The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 107

POV: Selene

The new hierarchy of the manor was established with a swift, brutal efficiency that was pure Zane.

He summoned me to his study that evening.

Cora was already there, standing near the fireplace, a picture of quiet, demure grace.

Zane was behind his massive desk, every inch the Alpha King, his face an unreadable mask of stone.

“There are new arrangements to be made,” he began, his voice devoid of any warmth. He did not look at me. He looked at a point on the wall just over my head.

“Cora, as my personal healer, will require proximity to monitor the residual effects of the poison,” he stated. “She will take the grand guest suite, adjacent to the Alpha’s wing.”

It was the room he had given me after the ceremony. The room where I had felt the first flicker of hope.

My heart clenched, but I kept my expression blank.

He then turned his cold, stormy eyes on me.

“You will be returned to your former guest quarters in the east wing,” he said.

We were being separated. After everything we had been through, after the Mating, he was putting me back in my cage.

“We are mated,” he continued, his voice flat, as if stating a boring, unavoidable fact. “That is an unbreakable, biological reality. But cohabitation, at this time, is not strategically sound. Your… emotional state is a liability.”

The insult was so cold, so clinical, it barely registered as an insult at all. It was just his truth now.

Every step was a fresh wave of humiliation.

Later that night, I lay alone in my cold bed, the Mating Mark on my neck a dull, throbbing ache.

Through the bond, I could feel him.

I could feel his presence, a steady, powerful hum on the other side of the manor.

But it was like listening to a song through a thick wall of glass.

I could feel the connection, the ownership.

But the music, the emotion, the love… it was all gone.