Chapter 10
Shelly’s POV
One year later, I was in Billy’s private estate, organizing medical equipment and preparing to start my life over as a surgical healer.
CRASH!
The front door was thrown open with violent force.
“Shelly!”
Ford’s voice, desperate and broken, echoed from the living room. I set down my scalpel and walked calmly toward the sound. Billy was already blocking the doorway, his eyes burning with a lethal fury.
“How dare you show your face here,” Billy’s voice was colder than ice.
Ford was on his knees. His cheeks were hollowed out, his eyes sunken deep into their sockets. He looked like a skeleton. Three months of torment had utterly broken him.
“Billy, please, just let me see her,” his voice was a ragged whisper. “Just once. That’s all I ask.”
In the space of a heartbeat, Billy was gone, and a massive silver wolf stood in his place. He lunged. The sound of claws tearing flesh filled the room. Ford didn’t fight back. He just let Billy’s rage rip into his body.
“That’s enough,” I said.
Billy stopped his attack but kept a heavy paw pressed against Ford’s throat. Ford looked up at me, his eyes an ocean of regret and despair.
“Shelly-”
“Don’t use that name,” I cut him off, my voice as steady and clinical as a surgeon’s. “Ford Blackwood, you violated our mate
vow: ‘Never deceive’.”
His body shook violently. “I know, I-”
“You let your brother die for another woman,” I walked toward him, step by step. “You chose betrayal for a threat that never
existed.”
“I can explain-”
“Explain what?” I crouched in front of him, my healer’s composure making my voice devoid of all emotion. “Explain how you cut our link when I needed you most? Explain how you stood by while I performed a forbidden ritual in agony?”
Tears streamed from Ford’s eyes. “Shelly, our child… I know you did it to get back at me—”
“You think I killed him?” I let out a cold laugh. “Ford, I never killed our son.”
His head snapped up.
“I simply ‘hid’ him from your world of lies,” I said, standing up.
Just then, the clear cry of a baby sounded from upstairs. Ford’s eyes went wide.
“Is that-”
“Our son,” I said, turning for the stairs. “I reawakened him. But he will never know you.”
“Shelly! Please!” Ford tried to get up, but Billy pinned him to the floor. “Let me see him! Just one look!”
1/2
I paused at the top of the stairs, without looking back.
“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, my voice soft but final, “you’re already dead.”
Click.
I closed the door behind me.
+15 Bonus
Six months later, Billy came into my study, his face grim.
“Shelly, I have some news.”
I was holding my six-month-old son, reading him a bedtime story. He had Ford’s eyes, but his smile was all mine.
“What is it?” I asked, not looking up.
“Ford is dead.”
My hand paused for a fraction of a second before I continued stroking my son’s hair. “How?”
“He tortured Kyra for weeks. It broke him, and it broke the pack’s laws. Without a mate to ground him or an heir to fight for, he lost his mind. He was challenged for the Alpha title, and he didn’t even fight back. He let them kill him.”
I looked down at my son, who smiled in his sleep.
“Shelly,” Billy watched me. “Do you still hate him?”
A single tear slid down my cheek. It wasn’t for the man who had died, but for the girl who had died with him on that bridge. The girl who had loved him so completely.
“I did,” I whispered to my sleeping son. “I hated him. Right up until this very moment.”
With Ford’s death, all the love, all the hate, and the chains of our broken bond had finally turned to dust.
I was free.
