The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 65

POV: Zane

Rage. It was a pure, white-hot, cleansing fire in my veins.

Seeing her on the floor, humiliated, with that human’s hands on her… something inside me had snapped.

The Alpha. The politician. The son. They had all vanished.

Only the mate remained.

My wolf had taken over, a primal, possessive beast driven by a single, undeniable instinct: protect what is mine.

I carried her through the silent, cavernous halls of the manor. She was light in my arms, a fragile weight that felt both precious and terrifying. She didn't struggle. She was completely still, her face buried in my chest, her body trembling with shock.

I bypassed the servant’s wing.

I carried her up the grand staircase to the Alpha’s wing, a part of the manor she had never been allowed to enter.

I kicked open the door to my own bedroom—my inner sanctum, my den—and carried her inside.

I gently placed her on the edge of my massive, king-sized bed.

The rage was beginning to recede, replaced by a wave of gut-wrenching guilt and a desperate, aching tenderness.

I knelt in front of her. Her ankle was already beginning to swell from the fall.

I gently took her foot in my hands. Her skin was soft, the bones delicate. My large, clumsy hands felt brutish and out of place.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, my voice a rough, broken thing.

She finally looked at me, her beautiful eyes a swirling vortex of confusion, fear, and a pain so deep it mirrored my own. She simply nodded.

I mind-linked a servant for an ice pack and medical supplies, my barked command a remnant of the Alpha’s fury.

As I gently wrapped her ankle, the words I had kept locked away for five long years began to pour out of me. I couldn't stop them.

POV: Selene

He was tending to my injury, his touch surprisingly gentle, his movements clumsy but full of a raw, desperate care. This was a Zane I had never seen before. Vulnerable.

He finished wrapping my ankle and looked at me, his face a mask of pure, desperate anguish.

“I love you, Selene,” he whispered, the words I had once thought I would die without hearing. “I think I have always loved you. It’s a possessive, ugly, broken thing, this love, but it’s real.”

He shook his head, a look of self-loathing on his face. “I cannot stand to see another man look at you, let alone touch you. And being forced into this Mating Ceremony with her, while my soul is screaming for you… it has been a torment beyond words.”

He had finally, completely, lowered his shields. The Alpha, the king, was gone.

Only a broken, desperate man remained, laying his shattered heart at my feet.

My own heart, the one I had encased in ice, began to feel a slow, painful crack. The ice was beginning to melt.

He looked at me, his eyes full of a raw, terrifying vulnerability.

“I know I have no right to ask,” he said, his voice breaking. “After everything I have done to you… all the pain I have caused…”

“But can you ever forgive me?”