Howling at Her Silent Grave

After all, he so desperately wanted me to disappear.

I might as well give him one last surprise.

“Who cares if you care or not? I’d be thrilled if you died!”

Damien snorted and brushed past me, only to pour a glass of warm water. He placed it on the table, his movements infusing it with a faint trace of his healing energy.

“Just looking at you ruins my mood. I wouldn’t have come back if I’d known.”

He seemed disgusted to be in the same space as me, grabbing his suit jacket and hurrying out of the mansion without even touching the water he had just poured.

I watched him go, a man who treated me like an enemy, avoiding me like the plague.

It had been this way for six years.

How had I survived?

I stared at the rippling surface of the water in the glass and couldn’t resist taking a small sip.

The warmth was familiar.

In that moment, my vision blurred.

To be honest, I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.

I couldn’t understand why I still chased after him, even after he had cast me aside.

Was it because he was the hand that pulled me from the mire? Or was he the one person I could confide in through the agony of my curse?

Damien gave me one year of sweetness, and it sustained me through six years of pain.

I even wondered, if not for this sudden curse, would I have eventually chosen to sever this damned mate bond?

But now I was dying, and I still wanted to keep loving him.

It was a sweet illusion I had woven for myself.

On the path to the Eternal Moonlight, at least I could proudly say that I once had the most sincere love.

The next time I saw Damien was at the pack’s annual gala.

I was with my best friend, Seraphina Vance, accompanying her after a check-up with the healer.

He was there with his mate-to-be, Isolde.

I felt like a sewer rat, desperately searching for a dark corner to hide in.

But my clumsy posture only made me look pitiful. The werewolves around me stared at me as if I were a lunatic.

Some even went out of their way to avoid me.

I didn’t care about the strange looks. My mind was consumed by the image of Damien showing Isolde the wolf totem tattooed on his chest.

The mark meant only for his fated mate—for me—had been desecrated, forcefully altered with dark magic to incorporate the Thorne clan’s sigil of thorns.

That desecration of the sacred mark hurt more than any claw ever could.

I had thought it was just a choice people make as they mature, a sacrifice for power.

But I was wrong.

Damien was only like this with me.

I looked up to see if he had left, and my gaze met Damien’s probing stare.

He frowned and quickly looked away.

He saw me, but he didn’t come over.

I had always been an awkward person.

I was never one to ask for things directly; I would just sulk in silence when I wanted something.

Not even my mother noticed this about me, but in the one year Damien and I were bonded, he had spoiled me rotten.

He indulged my quiet stubbornness, giving me everything I never had the courage to ask for.

At first, it was the magic dolls I never had as a child, and later, a gorgeous moonlight gauze dress.

How could I forget the boy who once cared for me so dearly?

The pain began to creep in again.

When Seraphina returned, she found me huddled on a bench in the corner and her face crumpled, her heart breaking for me all over again.

“Elara, you have to hold on. The baby still wants to call you godmother.”

I glanced at her swollen belly with envy, then looked down at my own flat stomach, my heart heavy.

A pup had once started to grow here, too. A life that never had the chance to see the moonlight.

“Sera, don’t cry. A pregnant she-wolf shouldn’t get so emotional.”

I gently wiped the tears from the corner of her eye. “I’ll hold on until your baby calls me godmother.”