Shattered Bonds A Second Chance Mate (by Yui) novel Chapter 186

Chapter 186

Chapter 186

Morning tasted of cinnamon and warm bread.

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The kitchens had been kinder than sleep, and Monica had bullied me into one more spoon of honeyed oats “for the nerves,” which I ate obediently while Francesco, Alfonso and Marlow went over lists that looked like nets: names, hours, corners where rumor liked to coil.

Francesco’s thumb traced small, absent circles over my wrist as he read.

Every few breaths his gaze flicked to my face, as if to confirm the bond hadn’t lied and I was, in fact, still here. When he rose, he kissed my brow with a gentleness that always undoes me, then turned hard again to business with Marlow–steel sheathing silk.

“I’ll be in the manor grounds,” I told him, light as I could make it. “Fresh air. Mika’s getting restless.”

“Take Audrey,” he said, the command softened by love.

“Always,” Audrey answered before I could, already two steps behind me with that look that says don’t argue; I bite.

We left the clatter of plates and the murmured war–room voices, and the manor gave us its quieter bones— hallway, stair, a half–closed door where Julius and Bethany debated seedlings as if plants could be convinced by logic.

Outside, the air was cool and clear, carrying damp from the night and a faint drift of pine from the ridge. Lanterns along the path guttered in the lingering breeze, the flames thin and stubborn.

I didn’t aim for any particular destination. My feet found one.

Past the old laundry arch and the broken sundial the last Alpha never fixed, a narrow gate sulked under a curtain of ivy.

When I pulled, the hinges complained, and the scent of loam and nettle shouldered out to meet us.

I stepped through–and stopped.

“An old garden,” I whispered in shock.

It had once been square and orderly; I could see the bones of it even beneath the tangle. Low stone borders shouldered aside by lavender gone feral. Box hedges drunk on neglect. A fountain crouched in the center, dry now, its basin cupping last week’s leaves like a forgotten bowl. A fig had muscled itself through a seam in the flagstones, its trunk leaning, stubborn and elegant. Sun caught on spider silk strung between two broken trellises and turned neglect to lace.

Florence flashed through me–another garden, better kept, the night I first saw Francesco in a shirt he had rolled to his elbows, coaxing a blue rose off a wall like it was a secret only he could hear. I felt then what I felt now: the sudden rightness of a place, a person, a future you hadn’t dared sketch.

‘We remember this,‘ Mika breathed, her fur rising warm under my skin. ‘Stones that keep stories. Green things that forgive neglect.

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Chapter 186

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“That look,” Audrey said, coming to lean beside me on the cracked fountain rim. “The one where your eyes go someplace your feet can’t yet. That’s your painting face.”

I laughed, surprised at how easy it came. She knows me well.

“It used to be.” The truth slid across my tongue like something I’d missed. “I haven’t drawn in… ” My eyes widened when I gasped “Goddess, too long.”

“Then draw,” Audrey said simply, as if she were telling me to breathe or eat. She eyed the wild hedges. “I’ll hack the ivy if it tries to be interesting.”

“Could you fetch my sketch roll from the wardrobe?” I asked, suddenly shy, as if I were admitting something indulgent. “The old leather one. And charcoal–there’s a tin.”

She gave me a look she saves for when I say please for things I don’t need permission to want. “On it,” she said, and vanished with the quiet speed of a blade pulled from a sheath.

I picked a low stone bench half–swallowed by thyme and brushed leaf–dust away, then sat and let the garden settle around me.

A bee, late to its own work, blundered through a foxglove like a small drunk. A robin announced himself to the universe and then forgot what he’d meant to say. Somewhere a shutter clacked, then stilled.

I folded my hands and simply looked.

It’s the first rule Lira drilled into me when she snatched a too–quick brush from my fingers months ago: Look until you think you can’t look anymore. Then look again. What you thought was shadow is actually violet. What you called gray is three kinds of green trying very hard to pretend to be dignified.

I looked. The fountain lip wasn’t just stone; it was stone with a fleck of mica that caught sun like a promise. The fig’s leaves held their own constellation, a greener dark toward the veins, a bruised gold where the light slid thin. The hedges had forgotten to be squares and were happier for the sin.

“Here,” Audrey said, soft as a gift, dropping my old leather roll beside me and a tin that rattled when it landed. “And a blanket,” she added, because she thinks of the muscles in my back when I forget I have a body.

“Thank you,” I said, and meant the larger thing.

She pretended not to hear the size of it, studied the far wall with interest, and began a slow prowl of the perimeter that would have made any intruder rethink their life choices.

I unrolled the leather.

The smell rose up–graphite and paper and the ghost of almond oil from a brush I’d forgotten I owned.

My fingers trembled, then remembered. The first charcoal stick felt too black, too blunt. I broke its tip, made it imperfect, made it mine.

The page took the first line like it had been waiting. My hand found the old angles–wrist loose, shoulder doing the work, not the fingers. I blocked the fountain with quick geometry, then gentled a curve where neglect had softened what men had made straight. The fig came next–negative space first, light carved out of

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Chapter 186

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the dark–and then the trellis where ivy had written its own alphabet over the winter.

Charcoal dust smudged my knuckles.

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I re–learned the pressure that makes stone look like it holds its breath and leaves look like they’ve been exhaling for a century. When a gust came, the page lifted at the corner–a small, eager wing–and I smiled at the child–joy of pinning it with a smooth pebble, of making the world and the paper agree.

My breath evened. The ache behind my heart–the echo of last night’s blade, the whisper under the window -eased without asking permission.

Drawing is a kind of prayer when you stop asking for anything and start admitting what is.

“This is good,‘ Mika murmured, drowsy and pleased. ‘You are more wolf when you make instead of only mending.’

“Agreed,” I whispered, and shaded the place the fountain shadow fell like cool water.

Time, which had been loud and bossy, quieted.

I don’t know how long I worked.

I know that when I sat back to shake my hand out, the page had become a version of the garden that the garden could recognize. The fountain leaned, but nobly. The hedges misbehaved, but with flair. A small scribble of robin lived in the top corner because life insists.

“Show me,” Audrey called from the far gate, and I held the pad up. She didn’t move closer. She squinted, then grinned. “If you ask me whether it looks like a hedge, I’m going to say yes. But it also looks like… us, somehow.” She shrugged, a rare flush on her cheeks. Compliments make her itchy. “It breathes.”

I gave her a wide smile “Then I did my job,” I said, pleased enough to laugh at myself.

We fell into a companionable quiet.

She settled on the fountain rim, stretching the knee that aches when rain looms, and pretended not to watch. me too closely. I sketched again–this time the broken sundial through the gate, the way light made a liar of time.

“Can I say something you won’t like?” Audrey asked, eyes still on the periphery.

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