The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 35

POV: Selene

The flight back to the Volkov estate was a silent, suffocating journey into hell.

I held Leo in my arms, his sleeping body still trembling with the aftershocks of his terror.

Zane sat opposite us, a silent, brooding king, his cold gaze never leaving us. He wasn’t the man I remembered. He was a stranger forged from rage and five years of obsession.

When we arrived, the manor was just as cold and opulent as I remembered. A prison of marble and memory.

My stepfather, Roman, and his wife, Seraphina, stood there, their faces masks of cold fury.

Isabella was beside them, looking every bit the wronged future Luna.

“Zane, what is the meaning of this?” Roman demanded, his Alpha voice booming, though it lacked the raw, untamed power of his son’s. “You bring this… this disgrace and her bastard child back into my house?”

“She is a stain on this family’s honor!” Seraphina hissed, her eyes filled with venom as she looked at me and Leo. “You jeopardize your sacred union with Lady Isabella for this… this nothing!”

Leo whimpered and buried his face in my leg.

Zane, who held my arm in a grip of steel, did not even look at his parents.

His gaze was fixed forward, his authority absolute.

“He is my son,” Zane stated, his voice quiet but carrying an unmistakable command that silenced the hall. “My firstborn. My heir. He will be raised here, in his rightful home.”

Roman’s eyes widened in shock at the public declaration.

“And her?” Seraphina sneered, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at me. “What is her place in this house?”

Zane’s cold eyes finally turned to me, and his grip on my arm tightened.

“She is the reason my son was lost to me for five years,” he said, his voice a whip-crack of cold fury. “Her place is one of penance. She will serve as the boy’s nanny. A servant. It is my will.”

The pronouncement was a strategic masterstroke of cruelty. It acknowledged his son while utterly demolishing my status, appeasing his parents’ anger with my humiliation.

Roman and Seraphina were silenced, their objections overridden by their son’s unyielding authority.

Zane led us past the grand living quarters, his footsteps echoing ominously. Our destination was a small, plain suite of rooms in the staff wing. The message was clear. I was not family. I was not even a guest.

“This is your room,” he said, his voice flat. “His is next door.”

He pointed at Leo. “He is a Volkov heir. He will have his own room.”

The thought of being separated from Leo, even by a single wall, sent a fresh spike of panic through me, but I knew arguing was useless.

“Nanny, the boy’s breakfast is cold. See that it doesn’t happen again.”

“You will ensure my son’s studies are not interrupted. He is not here to play.”

His presence was a constant, looming shadow, his disapproval a heavy weight. I would sometimes catch him watching me when he thought I wasn’t looking, his eyes filled with a dark, tormented conflict before he would mask it with a fresh wave of cold anger. He was at war with himself, and I was the battlefield.

Isabella, on the other hand, was direct in her sadism. She delighted in giving me contradictory orders, in pointing out my flaws, in treating me like dirt under her expensive shoes.

I took it all.

I swallowed the insults, I choked back the tears, I silenced the howl of my inner wolf.

I did it for Leo.

I endured the gilded cage and the daily, meticulous torture of watching the man I once loved hate me, and the woman who hated me pretend to love my son.

Because every night, long after the house was dark, I would sneak into Leo’s room.

I would sit by his bed until his whimpers subsided, his small hand clutching mine in the darkness.

He needed me. And for him, I would survive this.