The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 28

POV: Zane

I couldn’t stay there.

Watching the window of the home she had made with another man, with my son, was a form of self-torture I could not endure.

The urge to storm that building, to tear the door from its hinges and drag them both out, was a physical clawing in my gut.

But I needed a plan.

And to plan, I needed to get my rage under control.

I needed to numb the agony.

I drove away from the clinic, my tires spitting gravel, and found the only place in a town like this for a man seeking oblivion.

A bar.

It was a dingy, pathetic place called “The Rusty Mug.”

It smelled of stale beer, regret, and the damp misery of humans.

The air was thick, the lighting was dim, and it was perfect.

I threw myself onto a stool at the sticky bar, the handful of local patrons giving my expensive suit and the aura of barely contained violence around me a wide berth.

“Whiskey,” I growled at the bartender, a paunchy man with weary eyes. “The best you have. And leave the bottle.”

He wisely did as he was told.

The first glass burned, a welcome fire that scorched a path down my throat.

I poured another before the first had even settled.

But the alcohol didn't work.

It didn’t numb the pain.

It amplified it.

It sharpened the edges of the images replaying in my mind on an endless, torturous loop.

Selene’s laugh, light and free.

The human’s hand, brushing the hair from her face.

My son’s grey eyes, shining with adoration for a stranger.

Every gulp of whiskey was fuel on the fire of my agony and my rage.

I was Zane Volkov.

Alpha of the Volkov pack, soon to be Alpha King.

A creature of power, of lineage, of destiny.

I could have any female I wanted, human or shifter.

All I could see was her smile.

That soft, grateful smile she had given him.

A smile she had never, not once, given to me.

I had only ever been the source of her fear, her pain, her humiliation.

And he was the source of her happiness.

The injustice of it was a raw, gaping wound in my soul.

I poured another glass, my hand unsteady.

The whiskey sloshed over the rim, spilling onto the bar.

I didn't care.

I tipped the glass back, the liquor a bitter, useless medicine.

The darkness was closing in, but it wasn't enough to blot out the pain.

I slumped forward, my forehead resting on the cool, sticky wood of the bar.

“Selene,” I whispered into the empty glass, the name a broken, pathetic sound.

A sound of utter defeat.