THEA POV
Year One: Learning to Scream Silently
I was dying and no one noticed.
Not my parents, who stopped looking at me entirely after the mating ceremony. Not the pack members who whispered about "poor Thea, always in her sister's shadow." Not even Dane, who walked past me like I was furniture.
The only one who knew was Briar.
"Drink this," the Omega healer said, pressing a steaming cup into my shaking hands. We sat in her cottage on the pack's border—the only place I could breathe anymore. "It'll dull the bond pain for a few hours."
I drank without tasting it. Nothing could truly dull the pain. The mate bond burned constantly now, a live wire wrapped around my heart. And through it, I felt everything.
Right now, Dane was with Sable. Laughing at something she said. His happiness flooded through our connection like acid in my veins.
"It's getting worse, isn't it?" Briar's violet eyes were full of sympathy. "The bond."
"He loves her," I whispered. "Every day, he loves her more. And I feel all of it."
"That shouldn't be possible." Briar had said this a hundred times, always with the same confused expression. "One-sided mate bonds don't exist. If you feel him, he should feel you. Unless..."
"Unless what?"
"Unless someone's blocking the connection on his end." Briar bit her lip. "Dark magic could do that. Blood magic."
My sister's face flashed through my mind. The drink she'd given me the night of the Lunar Gathering. The bitter taste underneath the cherries.
But I said nothing. Who would believe me? I was just the spare daughter, the one nobody wanted.
That night, I ran into the forest and screamed until my throat bled.
Year Two: When Food Stops Mattering
"Eat something, Thea."
Briar pushed a plate toward me but I couldn't look at it. Food meant nothing when your insides were on fire. I'd lost thirty pounds over the past year. My clothes hung off me like sacks.
"I can't," I said. "When I eat, I feel sick. The bond—it's like he's rejecting me on a cellular level even though he doesn't know I exist."
"Your wolf is fading." Briar's hand glowed softly as she examined me with her healing gifts. "Tempest is starving herself because her mate won't acknowledge her. If this continues—"
"I'll die. I know." I'd accepted that months ago. Wolves couldn't survive long-term one-sided mate bonds. The rejection would eventually kill me.
Maybe that would be easier.
At home, my parents pretended I didn't exist. Father gave all the important Beta tasks to assistants, leaving me to deliver messages like a servant. Mother planned elaborate parties for Sable and Dane, never asking if I wanted to attend.
Why would they? I was the daughter who'd tried to steal her sister's mate. The liar who'd claimed a bond that didn't exist.
That's what they'd convinced themselves of. That's what the whole pack believed.
Only Briar knew the truth. And she was an outcast—no one would listen to her either.
"Still no mate?" Sable asked one morning, her voice dripping false concern. We passed each other in the pack house hallway. She glowed with health and happiness while I looked like death. "Maybe you're defective, Thea. Maybe the Moon Goddess simply forgot about you."
Each word was a knife between my ribs.
Through the bond, I felt Dane kiss her goodbye before leaving for patrol. Felt his affection, his satisfaction, his complete contentment with the life they'd built.
He didn't feel empty like I did. Didn't feel like half his soul was missing.
Because he thought he'd found his whole soul in Sable.
I made it to the forest before I started sobbing.
Year Three: The Night I Almost Gave Up
Twenty-one years old and I wanted to die.
The bond had evolved into something monstrous over three years. Now I didn't just feel Dane's emotions—I felt physical sensations too. When Sable touched him, my skin burned. When they were intimate, I experienced echoes of everything.
It was torture beyond description.
"Your wolf is almost gone," Briar said during one of our meetings. Her face was pale with fear. "Thea, Tempest hasn't spoken in weeks. If she fades completely, you'll go feral or die. You have to tell someone. Tell Dane!"
"And say what?" I laughed bitterly. "Hi, Alpha, I'm actually your mate but you can't feel me because someone cursed our bond? Oh, and by the way, I've been suffering for three years while you've been happily married to my sister?"
"Yes! Exactly that!"
"He'd never believe me. I'm nothing to him, Briar. Less than nothing."
That night, I stood at the edge of the cliff overlooking the pack's northern border. The drop was fifty feet onto rocks. Quick. Painless.
Final.
Do it, a voice whispered in my head. Not Tempest—she was too weak to speak anymore. This was my own despair talking. End the pain. He'll never know. He'll never care.
I stepped closer to the edge.
Through the bond, I felt Dane laughing. Happy. Complete. Living his perfect life with his perfect Luna while I dissolved into nothing.
"Moon Goddess," I whispered to the uncaring stars. "Why? Why did you curse me with a mate who belongs to my sister? Why give me this bond only to let it destroy me? What did I do to deserve this?"
The stars didn't answer. They never did.
I closed my eyes and stepped forward—
Hands grabbed me from behind, yanking me back from the edge.
"No!" Briar's voice was fierce. "I won't let you do this!"
"Let me go!" I struggled but I was too weak. Three years of starvation and bond-pain had left me fragile. "Please, Briar. I can't do this anymore. Every day is agony. Every single day I feel him loving her and it's killing me!"
"Then we make him see!" Briar shook me hard. "We find proof of the curse. We force the truth into the open. But you don't get to give up, Thea Calloway. You're stronger than this."
"I'm not strong. I'm broken."
"You've survived three years of what would kill most wolves in three months. That's not broken." Briar's eyes blazed. "That's powerful. You're powerful, even if you can't see it yet."
I wanted to believe her. Wanted to think I had power, had worth, had any reason to keep breathing.
But all I felt was empty.
Briar dragged me back to her cottage and forced healing herbs down my throat. Made me promise not to try again. Made me swear I'd hold on just a little longer.
I promised, even though I wasn't sure I could keep it.
That night, wrapped in blankets in Briar's spare room, I felt Dane through the bond. He was standing outside, staring at the moon. And for the first time in three years, I felt something new from him.
Confusion. Doubt. A faint, distant pain in his chest that matched mine.
Was he finally starting to feel something wrong?
Or was I imagining it because I was so desperate for any sign that our bond meant something?
Through my haze of exhaustion, I heard voices outside Briar's cottage. Urgent voices.
"—found her scent trail leading to the cliff—"
"—blood on the rocks, we think she jumped—"
"—search the river, she can't have survived—"
Wait.
They thought I'd jumped. They thought I was dead.
And then I heard my father's voice, cold and relieved: "Good. It's better this way. The family is finally free of that burden."
My own father. Relieved I was dead.
Something inside me shattered completely.
Or maybe... maybe it reformed into something harder.
Something angry.