61 Chapter 61 Caged by Hatred
His eyes told a different story entirely.
“Stop crying,” he warned, his voice like grinding stone against my nerves. “You don’t get to play the victim here. Not after what you did. Not after you betrayed me with
another man.”
I collapsed into broken sobs, my fists beating uselessly against the unyielding stone until my knuckles split and bled, the sound swallowed by the suffocating darkness of my prison.
He shoved me through the doorway with enough force to send me sprawling across the rough stone floor. Before I could even push myself upright, before I could make one final plea for mercy, the heavy iron door slammed shut with a sound like thunder.
up to The realization that I was completely naked hit me like a slap. My arms flew cover myself as heat flooded my face. The warriors were still gaping, their expressions a mixture of shock and something else. They had never seen me in wolf form before I
left.
“Seraphina.” My name on his lips sounded like a death sentence.
Those steel-gray depths held nothing but ice and contempt. No warmth, no recognition of what we once meant to each other. Just the kind of hatred you reserve for someone who has destroyed everything you ever cared about.
The dungeon.
The mate bond that had awakened with my wolf sang through my blood, a symphony of recognition and desperate joy. Every cell in my body screamed that I was home, that I was safe, that I was exactly where I belonged.
“What the hell are you doing back here?” The words were sharp enough to draw blood. He released my wrist only to cross his arms, building a wall between us that felt insurmountable.
Shame burned through me hotter than any physical pain, but Julian wasn’t finished with me yet.
“Explain?” he snarled, moving closer until I could feel the heat radiating from his body. “Where was your explanation six years ago, Seraphina? When I woke up to find you
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61 Chapter 61 Caged by Hatred
gone like a thief in the night? Did you bother explaining then?”
Tears spilled down my cheeks before I could stop them. The raw pain in his eyes reflected my own heartbreak back at me.
“Can we please talk somewhere else?” I gestured helplessly at our surroundings, at my barely covered state. “I’m practically naked in the middle of the forest. Let me explain what happened-”
“Cover yourself.” Julian’s voice was flat as granite, devoid of any emotion except barely restrained disgust. The sound of it made my blood turn to ice water.
“Shut your mouth.”
The bitter cold slammed into me like a physical blow, followed immediately by the sharp bite of pine needles scratching across my bare skin. My body trembled as I slowly came back to myself, the world spinning as I struggled to focus through the haze of my recent shift.
The lock turned with a grinding finality that echoed through my bones.
“What?” I shook my head frantically, stumbling backward. “Julian, no! I never betrayed you! I would never! What are you talking about?”
Before I could form another word of protest, his hand closed around my arm like a steel trap. This time he wasn’t just holding me; he was hauling me forward with ruthless determination.
They scattered without question, murmuring among themselves as they disappeared into the trees, leaving us alone in the suffocating silence.
His hand shot out and clamped around my wrist with bruising force. The grip was tight enough to make me gasp, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the emotional devastation of his rejection.
The air was thick with the smell of damp stone and despair.
“Julian, stop! Please, you’re hurting me! We have to talk! You have to listen to me!” I screamed, fighting against his grip as he dragged me through the underbrush toward the pack house.
My hands shook violently as I pulled the worn cotton over my head. The fabric reeked of him, that intoxicating blend of forest and earth and raw masculine power that had haunted my dreams for six long years. The scent sent waves of conflicting emotions
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crashing through me, longing and terror warring for control.
The accusation hit me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs and leaving me gasping.
I didn’t need words to understand that I wasn’t welcome here.
Julian.
Then I saw him.
My bare feet slipped on the wet ground. I was sobbing now, begging him to stop, to listen, but he might as well have been deaf.
“Julian, please, I need to explain—”
“Get out of here,” he commanded the gathered warriors, his Alpha authority cutting through the air like a blade. “All of you. Now.”
I had missed him with an intensity that bordered on madness, and now that my wolf had awakened, the bond magnified that ache a hundredfold. I loved him with a force that terrified me, a need so deep it felt like drowning.
“You left on your terms,” he hissed, his face so close to mine I could see the flecks of gold in his furious gray eyes. “Now you stay on mine.”
A threadbare shirt hit me in the face.
A collective gasp rippled through the small crowd. I hadn’t seen my wolf the last time I shifted, but their reactions told me everything. The memory of thick, snow-white fur filled my mind. A white wolf. The rarest of our kind.
My heart stopped beating for a moment before hammering against my ribs so hard I thought they might crack. He stood there, maybe fifteen feet away, his massive frame tense with barely contained fury. The pack warriors flanked him, faces I remembered from years past now frozen in stunned silence.
Seraphina’s POV
The forest fell away and we emerged onto the main grounds. I tried to dig my heels in, but it was useless. He was going to humiliate me in front of everyone.
“I had to leave! You know why I had to run! You weren’t going to let me go!” The words tore from my throat, desperate and pleading.
The command cracked like a whip, making me flinch instinctively.
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61 Chapter 61 Caged by Hatred
But none of them mattered. Nothing mattered except Julian and the way he was staring at me like I was something poisonous that had crawled out of the earth.
My throat closed up. This was the moment I had dreaded and longed for in equal
measure.
Just us. After six years of aching absence, six years of wondering if I would ever see him again. The trees stood as silent witnesses to our reunion, and I had never felt more alone in my life.
His laughter cut me off, harsh and bitter and completely devoid of warmth.
He ignored every plea, every desperate attempt to make him hear reason. His face was carved from stone, completely unmoved by my tears or protests.
He didn’t stop at the main entrance. He dragged me past the kitchen, past the sleeping quarters, down a narrow staircase I had never seen before that led deep into the earth beneath the house.
I searched his face desperately for any trace of the man who once whispered that he loved me. But all I found was cold disappointment so thick I could taste it.
I reached toward him with trembling fingers, desperate to close the distance, to somehow bridge the chasm that six years of separation had carved between us.
The entire pack poured out of the house like ants from a disturbed hill. Elders, warriors, mothers with children in their arms, they all stood transfixed on the porch, watching their Alpha drag his half-dressed, screaming former mate through the dirt like a common criminal.
I was trapped. Caged like an animal. And the man I loved more than life itself hated me enough to put me here.
Julian moved like a predator stalking prey. One slow, deliberate step forward that made every pack member around us tense and take an involuntary step back.
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