The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 27

POV: Zane

My training, the iron-clad discipline of an Alpha, was the only thing that kept me from storming across that park and ripping the human’s throat out.

I was a king, not a savage.

And my revenge would be a cold, calculated dish.

First, I needed to understand the full scope of her betrayal.

I put the SUV in park in the shadow of a large oak tree, my position giving me a clear, unobstructed view.

I watched them for an hour.

Every shared smile, every easy conversation, every moment of their peaceful, domestic bliss was a fresh twist of the knife in my gut.

The human was good with my son.

He knelt to tie his shoe.

He bought him a toy, a ridiculous monster truck, from the store across the street.

My son, my Leo, had thrown his arms around the man’s legs in a hug of pure, childish adoration.

The sight made me see red.

That should be me.

That was my son, my role, my family.

She had stolen it from me.

She had run away with my heir and given him to another man to raise.

The pain of the last five years, the endless, hollow nights and the obsessive, frantic days, coalesced into a single, burning point of rage directed at her.

I had imagined finding her scared, struggling, and alone.

I had fantasized about being her savior, about sweeping in and finally giving her the protection I had so cruelly denied her.

But she didn't need a savior.

She looked… happy.

Content.

That happiness, a life built entirely without me, was the greatest betrayal of all.

Finally, they left the park.

I followed at a distance, my movements silent and unseen.

My wolf was a predator on the hunt, every sense honed and focused on the prey.

The last of my rational thought evaporated, consumed by the black tide of jealousy.

Five years of agony, and she had moved on.

She had replaced me with a human doctor in a backwater town.

The lie I had constructed in my mind was now a concrete reality.

She was a faithless, treacherous woman who had abandoned her mate and given our pup to another.

She had made her choice.

Now, I would make mine.

I wasn't here to save her anymore.

I was here to reclaim what belonged to me.

And to punish her for her betrayal in a way she would never forget.

I stood in the shadows across the street, staring up at the darkened window of the apartment above the clinic, my fists clenched so tight my shifter strength made the bones audibly creak.

The hunt was over.

The war was about to begin.