Frozen Bonds, Broken Heart Chapter 08
I stood once more at the edge of the glacier where Sarah had pushed me in.
The gale howled, phantom winds lashing relentlessly at my insulated parka.
But I didn’t feel the cold.
Ever since I traded my heart for a second life in the frozen abyss, I had never felt the cold again.
“I’m here,” I shouted, my voice swallowed by the storm. “I’ve come to pay my debt.”
The ice beneath my feet began to glow with an eerie blue light, as if something ancient had woken
The spirit rose from the depths.
It had no form, no voice, but I understood its message clearly-not through my ears, but through
the broken mate bond between us.
“We gave you a second life, and you paid with your love. But you have taken far more than you were
given.”
“I only reclaimed what’s rightfully mine,” I said quietly, my breath fogging in the air. “Everything
was due to me from the start.”
“Vengeance was never written into our pact,” the spirit answered. “You misused the gifts I granted and brought an Alpha down. The natural order has to be set right again.”
“What exactly are you demanding of me?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“Go back to him. He is a part of you, and you are a part of him. Your bond is not yet gone. If you let
him fade, you waste a piece of yourself.”
“Not a chance,” I spat, the spit froze the second it left my lips. “I’d sooner drop dead all over again than go back.”
“Then die. This time, no one will pull you out of the abyss.”
The ice beneath me began to crack.
That was when I realized the spirit wasn’t giving me a choice. It was giving me an ultimatum:
Go back to Damon, or let the glacier swallow me.
“Hold on!” I roared. “Give me more time to process this!”
Damon’s room was clean and silent, thick with the smell of disinfectant, medicine, and a thick, suffocating undertone of pure despair.
The once-proud Alpha lay in bed, frail and broken, tubes running through his arms and nose like a feral beast stripped of its claws and fangs.
His parents huddled in the corner, looking years older.
Mrs. Hale saw me and crawled across the floor, her eyes puffy and bloodshot from endless crying
“Elena! Thank the Moon Goddess you’re here! Maybe he can hear you…”
I ignored her.
I walked to the bed and looked down at him.
His chest rose and fell with the rhythm of the ventilator.
I reached out and took his cold, limp hand.
The moment we touched, a shock like electricity shot through me.
The spirit was right.
Something still connected us-not a full bond, but a thin, frayed thread, stretching across the distance of his coma, linking him to me.
I closed my eyes and concentrated.
I could feel his consciousness. A tiny, flickering spark buried deep beneath layers of trauma and
cold.
I pushed my own awareness down along that broken connection.
Suddenly, I was no longer in the hospital room.
I was standing on a vast, frozen wasteland.
In the distance, a lone wolf let out a howl, full of endless sorrow and self-hatred.
That was Damon’s soul, trapped in a prison of his own making.
“Damon,” I called softly, my voice echoing across the empty plain.
The wolf lifted its head. Its golden eyes locked onto mine.
Then it whimpered.
I held out my hand.
The wolf nuzzled against my palm. Its shape wavered and grew translucent, like a candle flame flickering out.
In that moment, I finally understood what the spirit wanted me to see-Damon was drowning in his
own regret.
Just like I had drowned in the frozen sea.
I gasped and snapped back to reality. His hand was still wrapped around mine.
“He’s not there,” I told the weeping old couple, my voice flat. “His soul is trapped in the ice.”
“Is there any way you can pull his soul back?” Mr. Hale knelt on the floor, his voice cracked and raw.
I looked at the man who had once been my whole world.
The man who had betrayed me, broken my heart, and then fallen to his knees begging for forgiveness.
“Not a chance,” I said. “But the cost runs steep, for each of us alike.”
