I hadn’t slept properly since she left. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her face, not the angry one from the last day, the one before the anger. The one when she was holding the magazine with shaking hands and hadn’t figured out what it meant yet, the confusion crossing her features, the trust still there, the moment before it shattered. That face woke me at 3 am every night and wouldn’t let me go back to sleep.
The bond pain was constant. A dull ache under my sternum that spiked when I thought about her, which was always. The healers told me rejection pain could last months, sometimes years. They looked at me with barely disguised pity when they said it and I wanted to put my fist through the wall.
Lorraine called on a Tuesday.
“We need to set a date, Finneas. The venue wants to know.”
“I don’t care about the venue.”
“Well, you need to care because we’re getting married and married people have weddings and weddings need venues.”
“Pick whichever one you want.”
“I want you to be involved. This is supposed to be our day.”
I almost laughed. Our day. I was sitting in my office with dead flowers on my mate’s desk, my wolf locked behind a wall, my chest aching every time I breathed, and she wanted to talk about venues.
“Lorraine, I said pick one. I’ll be there.”
“You could at least pretend to be excited.”
“I could. I won’t.”
She hung up on me. I put the phone down and felt nothing about it. That was the worst part, the nothing. Lorraine was supposed to be my future wife and all I felt when she hung up was relief that I didn’t have to listen to her voice anymore. I tried to remember if I’d ever felt anything when she called, even beforeAndrea. Obligation, maybe. Annoyance. Never warmth. Never the chest-tightening anticipation I felt when Andrea’s name lit up my screen. Andrea could text me a single word and my whole body responded. Lorraine could talk for thirty minutes and I couldn’t recall a single sentence afterward.
I visited my mother that afternoon. She was sitting up in bed, monitors beeping, IVs in both arms, but she was animated. Color in her cheeks, hands moving while she talked. She told me about the florist Lorraine had selected, the guest list that needed trimming, how the seating chart had to be rearranged because the Ashtor family needed to be at the front.
“You look better today,” I said, and I meant it. She looked stronger than she had in days. Her voice was fuller, her grip on my hand firmer, and I felt a cautious loosening in my chest because if she had good days like this, maybe the timeline wasn’t as short as they said. Maybe there was more time. Maybe I didn’t have to rush this.
“Good days and bad days, sweetheart. Today is a good day.” She patted my hand. “Now, about the venue. Lorraine wants the grand hall at the estate but I think the garden would be more elegant, don’t you?”
“Mother, I was thinking we could push the date back a bit. Give you more time to recover, make sure you’re strong enough to enjoy it.”
Her face fell. She pulled her hand back, pressed it against her chest, and coughed. Hard, her shoulders curling forward, the monitors spiking. I reached for her and she waved me off.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” She caught her breath. Her eyes were wet when she looked at me. “Finneas, I don’t have the luxury of time. Please. Don’t take this from me.”
I couldn’t say no. My jaw locked around the word, my throat closed, and what came out instead was surrender.
I took her hand back. “Okay. We won’t push it.”
She squeezed my fingers and smiled through the tears. “Thank you, sweetheart. You’re a good son.”
A good son. I’d been hearing that my whole life. Every time I heard it I was giving away another piece of myself.
I stayed for another twenty minutes while she talked about flowers and tablecloths. When I left she kissed my cheek, told me to eat. I drove back to the estate with my hands tight on the wheel. She pushed, I caved. My whole life, the same pattern.
Pack business suffered. The first council briefing I missed, I was sitting in my car in the estate parking lot with my forehead on the steering wheel, the bond pain spiking so hard I couldn’t see straight. I told myself I’d go in after it passed. It didn’t pass. I sat there for two hours and drove home. The second briefing I was in my office, staring at the glass wall where Andrea used to sit, and the alarm on my phone went off reminding me about the meeting, and I looked at it and turned it off and kept staring. Luca covered for me both times. He handled the territory patrols, mediated a dispute between two families that should have been my call. He didn’t complain. But I could see the strain on his face when he dropped by the office with updates, the careful way he delivered bad news, the questions he was holding back behind his teeth.
One evening I drove to her house. I didn’t plan it. I was driving home from the office and my hands turned the wheel before my brain agreed to it, muscle memory pulling me down her street the way it had hundreds of times when I was Fin.
Her street was quiet. I parked across from her house and looked up and my chest went cold.
A sign on the lawn. For Rent.
The windows were bare. Curtains gone. The front door had a lockbox on the handle. The porch where I used to lie beside her while she read was empty, the rocking chair gone, no book left on the railing, no blanket draped over the back.
She was gone. Not just from the office, not just avoiding me. She’d packed up and left the city.
