Chapter 61 Shattered Vows

Chapter 61 Shattered Vows
~~SERAPHINE~~

The door closed behind them with a soft click that sounded louder than any gunshot. For a long moment, I could not move. The imprint of Andrew’s rejection sat like a weight on my chest, heavier than any curse.

He had looked straight through me.

Not like a stranger. Strangers had no power. He had looked at me like I was a threat. And then he had taken Christina’s hand.

Natasha was the first to break the spell. She exhaled slowly, as though she had been holding her breath for hours, and set her clipboard down with trembling fingers.

"We need to alert security," she said, forcing professionalism into her voice. "They cannot leave the palace grounds."

I stepped in front of her before she could reach the intercom. "If the guards rush him now, he will panic. He will think he is being hunted. He will fight them."

Natasha hesitated, torn. "Seraphine, he is still healing from the surgery. He will tear open his stitches. But if Christina gets him beyond the gates..."

"He will run farther," I finished.

The baby shifted inside me, not a gentle nudge this time, but an insistent roll that tightened my abdomen. Instinct screamed at me to chase after him, to drag him back, to remind his body who I was. Logic said that would only drive him deeper into her arms.

Kylie appeared in the doorway, breathless, her silver hair disarrayed, a rare sign that she had run. "I just heard," she said. "Is it true? He woke up and went with her?"

I nodded. The motion felt detached, like it belonged to someone else. "He does not remember me. He remembers Christina. He thinks she is saving him from us."

Kylie’s face crumpled for a fraction of a second before she smoothed it back into steel. "Where would she take him?"

"Somewhere isolated," I said. "Somewhere she can control what he hears. Where the walls repeat only her story."

Natasha gripped the back of a chair. "We gave him blood from the northern line. We used healing tonics that should have anchored his mind. But the silver and whatever Raymond laced that bullet with..." She shook her head. "His short-term memory is fractured. The last clear sequence he recalls may be from years before you."

Before me. Before the hotel. Before the poker game. Before the dragon tattoo meant anything more than a mark he had to hide.

Garek’s voice crackled through the infirmary intercom. "All exits are being monitored. No vehicle can leave without clearance."

"Do not engage," Kylie ordered into the speaker. "Eyes only. Track them, but do not stop them until we know where they are going."

I caught her gaze. "You are letting her take him."

"I am letting her show us her nest," Kylie replied. "We cannot fight a war on shifting ground. If she wants to build a stage, we will see where the curtains are hung. Then we cut the strings."

I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. Andrew’s warmth still lingered where he had flinched away from my touch. The rejection echoed in my bones.

He had asked, "Who are you?"

I had thought I understood pain before. I had been wrong.

Kylie walked closer and rested a hand on my shoulder. "Listen to me. This is not Andrew choosing her over you. This is a wounded man clutching the last memory that makes sense. She is feeding him a story he thinks he remembers."

I swallowed hard. "That does not make it hurt less."

"I know," she said softly.

The romance between us had always been built on choice. That first night in the hotel, the decision to stay, the decision to kiss him, the decision to love him despite every warning. Seeing that stripped away, replaced with fear and confusion, felt like watching our wedding vows torn up and written over in another hand.

Natasha straightened. "I will prepare more fortifying tonics, in case we get him back sooner than expected. But do not expect his memories to just snap into place. The brain does not work like that, especially not after trauma."

Garek’s voice returned on the intercom, strained. "Report. South gate. The king and Christina exited on foot. They entered a black sedan with false plates. Direction: southern highway. Two vehicles followed at visual range. No engagement."

Kylie closed her eyes for a moment, composing herself. "She is taking him toward Ashford territory. Of course she is."

"The estate," I said. "Her father’s property."

"It is warded against most of our magic," Kylie confirmed. "Old protections. Legal fictions. Human companies. She has been preparing for exile for a long time."

"And now she has a king to parade as her captive," I whispered.

A wave of nausea rolled through me. I sank onto the edge of Andrew’s empty bed, gripping the rail until my knuckles turned white. The scent of him clung to the sheets. I bowed my head, breathing it in, forcing back the sob that clawed at my throat.

"If he never remembers," I asked quietly, "what then?"

Natasha looked away. Kylie did not.

"Then we remind him in other ways," Kylie said. "Through action. Through instinct. Through the bond you both forged before any crown weighed you down."

"He feels nothing," I said. The words shook. "He recoiled from me. When I touched him, there was nothing in his eyes."

"That is what you saw," she replied. "But every nerve in his body reacted when Christina mentioned you. I watched the monitors. His heart rate spiked. His muscles tensed. His wolf remembers even if his mind does not know why."

I clung to that. To the idea that somewhere under the fog, something still recognized me.

"I need to go after him," I said, standing too quickly. The room tilted for a moment. The baby thumped in protest.

"You will," Kylie said. "But not today. You cannot chase across the continent while carrying the heir and still expect to face Christina at full strength."

"She is filling his head with lies right now," I snapped. "Every second we leave him with her, she makes me the villain in his story."

"You cannot win him back by bleeding yourself dry," Kylie answered, her tone hardening. "You are not only his wife. You are the Luna. The mother of the future. Your survival is no longer only your own concern."

That hit with brutal clarity. The baby shifted again, as if reminding me there were three lives tied to every choice I made. Vulnerability pressed against duty. My heart wanted to sprint down the highway, tear open the car doors, and drag him out. My body and position said I would be playing Christina’s game if I did.

Kylie turned to Garek. "Start mapping every route from the palace to Ashford’s southern holdings. I want every back road, every service tunnel, every supplier’s gate marked."

Garek nodded. "We will need human eyes down there. People who can move in and out without raising pack alarms."

Bella, who had been hovering silently near the door, stepped forward then. Her hands twisted in her apron, but her chin was lifted.

"I have cousins in the city near the Ashford estate," she said. "Humans who know how to listen without being seen. I can send word. Ask them to watch the house."

Kylie nodded. "Do it quietly. No mention of wolves or magic. Just say we are worried about a friend with a controlling partner."

I met Bella’s eyes. Gratitude swelled in my chest. "Thank you."

When the others left to carry out orders, the infirmary fell into an exhausted hush. I drifted back to Andrew’s bed and sat on its edge, slowly tracing the pattern on the sheet with one finger. My ring caught the light, a tiny reminder of the vows we had made under the ancient oak.

Romance was not always soft words and perfect nights. Sometimes it was sitting alone by an empty bed, choosing to believe that love could stubbornly outlast even the cruelest of magic.

I closed my eyes and let my mind reach for the bond. It was faint, like a faraway star half hidden by clouds. But it was there. A sense of restlessness. Of fear. Of something familiar pressed under layers of foreign voice and narrative.

He was not gone.

The door opened again, more quietly this time. Bella stepped in, holding a folded piece of paper.

"A message just arrived," she said. "Left at the southern gate by an unmarked courier. They said it was for you, personally."

She handed me the note. The paper was thick, embossed with an insignia I recognized instantly: the stylized ash tree of the Ashford crest.

My stomach turned. I unfolded it.

Seraphine, it read in a flowing hand that slanted with practiced arrogance.

If you want your husband’s sanity preserved, you will attend our negotiations alone. The king is... confused. I am helping him see clearly. Meet me at my father’s estate in three nights, at midnight. No guards. No tricks. If I see so much as a wolf’s shadow, I start removing pieces of his memory permanently.

For every lie you have ever told him, I will pluck another thread from the tapestry of your life together. By the time I am done, there will be nothing left of you in him.

Come alone, or lose him completely.

Signed,

Christina Ashford

P.S. He asked, once, why his hand felt empty. I told him he had never worn a ring.

The words blurred as tears stung my eyes. I closed them, inhaling sharply. Christina had not only taken his present. She was threatening to dismantle our past.

Three nights. Alone.

The baby pressed firmly against my hand, as if to claim space in this decision. My heart tugged in two directions at once.

I folded the letter slowly and looked at Andrew’s empty pillow.

"If this is the only way to reach you," I whispered, "then I will walk into her den myself."

The clock on the wall ticked steadily, each second bringing me closer to midnight on the third night.

And to the moment I would step alone into enemy territory, to bargain not for my life, but for the memory of his love.