7 Years in Prison for My Mate—He Made Me Kneel

The news hit like a series of hammer blows throughout the day.

First, the Eastern Ridge pack severed their hunting agreements. Then the Northern Valley wolves withdrew their trade contracts. By evening, Sterling's carefully constructed network of alliances was crumbling like a house of cards in a windstorm.

I was in the kitchen washing dishes when Beta Derek burst through the servants' entrance, his face pale and drawn. He didn't even notice me as he grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and disappeared toward Sterling's private dining room.

That was three hours ago.

Now I stood outside the dining room door, a tray of cleaning supplies balanced in my hands. The sound of shattering glass had stopped echoing through the corridors, replaced by an ominous silence that made my skin crawl.

I knocked softly. No answer.

The door creaked as I pushed it open, and the sight that greeted me made me freeze. Empty bottles littered the mahogany table like fallen soldiers. Sterling sat slumped in his chair at the head of the table, his dark hair disheveled, his usually pristine shirt wrinkled and stained with alcohol.

He looked broken.

I moved quietly into the room, setting my supplies on the sideboard. Glass crunched under my feet where he'd thrown a bottle against the wall. The acrid smell of whiskey hung heavy in the air, mixing with something else—desperation, maybe. Fear.

"Leave," he said without looking up, his voice slurred and rough.

I continued gathering the broken glass, my movements careful and deliberate. "I need to clean this up, Alpha."

"I said leave!" The words came out as a roar, but there was no real power behind them. Just pain.

That's when his head snapped up, and I saw his eyes.

They weren't the cold, calculating green I'd grown used to. They weren't filled with the hatred and disgust he'd shown me for the past weeks. Instead, they were raw with anguish, pupils dilated from alcohol and something deeper.

Something that made my breath catch in my throat.

"Mate," he whispered, and the word hit me like a physical blow.

But it wasn't Sterling speaking. It was his wolf.

I could see the moment his human consciousness lost control, the way his features shifted slightly, became more primal. His wolf had broken through the barriers Sterling had built, and it was staring at me with seven years of suppressed longing.

"Wrong," he breathed, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. "So wrong. I was wrong."

His hand reached toward me, trembling, and I saw him clearly for the first time since I'd returned. Not the Alpha who had rejected me, not the man who had chosen power over love, but the part of him that had never stopped wanting to claim me.

The mate bond, dormant for so long, suddenly flared to life between us. Heat rushed through my veins like liquid fire, and my silver wolf whined deep in my chest, recognizing what she'd been denied for so long.

"Seven years," his wolf continued, taking a stumbling step toward me. "Seven years I've been caged, watching him destroy everything. Watching him choose her when you—when you were always—"

His voice broke, and the sound of it nearly undid me.

The warmth spreading through the mate bond was intoxicating, addictive in a way that made my knees weak. It would be so easy to step into his arms, to let him give me back what he'd taken away. Seven years of loneliness, of cold prison cells, of believing I was unwanted—it could all end right here.

My wolf was begging me to move closer, to accept what his wolf was offering. The connection between us pulsed with desperate need, with regret so deep it felt like drowning.

But then I remembered.

I remembered my mother's grave, defiled and forgotten. I remembered seven years of silence, seven years of him building his empire on the foundation of my sacrifice. I remembered Arianna's mark on his throat, dark and possessive and permanent.

I remembered who had put me in that cell.

"You think one apology erases seven years?" My voice came out ice-cold, cutting through the alcoholic haze and the mate bond's false promises. "Your wolf might regret it, but you—Sterling—you made your choice."

His wolf flinched as if I'd struck him, but I wasn't finished.

"You chose Arianna. You chose power. You chose to let me rot in that cell while you built your kingdom on my bones." I stepped backward, away from his reaching hand, away from the treacherous warmth of the bond. "You marked her, Sterling. You made her your Luna while I was locked away for a crime I didn't commit."

"No," he whispered, his wolf's voice breaking. "It wasn't supposed to—I never meant—"

"But you did." The words came out flat, final. "You did all of it. And now that your precious alliances are crumbling, now that the consequences are catching up to you, suddenly your wolf remembers what you threw away?"

I turned toward the door, my spine straight despite the mate bond clawing at my chest, begging me to stay.

"It's too late, Sterling. Seven years too late."

Behind me, I heard the sound of his wolf breaking through completely—a howl of pure anguish that seemed to shake the very walls of the pack house. It was the sound of a creature in agony, mourning what it had lost through its human half's choices.

I didn't look back.

As I stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind me, I felt a flicker of savage satisfaction. Let his wolf suffer. Let him feel even a fraction of what I'd endured in that Council prison. Let him burn with the knowledge of what he'd destroyed.

The mate bond pulsed between us, carrying his pain directly into my chest, but I welcomed it. Every throb of anguish was proof that my plan was working.

This was only the beginning.