Chapter 8

• I had been monumentally stupid. Since Damian had accepted our Bond in the sacred ceremony and I wasn’t able to cut it off entirely, he had access to me through it. It wasn’t as powerful as a Bond accepted by both parties, but it was enough.
• Of course, now that I knew this I couldn’t leave the Bond active. The last thing I wanted was to have Damian still clinging to me, ready to violate my very thoughts whenever he damn well pleased. He didn’t deserve the honor, and he wasn’t worth the risk.
• So I agreed to meet him. I had no choice; I needed him to break the Bond off on his end, since I couldn’t do it on mine. The biggest concern was what he wanted in return.
• When I walked into the restaurant (the one where we had our first date, that fucker) I wasn’t even all that surprised to find Louisa sitting there too. She looked up at me smugly.
• I just sat down silently. I wasn’t here for her.
• “What do you want?” I asked bluntly. Damian chuckled, and I seethed. He had the upper hand here and he was going to milk it for all it was worth.
• “Wow, not even a hello to start the conversation? Already abandoning social etiquette, I see.” I just rolled my eyes.
• “I don’t want to be anywhere near you, and I know that you don’t really want to be near me either, so let’s skip the formalities, alright?”
• “You’re right, I don’t want to be around you,” Damian said with a sickly little smile. There was rage behind his eyes. “That little stunt you pulled cost me a lot of reputation.”
• “What do you want,” I sighed, tired of the drama. Damian grinned.
• “The Harp House.”
• My blood went cold.
• “Alpha Greg is still appointing me as his successor, but there are still those who are loyal to your mother and claim that Alpha Greg is just a placeholder until she wakes up. Succeeding a placeholder means becoming a placeholder, right? They would never respect me.”
• Louisa leaned forward towards me, grinning like a shark. “But Alpha Alexandra meant for the Harp House to be passed down from Alpha to Alpha. It might as well be the symbol of Moonshadow’s leadership!”
• “Exactly,” Damian added. “Half the reason Alpha Greg isn’t fully accepted is because your mother gave the house to you, not him. But if you give the house to me, then I can truly inherit the title!”
• I stared at them, cold and hollow. I should have known.
• Greg had been vying for the house ever since mom fell into her coma, almost eight years ago now, and keeping the house from him was my silent way of showing the pack that I refused to endorse my mother’s proxy. I kept him from fully seizing control of Moonshadow.
• And now the one person even less deserving was demanding I hand it over.
• “That house,” I said lowly, “was built by my mother’s hands. She hauled lumber and poured concrete, all to ensure the future of not just her pack, but her family. It’s not just some political symbol, it’s my goddamn home.”
• Damian and Louisa both glared at me.
• “Your home in the middle of pack territory, where you can never set foot again,” Damian hissed.
• “Pack territories are not legally recognized as trespass zones,” I said smoothly. “As long as I am not on someone else’s yard or property, I have the same rights to walk around the streets as anyone else. You’d know that if you didn’t rely on me for leadership.”
• Damian growled, his spicy-sour scent flitting under my nose as he started to broadcast his anger. Someone at the next table looked at us like she wasn’t sure if she should ask to move or not.
• “I never relied on you for shit,” Damian bit out. I raised one eyebrow condescendingly.
• “Oh? I would have thought the last Alpha meeting had disabused you of that notion.”
• Damian’s face was turning red. “Give. Me. The house,” he grit. “Or the Mate Bond stays in place.”
• I ground my teeth together, furious. The gall he had, the fucking audacity—I hated him to the very core of my soul, more so because I knew he had the upper hand.
• I couldn’t break the bond myself. I couldn’t let Damian stay in my head. But I couldn’t give away my mother’s final gift to me, not when every nail, board, and shingle in that home still held something of her.
• There might be other ways to break the bond. There was no other way to feel my mother’s embrace.
• Damian could feel the moment my mind was made up, my determination echoing through the Bond, and he jumped to his feet with a roar. I didn’t flinch, but many of the other customers did.
• “Give it to me!” he screamed, leaning over the table until he was so close I could feel his spit on my face. I just glared at him, unmoving as stone. “You bitch!”
• Louisa must have cottoned on, because she shrieked in rage before grabbing her cup. The water never hit me though—instead it hit a young man wearing the waiter’s uniform. I gasped.
• “If you continue to cause a disturbance in this establishment, you may be asked to leave!” the teenager said loudly, as if his sopping-wet visage might inspire some fear. Then he whirled back to me worriedly. “Are you alright, my Luna?”
• I gaped at him. If he was calling me Luna then he was a member of Elroy’s pack. Did Elroy know I had come to meet Damian?
• If the word Luna stunned me, it triggered Louisa into a fit. She picked up a plate and threw it to the ground, shattering it, screeching in rage.
• “He made you his Luna? Are you kidding me?! All because you opened your legs for him?”
• I glared, pulling the waiter to my side. I didn’t want him to get hurt if Louisa broke anything else—not that I wanted to get hurt either, but better me than some fresh-faced fifteen-year-old. I still turned slightly to the side to protect my stomach from any attacks, though.
• “You’re fucking shameless, you know that? Seducing a man, using your baby to climb in the ranks! I bet that Alpha only sees you as his incubator.
• “How could he see you as anything else? Let alone care about you? He’s promising such pretty things, but the second that baby falls out of you he’ll throw you to the forests like the Rogue whore you are!”
• And then Louisa’s hand was in my hair, pulling hard enough to force me forward. She had never trained for battle, being an Omega, but her sloppily flung hits still landed hard enough. She had her wolf to strengthen her, after all.
• I was glad I was bent over, so she had no direct access to my belly and my growing child. I put one arm around my middle just to stay safe, and dug my thumbnail into Louisa’s wrist hard. She yelped, forced to release me as I destabilized her hold.
• I heard a short shout as Damian shoved the waiter hard, knocking him into another table before he could jump in to help me. Enraged, I whirled on him with a vicious punch.
• Unlike Louisa, I was well trained.
• His nose crunched under my knuckles, but I only got one hit in before Louisa was jumping on me. I had to shield my stomach again, giving her the freedom to rain hits on my back and shoulders while Damian hauled me over his shoulder. I screamed as my feet left the floor.
• Were they kidnapping me?
• I kicked and squirmed, rolling to the side, and Damian lost his hold. I fell to the floor and kicked out, hitting Louisa’s shin and earning a lovely cry. Now if I could serve Damian a heel to the crotch—
• The bell over the door jingled cheerily, and the atmosphere was sucked right out of the room. I didn’t have to look behind me to know who it was; it was too much like the wedding to be anyone else.
• Though I wasn’t expecting Elroy to be spattered with blood. What the fuck?
• “Y-you can’t hurt me,” Damian stammered quickly, backing away from me like the coward he was. “Our Mate Bond is active—you hit me, Olivia will feel it too.” Elroy just stalked forward, unnervingly serene.
• He pulled leather gloves out of his back pocket and threw them down. They slapped the flooring right by my feet.
• “I, Alpha Elroy of Eclipse Pack, hereby invoke the challenge of the Alpha against this man. We will fight with everything on the line, and when I defeat you, I will break the Fated Bond between you and my Luna once and for all.”