The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 64

POV: Selene

I was trapped in a nightmare, surrounded by a hundred pairs of judging eyes, the scent of spilled champagne thick in the air. My cheek burned with shame. The whispers started, a low hiss of snakes in the grass.

“It’s the orphan, isn't it?”

“So clumsy… an embarrassment to the family.”

My world had shrunk to the glittering shards of glass on the marble floor. I just wanted to disappear.

Then, a pair of sensible leather shoes entered my field of vision.

“Selene, are you hurt?”

Elias.

He was kneeling in front of me, his kind face etched with a fury that was directed entirely at Isabella. He ignored the gasps from the crowd, ignored the fact that a human was interfering. He only saw me.

He gently took my hand, trying to stop me from picking up the broken glass. “Don’t. You’ll cut yourself.”

His touch was warm, steady, and an island of sanity in my world of chaos.

And it was the final trigger.

A shadow fell over us.

A wave of pure, unrestrained Alpha power crashed down, so potent and so furious that the entire ballroom seemed to hold its breath. The whispers died instantly.

I looked up.

Zane stood there, a towering figure of absolute rage.

His eyes were not on the crowd, not on Elias. They were on Elias’s hand, holding mine.

He looked like a volcano about to erupt.

Isabella, sensing she had pushed him too far, tried to recover. “Zane, darling,” she began, reaching for his arm. “It’s just a clumsy servant, it’s nothing…”

He turned his back on Elias, who was still kneeling on the floor in shock.

He turned his back on his stunned, furious parents.

He turned his back on his humiliated, hate-filled fiancée.

And he turned his back on the elders and a hundred powerful guests.

With his head held high, every line of his body screaming defiance and ownership, he carried me out of the ballroom.

He strode through the grand hall, his footsteps echoing in the stunned silence he had created.

He had just committed an act of political suicide.

He had just publicly declared war on his own carefully constructed future.

And he had done it for me.