The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 31

POV: Zane

My head felt like it was splitting apart.

A brutal, hammering pain pulsed behind my eyes with every beat of my heart.

I groaned, the sound rough in my dry throat.

My werewolf healing was struggling against the sheer amount of whiskey I’d consumed, but it couldn't touch the deep, soul-crushing ache that had settled in my bones.

I forced my eyes open.

The hotel room was too bright.

And I was naked under the sheets.

A cold, sick feeling of dread washed over me. My memory of the night before was a total blank, a black void after I’d started on the second bottle of whiskey.

Then I saw her.

Isabella.

She was sitting in a chair by the bed, turned away from me. She wore my white dress shirt, the fabric a stark contrast against her golden hair.

The room was a mess. My clothes were discarded on a chair. A woman’s silk dress lay on the floor.

The bedsheets were a chaotic tangle.

My gaze caught on a small, dark red smear on the white cotton, near where she must have been lying.

Blood.

My heart stopped.

My inner wolf, the primal part of my being, was confused and silent. It had no memory of this. Dulled by alcohol and overwhelmed by my grief, its instincts were muddled and unreliable.

“Isabella?” My voice was a harsh rasp.

She jumped, turning to face me.

Her performance was a masterpiece of wounded innocence.

Her eyes were wide and tear-filled, and she clutched the shirt to her chest.

She didn't have to say the rest.

The evidence was all around me.

The trashed room. Her wearing my shirt. The blood on the sheets, a damning symbol of a line crossed.

I had no memory. Not a single image.

But my senses, though dulled, picked up the scent of her perfume mingled with my own.

The scene was irrefutable.

I had done it.

In a drunken, blacked-out haze, driven by the pain of Selene’s betrayal, I had taken my fiancée while believing she was my true mate.

I had violated her honor.

I had betrayed my own soul.

The self-loathing that crashed down on me was absolute. It was a physical thing, a crushing weight that threatened to pull me down into an abyss of my own making.