always neighbors. And you know the Werewolf Council ignores complaints from anyone below the oga rank.” Her eyes were wet with unshed tears. “Just give a little more ti. Please. Give a little more ti to figure out an escape plan before I drive you to school with that limp.”
I looked at my injured ankle, then back at her exhausted face.
“You’ll be late,” I said softly. “I’ll walk.”
She kissed my forehead. “I love you.”
“I know, Mom.”
The door closed.
I walked on an ankle that had no business holding up, and every step sent a small dull knife into the wound under my ribs. By the ti I reached the school parking lot, sweat had soaked through the back of my shirt.
I saw him before I was through the doors. Beta Hugo. Standing at the entrance like a strict guard dog.
He fell into step beside without a word as I walked into my first classroom.
“No,” I said uneasily.
“Alpha’s orders,” Hugo replied flatly. “And you should know, Alpha Marcus is watching you through the school’s security caras right now.”
I stopped, the wound under my shirt throbbing with a sickening heat.
“Then tell him sothing for ,” I whispered bitterly. “Since you can mind-link him so easily.”
Hugo’s face didn’t change.
“Tell him,” I said, my voice dripping with pain and venom, “if I am still his mate, he needs to stop fucking his girlfriend.”
Hugo’s eyes went distant for half a second—the telltale sign of a wolf speaking inside his head to another.
Almost instantly, the heavy classroom door swung open.
Marcus stord in. He didn’t stop until his hand closed tightly around my arm. He dragged into an empty classroom next door. Hugo followed, stepping into the doorway and putting his back to it, guarding the exit.
Marcus let go of my arm, turning on . His eyes flashed dangerously.
“Are you spying on ?” he demanded. “Explain how else you would know.”
As my only answer, I let out a mocking scoff and lifted the hem of my shirt.
I peeled the gauze down just enough. I didn’t look at it; I just watched his face. The dark, agonizing bruise and the weeping wound were undeniable proof of what the mate bond was telling .
His jaw dropped slightly. For one fleeting breath, a flash of genuine guilt crossed his face as he stared at the physical toll his actions had taken.
But just as quickly, his expression hardened into coldness.
“Viviana isn’t going anywhere,” he announced coldly, before turning on his heel and leaving the room.
For the rest of the day, Hugo sat next to in every single class. At lunch, he stood nearby, watching eat alone outside. The bruise under my shirt burned every ti I moved.
During the last period, I was called down to the office. The receptionist handed the phone with a grim expression.
I pressed it to my ear.
“Elena, this is your mother’s supervisor at the diner. Your mother collapsed during her shift, and an ambulance just took her to the hospital.”
The phone slipped from my fingers, clattering loudly against the floor. I sprinted out of the office, dashed down the hallway, and burst through the front doors into the bright afternoon sunlight, completely ignoring the sharp bursts of agonizing pain shooting up from my injured ankle.
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