Chapter 52 The Fall Between Heartbeats
Sable’s POV
The door hit the jamb behind me and the sound rang through my bones like a bell. I didn’t run—couldn’t—because my legs were shaking, because the elevator at the end of the hall looked too far away, because my mouth still tasted like him.
Kier.
The word was a wound and a warm hand at the same time, throbbing, soothing, confusing. I pressed my palm to my sternum as if I could hold the bond still beneath my skin. It wouldn’t listen. It surged and receded like a storm tide, dragging memories up onto the shore of my mind—his mouth; the heat of his hands; the way his voice broke when he said my name like a vow and a curse.
I hated that I wanted to turn back. Hated that the elevator doors were mirrors and in them I looked like a woman who’d left a fire behind but still wanted to stand in the smoke.
The doors opened. I stepped in and hit the button hard enough to sting.
As the elevator car slid downward, I braced my forearms on the cool rail and fought for air. My wolf paced under my skin, a bright, restless shadow. Go back, she urged, tail high, eyes lit with that terrible, beautiful certainty. Ours.
“No,” I whispered, and my voice came out shredded. “Not like this.”
Images flared—and burned: Kier’s body caging mine; my own fingers fisted in his shirt. The worst part was the honesty of it. How my body had answered him without asking my permission. How the mate bond wasn’t a chain so much as a current I kept trying to swim against—until I was too tired and let it carry me.
The elevator chimed. The security guard nodded; I nodded back, a practiced smile sliding over my face like a fresh mask. If anyone looked too closely, they’d see the cracks.
Outside, I let my self breathe. Taxi lights flickered. Somewhere above, sirens wound down to nothing. I sucked the air into my lungs until it hurt and started walking without picking a direction—just away.
He had touched me like he’d been starving.
I’d kissed him like I had been.
Heat licked low and disobedient at the memory. I hated it. Loved it. Wanted it again, hated myself for that too. I should have felt clean with distance; instead, I felt flayed open, each step rubbing the raw places.
At the corner, I stopped beneath a streetlamp and tilted my head back. Clouds marched over the moon, fat and low, pregnant with rain. I had run once, under a sky like this, swearing I’d never let anyone own my future again. The human world had been a refuge. A battlefield. Both. I’d built a life that fit me, even if the mate bond made the seams ache.
And then I’d walked into his boardroom and remembered what it was to be seen to the bone.
A pair of pedestrians brushed past, laughter trailing after them. I flinched like I’d been grazed. My wolf lifted her head, scenting the air. She didn’t roll in the memory the way I did; she took inventory—air damp; asphalt warm; night metal; a faint tang of garbage and rain and—
I stumbled, falling to my knees when I felt the ache. It started low in my chest, then spread like wildfire, clawing into every nerve. The mate bond was merciless—every betrayal written into my body whether I wanted to feel it or not. My wolf howled, torn between rage and despair, as if someone had taken a blade and carved through the threads that bound us.
I knew. Even if Kier hadn’t spoken a word, even if no one else whispered a rumor, I knew. He had been intimate with someone. The bond screamed it. The hollow echo of it rattled through me, shaking the walls of everything I had left standing.
My mind snapped instantly to Liora. Of course her. I had just caught her there in front of him. Ready to devour him. The hunger in her eyes unmistakable. She would sink her claws into any weakness if it gave her a shot at being Luna. But then—Kier had thrown her out. Kicked her away like she didn’t matter. So maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was someone else. Maybe more than one.
The thought gutted me.
How many she-wolves had angled themselves close to him, waiting for a slip, a crack, a moment of his loneliness to pounce? Kier was strength, power, Alpha-in-the-making—and with that came the vultures. Every female in the pack would bare her throat just to have a chance at standing beside him. To bear his mark. To wear the crown of Luna.
And me? I had left. I had chosen freedom over the mate bond, over him. Didn’t that mean I had no right to this pain? No claim to the fury burning in me? My rational mind whispered yes, but my wolf shredded that lie to pieces. She howled inside me again, wild and broken.
I pressed my palm to my chest, but the pressure did nothing to dull it. The mate bond betrayed me with every heartbeat, showing me flashes I didn’t want—skin, heat, touches that weren’t mine. My stomach twisted until I thought I would be sick.
“Kier,” I whispered, though he wasn’t here to hear me. My voice cracked anyway, raw with a grief I couldn’t cage.
The image of him rose unbidden in my mind—broad shoulders, sharp jaw, those storm-dark eyes that always seemed to see straight through me. How many of them had looked into those same eyes, praying to be chosen? How many of them had felt the strength of his hands, the fire of his kiss?
It wasn’t fair.
And yet the mate bond was a cruel master. It demanded I feel every ounce of it, punished me for stepping away, for thinking I could sever what the moon goddess had woven.
I curled in on myself, nails digging into my arms as though pain could drown pain. My wolf keened, heart shattering in sync with mine.
Betrayal tasted like iron on my tongue. And worse—doubt. If it wasn’t Liora… who else? How many wolves already dreamed of sinking their teeth into him, waiting for me to crumble so they could take what I had abandoned?
I wanted to hate him. Goddess, I wanted to. But hate was too clean, too simple. What I felt was a storm, wild and relentless. Love and fury, longing and devastation. It tore through me like lightning through a tree, leaving nothing whole.