Elena gripped the cold stone balustrade of the terrace until her knuckles turned white, the rough texture biting into her palms like tiny accusations. The night air was crisp and unforgiving, carrying the distant sounds of laughter and music from the grand hall behind her. Each note felt like a blade twisting deeper into her chest.

She couldn’t breathe.

The burgundy silk of her gown clung to her skin, suddenly too tight, too heavy, as if the fabric itself was mourning what she had just witnessed. Nikolai — *her* Alpha, the man fate had promised her — had danced with Lana like she was the center of his universe. He had looked straight at Elena while holding another woman in his arms. He had smiled. He had kissed Lana’s temple in front of the entire pack.

And the worst part? Even through the humiliation, the fated mate bond still burned.

It wasn’t just emotional anymore.

It was physical.

Elena gasped sharply as a wave of heat surged through her chest, centering around her heart where the invisible thread connecting her to Nikolai pulled taut. Her healing gift — the golden light that had always been a gentle, nurturing force — suddenly flared to life without warning. It pulsed violently beneath her skin, hot and frantic, as if trying to reach across the distance to heal the very man who had just torn her apart.

*Why?* she thought desperately. *Why do you still call to me when you’ve chosen her?*

She pressed a trembling hand to her sternum, feeling the rapid, erratic beat of her heart. The bond was awakening fully now, no longer content to whisper. It roared. It demanded. It *hurt*.

**He is mine,** the golden light seemed to scream inside her veins. **He has always been mine.**

Elena closed her eyes, leaning heavily against the balustrade as another wave of pain crashed over her. This wasn’t the familiar echo of someone else’s physical wounds she usually felt when healing. This was deeper. Primal. The mate bond was forcing her gift to recognize Nikolai as her counterpart — the one her power was meant to sustain, to protect, to complete.

Flashes of memory assaulted her:

The storm-soaked road. Her hands glowing against his torn chest. The way his ice-grey eyes had locked onto hers in delirium as he pressed the Moonshadow Medallion into her palm and rasped, “Mine…”

The warmth of his skin beneath her fingertips. The raw power of his wolf brushing against her consciousness even while he lay dying. The undeniable rightness that had settled in her soul the moment she touched him.

Tears slipped silently down her cheeks.

*How can something so beautiful feel like dying?*

She could sense him even now. Through the glass doors, through the crowd, through the distance he had forced between them. Nikolai’s presence was like a dark star — massive, magnetic, pulling at every fiber of her being. Her healing gift responded with painful intensity, flooding her system with golden energy that had nowhere to go. It burned through her veins, searching for him, aching to soothe the hidden scars on his soul that no one else could see.

Elena bit her lip hard enough to taste blood, trying to suppress the whimper rising in her throat.

*Why won’t you see me?* she thought, the internal monologue raw and unfiltered. *I saved your life with these hands. I poured my soul into you while the rain tried to wash you away. I felt your pain as my own. And still… you look at me like I’m the enemy.*

Another surge of the bond hit her. This time it was accompanied by phantom sensations — the ghost of Nikolai’s touch on her shoulder from the charity auction, the heat of his body when he had nearly kissed her. Her knees weakened. She gripped the railing tighter, breathing through the overwhelming wave of longing mixed with agony.

The gift inside her wasn’t just reacting to his presence.

It was *confirming* the bond.

Every cell in her body recognized Nikolai Volkov as her true mate. Her destined partner. The other half of a soul she hadn’t known was incomplete until that stormy night. Her healing power wanted to wrap around him, to mend the trust issues that made him so cruel, to chase away the shadows of his brutal past. It wanted to glow beneath his skin the way it had on the roadside — gentle, devoted, eternal.

But he had chosen Lana.

He had publicly declared another woman as his Luna while forcing Elena to watch.

A broken sob finally escaped her lips. She pressed her forehead against the cool stone, shoulders shaking as the full weight of the awakened bond settled over her like chains made of fire and silk.

**I hate how much I still want you,** she thought fiercely. **I hate that even after you humiliated me in front of everyone, my body still aches for your touch. My gift still reaches for you like a fool. What kind of cruel joke is this fate? To bind me so completely to a man who refuses to see the truth?**

She could feel him moving inside the hall. Every step he took sent another ripple through the bond. Her healing gift flared brighter, painfully so, as if protesting the growing distance. The golden light beneath her skin glowed faintly through her fingers where they gripped the railing — soft, ethereal, and completely out of her control.

Elena straightened slowly, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand. She refused to let the pack see her completely broken. She was a Voss. She had steel in her blood even if her heart was currently in pieces.

But gods… it hurt.

The bond was no longer a gentle pull. It was a living, breathing entity inside her — demanding, possessive, and exquisitely painful. It confirmed what she had suspected since the night she saved him.

Nikolai Volkov was hers.

And she was his.

Whether he accepted it or not.

Elena turned back toward the glass doors, her reflection staring back at her — a beautiful woman with tear-stained cheeks and eyes glowing with golden-amber fire. The bond thrummed stronger than ever, a constant, aching reminder that no matter how hard Nikolai pushed her away, fate had already woven their souls together.

She whispered into the night, voice barely audible but filled with quiet, devastating resolve:

“I won’t stop loving you, even if you break me a thousand times. But I refuse to beg. When you finally see the truth… I hope it hurts you as much as this hurts me right now.”

Inside the hall, Nikolai paused mid-conversation, his head snapping toward the terrace. His wolf surged forward violently, sensing the awakening of the bond like a beacon in the darkness.

For the first time, the Alpha felt truly afraid.

Not of his enemies.

But of the woman he was trying so desperately to deny.