Shattered Bonds A Second Chance Mate (by Yui) novel Chapter 194

“Hello, Luna,” he purred. His gaze slid over me, dismissing Audrey as if she were nothing more than an inconvenient wall of steel. “Finally… you’re alone.”

My pulse hammered, but Mika growled inside me, steady and sharp. ‘You are not prey. Not to him. Never to him.

I lifted my chin. “I’m not alone.”

His gaze flicked briefly to Audrey, then Monica, then the circle of rogues behind him.

His smile widened. “No, I suppose not. But we both know they can’t save you from what I’ve come to say.”

Audrey shifted, stepping half a pace forward, her sword gleaming. “One word, Luna, and I’ll cut his throat.”

“Wait,” I murmured, raising a hand. My eyes stayed on Dorian. “He came to talk. Let him talk. Words reveal more than blades.”

Dorian’s chuckle slithered through the night. “Clever Luna. But cleverness won’t save you from truths you don’t want to hear.”

He paced slowly, his boots crunching against gravel, his hands clasped behind his back like a man strolling a garden rather than commanding an ambush.

His voice lowered, rich with venom.

“Do you know why I hate him?” His eyes locked on mine, gold flecked with madness. “Do you know why the very sound of the name Lycaon makes my blood burn?”

I held his stare. “Tell me.”

“My mother,” he said, and for a moment his face twisted, not in rage but in something rawer. “My mother adored his father. Admired him. Worshipped him, even. She looked at that man as though he hung the moon in the sky, as though he were the true Alpha and my father–her mate–was nothing.”

The words dripped bitterness.

His voice was jagged, like glass ground underfoot.

“My father grew hollow with it. Every time she whispered the Lycaon name, every time she praised their power, their grace, he became less. And I… I watched.” His hand curled into a fist, knuckles white. “I watched the woman who bore me destroy the man who raised me, piece by piece, because she couldn’t keep her eyes from a Lycaon.”

He turned his face toward the flames, shadows sharpening the hollows of his cheeks. “Do you know what it’s like to watch your parents unravel? To watch your home rot because of admiration that turned to obsession? I swore then I would never bow to that family. That I would see them broken.”

My stomach twisted, but I kept my voice calm. “So you decided to hate Francesco for the sins of his father?”

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Chapter 194

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His laugh was short, sharp. “Not just his father. All of them. Ruthless. Arrogant. Believing themselves above us -above every werewolf who wasn’t born under their cursed line. Do you think it’s a coincidence that they are nearly gone? No. It is justice. Even his brother turned on him. Even his own blood could not stand the weight of their pride.”

He stepped closer, his eyes narrowing. “And what are you, Luna? Do you even know what you’ve tied yourself to? The last Lycaon. The last relic of a family that believed they could take whatever they pleased. Did you think it a fairy tale that Lycans can claim a mate already bound? That they can rip bonds apart just because they choose?”

A chill coursed through me.

I had heard whispers of it–old tales, half–buried in archives.

Lycans who claimed mates not their own, leaving wreckage behind. But Francesco had never done such a thing. He had never forced me, never stolen me.

Still, Dorian’s words pressed like poison into old wounds.

“You think he loves you,” Dorian sneered, circling me now, predator smooth. “But love? For them? It’s a choice. Convenience. Power. My mother thought the same–that if she could catch the Lycaon’s gaze, she would be chosen. Do you know what it’s like to be the child of a woman who prayed for another man while lying in your father’s bed? I learned young what it means to be discarded.”

His face hardened, eyes burning into me. “So tell me, Luna–what makes you think you are different? What makes you think you are anything more than another temporary amusement to a name that devours everything it touches?”

My heart hammered, but not in doubt.

Not anymore.

Because beneath his venom, beneath his bitterness, I saw the truth: a boy who had grown into a man fueled by envy, by pain he had never healed, by the rot of watching love twisted into worship.

He wasn’t speaking about Francesco. Not really. He was speaking about his mother. About himself.

I drew a steady breath. “Because I know him.”

Dorian stopped, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “You think you do.”

“No,” I said, my voice firm. “I know him. I’ve seen him stripped of crown and fury, sitting in gardens with dirt under his nails. I’ve seen him bleed for others, not because of power, but because he cannot stand to see those under his care suffer. He is not his father. He is not his brother. He is not the Lycaon name you spit with such venom.”

I stepped closer, and Audrey tensed beside me, but I did not stop. “And unlike your mother, I don’t worship him. I love him. Not the crown. Not the name. Him. The man who holds me when I break, who listens when I doubt, who would burn the world only if it meant saving one child crying in the dark.”

For a moment, silence stretched.

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Chapter 194

The rogues shifted, uneasy, as though even they felt the bond humming through my words.

Dorian’s jaw clenched.

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His eyes flashed, not with triumph but with something closer to rage–because he could not crack me.

He could not seed his poison in soil that had already rooted too deep.

“You’ll regret it,” he spat. “When he shows you what he truly is. When the last Lycaon cannot help but devour

what he claims.

I lifted my chin, the steady hum of the bond with Francesco thrumming in my chest like a drumbeat.

And then, slowly, deliberately, I let the shift come.

Not fully–not claws and fangs tearing skin.

But enough…..

My eyes bled from hazel to silver–white, radiant in the torchlight. My skin shimmered faintly with the glow that came only when Mika rose to the surface. And when I spoke, my voice carried hers, layered and resonant, wolf and woman as one:

“You speak of devouring, Dorian. But you forget–you are not the only one who knows old bloodlines. I am no weak Luna waiting to be swallowed. I am the White Wolf. I do not bend. I do not break. And if you ever lay hand or rumor against me or mine again—” My teeth flashed, sharp in the half–shift. “—it will not be Francesco who ends you. It will be me.”

The air shifted.

The rogues, who moments before had stood grinning like shadows, recoiled, whimpering low in their throats.

Even Audrey drew in a sharp breath, though her claws never wavered. Monica’s grip tightened on my arm- not in fear, but in awe.

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