The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 108

POV: Kael

I watched my Alpha, and my heart was a cold, heavy stone in my chest.

The man who had returned from that forest was not the man who had left.

The body was Zane’s. The power, the authority, the sharp, strategic mind—that was all Zane.

But the soul, the tormented, passionate, fiercely loving man who had been at war with himself for five long years, was gone.

He was a king carved from ice.

His parents saw it, too.

I stood in the shadows of his study as his mother, Seraphina, confronted him.

“Zane, what is wrong with you?” she pleaded, her usual aristocratic composure shattered by a mother’s fear. “You look at your son as if he is a stranger. You look at your mate as if she is a duty. You have banished Isabella, defied the council… for what? To become this… this cold machine?”

“I am doing what is necessary for the stability of this pack,” he replied, his voice flat, his eyes never leaving the strategic maps on his desk.

“And Selene?” I dared to ask, stepping forward. “She is your mate. The bond is complete. She nearly died caring for you. She is the one who saved you.”

Zane’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowing on me. “She fulfilled her duty as a mate is expected to. Her collapse afterward was a sign of weakness, not strength. And Cora was the one with the cure. My reliance is on my healer. My bond with my mate is a matter of bloodline and biology. Nothing more.”

His cold, logical dismissal of everything they had been through was terrifying. The poison had not just stolen his memories; it had stolen his heart.

He would not listen to us. He trusted only his own flawed, fragmented "judgment" and the carefully edited "testimony" of the witch who now shadowed his every move.

After he dismissed us with a curt, final command, Seraphina was shaking with a mixture of fear and fury.

“He was fine before you came back!” Seraphina continued, completely unhinged. “He was going to mate with Isabella, to secure our future! But you, with your pathetic face and your bastard child, you dragged him back into the mud! Look what you’ve done to him! You’ve broken him! He is my son, and you have broken him!”

I stepped forward then, my own Beta authority a low growl in my voice. “That is enough, Seraphina.”

She whirled on me, but I stood my ground.

She gave Selene one last look of pure, unadulterated hatred before turning and storming away.

I looked at Selene. She was not crying. Her face was a mask of weary, stoic endurance.

She was a queen being treated like a whipping boy.

And the man who was supposed to be her shield was the one who had handed their enemies the whip.