Frozen Bonds, Broken Heart Chapter 03
“Damon,” Sarah murmured as we arrived at Blackwood Pack’s Aspen estate, “can I have that room? The one facing the east ridge? I love the morning light.”
She pointed straight at my bedroom.
That room held my scent, my clothes, my past.
She batted her eyelashes. “Please? I love it here.”
Damon hesitated.
Fire popped and crackled in the hearth, casting warm flickers along his jawline.
He looked at Sarah, then at me.
“That bedroom belongs to Elena,” he said, a rare note of uncertainty creeping into his voice. “All her things are inside, so it’s her call to make.”
He turned to me, his expression dark.
He’d fully expected me to shift shapes and go for her throat to guard what was mine.
But I just smiled. “Of course she can have it.”
Shock flickered across his face. “Elena… why would you…”
He couldn’t reconcile the woman standing in front of him with the she-wolf who had once shifted and fought Sarah tooth and nail to protect her space.
“If Sarah’s fond of it, she ought to have it,” I said flatly. ” If she’s content, my Alpha is content. It’s only logical.”
Even Sarah froze.
They both stared as I calmly gathered my pillows and walked to the guest room at the end of the hall.
The trip to the Arctic had drained me.
I needed sleep.
When I woke again, the room was pitch black.
I fumbled for the bedside lamp, and then I saw it—a dark figure sitting beside my bed.
My wolf coiled to strike.
But Damon’s voice cut through the silence first.
“Elena, why did you throw our mating ring in the trash?”
His eyes were bloodshot.
In his hand, he clutched the heavy gold ring—the one he had slipped onto my finger two years ago during the Blood Moon ceremony, in front of all the elders.
Back then, I thought it was sacred.
Now, it was just a piece of metal.
“It must’ve slipped off somehow,” I murmured, sitting up.
Damon grabbed my arm, his fingers clamped around my arm in a vice-like grip. “You’re different. Ever since you came back from the wilderness… you’ve changed.”
I didn’t think he would notice so quickly.
It didn’t matter.
The real surprise was still to come.
Later that afternoon, I stepped onto the terrace.
A ceramic vase fell from the second-floor balcony and hit me square on the head.
Blood poured down my face instantly, streaming over my brow and into my eyes.
“Ah! Elena, I’m so sorry!” Sarah’s voice floated down from the balcony above. “It slipped!”
Damon rushed out, his face pale. “What happened?”
He grabbed the first-aid kit and tried to bandage me up, but the blood wouldn’t stop—my werewolf healing had abruptly failed, as if something was blocking it.
“Get the driver over here, we need to head for the pack hospital immediately!” he roared, scooping me into his arms.
He laid me down in the passenger seat of his truck. That seat hadn’t belonged to me for months.
In the hospital hallway, I heard Damon shouting.
“Sarah, that was beyond careless! You nearly got her killed!”
“I didn’t mean to,” Sarah sobbed. “If something happens to Elena, I’d never live it down. I’d hurl myself off the bluff out of guilt.”
Her performance was seamless.
Damon’s anger visibly faded. “Fine… go apologize to her.”
Sarah knelt by my bedside, tears streaming down her face. “I’m so sorry, Elena.”
The second Damon left, she stood up and locked the door.
She walked back slowly, smiling.
“What are you doing?”
In the next moment, she shoved my head back against the pillow and pressed her thumbs hard into the wound on my scalp.
“How on earth are you still kicking?” she hissed, her nails nearly digging into my skull. “It doesn’t matter, though. You see that doctor who just checked on you? I paid him to put silver in your IV.”
Silver.
A slow poison for werewolves.
It burns through veins, blocks healing, like live embers burning deep within your tissue.
“That wound is going to burn like hell for weeks.”
I stared at her with a blank expression.
To be honest, I felt nothing at all.
The spirit beneath the ice had warned me long ago:
“The ancient virus from the abyss will change you. You won’t feel pain anymore. Not physical. Not emotional.”
Sarah had no idea what she was up against.
“Sarah,” I said, grabbing her wrist like a vice, “you’ve been tormenting me long enough. Now it’s my turn.”
“What—how are you fine?!” She panicked, trying to pull away like a frantic she-wolf with her tail pinned.
I didn’t answer.
I glanced at the vase on the windowsill.
A flick of my finger sent it flying across the room and crashing into her head.
When Damon and the doctor burst in, Sarah was screaming on the floor, blood pooling beneath her among the shattered ceramic.
“What happened?” Damon roared.
I dabbed at the bandage on my head, calmly as though straightening bed linens. “Sarah wanted to apologize in her own way.”
Sarah was carried out to another room, shaking uncontrollably.
Damon didn’t follow right away. He stood there, staring at me with a look of searching—and something else. A quiet, unacknowledged flicker of fear.
“Elena, are you okay? Your lips have gone pale. You feeling chilled? I’ll shut the window for you.”
I laughed.
He had left me to freeze in the Arctic wilderness, left me for dead, and now he was putting on a show of fretting over a cold breeze.
I shrugged off the coat he offered. “I’m not cold. Give it to Sarah. She needs it more.”
