The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 52

POV: Selene

The next morning, the sun rose on a world that felt colder and crueler than ever before.

Zane was gone when I awoke, the only proof he had been there the lingering scent of him on my sheets and the deep, aching bruises his desperation had left on my body and my soul.

I moved through my morning duties in a numb, silent fog, a ghost haunting the edges of the manor’s life.

I found Isabella in the garden, pruning a rose bush with a pair of silver shears, looking every bit the serene and benevolent future Luna.

She saw me approach, and a slow, triumphant smile spread across her perfect face.

“Selene,” she said, her voice a condescending purr. “I was hoping I’d see you. We need to have a little chat.”

She snipped the head off a perfect, blood-red rose.

“I want you to know,” she began, her tone oozing with false generosity, “that as long as you behave yourself, as long as you remember your place, I have no intention of making things difficult for you or the boy.”

I remained silent, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.

“Zane and I will be mated soon,” she continued, her eyes gleaming. “And after that, our own children will come. The true, legitimate heirs of this pack.”

She took a step closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

“And you and I both know what that will make little Leo, don't we?”

My blood ran cold.

“He will be a bastard,” she stated, the word a clinical, cruel stab. “In the eyes of the pack, in the eyes of our society, he will always be second-best. A living symbol of his father’s past indiscretion.”

“Don’t you talk about my son,” I snarled, my inner wolf stirring with a protective rage.

Isabella’s smile widened. She was enjoying this.

“Oh, but I am,” she said. “Because I am thinking of his future. A future that you, in your current state, cannot provide. But I can.”

She circled me like a shark.

She turned and walked away, leaving me shaking in the manicured garden.

But it was not with fear.

Her words, meant to break me, had done the opposite.

She had threatened my son.

She had threatened Leo’s future, his happiness, his very place in the world.

And in that moment, the numb, broken part of me was burned away by a fire I had not felt in years.

It was the cold, pure, unadulterated rage of a mother.

I was done running. I was done hiding. I was done being a victim.

If she wanted a war, I would give her one.