Frozen Bonds, Broken Heart Chapter 06
She stumbled backward, arms flailing as her heels slipped on the ice, and she crashed headfirst into
the frozen lake in the middle of the forest.
The ice cracked with a sharp sound, like an ancient curse waking from sleep.
She thrashed in the dark water, her screams muffled, only bubbles rising to the surface
I stood at the edge of the lake and watched.
I waited until the surface began to go still and her thrashing faded to feeble twitches, then I raised my hand and called the pack’s patrol guards.
When they pulled her out, her face was blue and she wasn’t moving.
The pack healer examined her, then delivered the news in a heavy voice:
“I’m sorry, Alpha. Prolonged submersion in the freezing water caused permanent neurological and cranial damage. She’ll live, but she’ll never be the same.”
Sarah had lost her mind.
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t recognize anyone-except for me.
Every time she saw me, her empty eyes would snap wide. She would tremble, scream, and point at me with twisted fingers.
“Ghost! It’s a ghost!”
I would walk up to her, lean close, and let my cold breath brush against her ear.
“You’re right, Sarah. I’m a ghost. And I’ve come for revenge.”
When Damon found me in the empty stone pack house, he was on the verge of a total breakdown.
He must have abandoned all his pack duties. Word had spread all across Aspen.
He stood in the doorway, his eyes red, his expensive coat wrinkled and stained with snow and mud.
“Elena,” he choked out, stumbling toward me. “There you are. Thank the Moon Goddess.”
He reached for me, but I stepped back.
“Why did you cancel the mating ceremony?” he demanded, his voice raw and ragged, torn straight
from his chest. “Why did you leave? Don’t you love me anymore?”
I looked at him.
The man who had put on an apron at three in the morning to bake me cookies.
The man who had held me all night when I was hurt, using his own body heat to soothe my wolf.
The man who had left me in the snow and coldly said, “Survive.”
“Love?” I repeated.
I shook my head.
“The woman who loved you is gone. She drowned in the sea.”
I walked past him.
“Elena, wait!” he shouted, grabbing my wrist.
I stopped and turned slowly.
“Let go of me, Alpha. Or I’ll show you what a real monster can do.”
He let go. His face went pale, like something invisible had forced him back a step.
“What… what happened to you?”
“All you need to know is that I’m not your mate anymore,” I said flatly.
Wind whistled through the treeline. Snow fell. The temperature dropped a few more degrees.
“No, Elena,” he begged, his tone meek and groveling, no different from a whipped hound. “You still have feelings for me, right?”
“Is that what you think?” I tilted my head, looking at him like a stranger. “I never loved you,
Damon. I only used you.”
He froze.
“My parents were dead. I was an orphan with nowhere to go. I latched onto you because I had no
other choice.”
“That can’t be true,” he rasped. “What about our sacred mate bond between us?”
i let out a dry laugh.
“Your parents told me I was your fated mate, so I brainwashed myself. I kept ignoring what my wolf knew.”
I paused. “Can you still feel it? The bond?”
Damon went still.
He took a deep breath, like he was reaching for something in the air-and then he stumbled back
half a step, his face drained of color.
“What’s happening…”
“Damon, Sarah was the one who truly loved you,” I said coldly. “Though I don’t think she’s in any condition for a mating ceremony right now. But that doesn’t bother you, does it? You swore on the
Blood Moon that you would die in her bed. Nothing was supposed to tear you apart.”
His face turned ashen. “Elena… how do you know that?”
“Sarah told me,” I said with a shrug. “She sent me every detail of the times you slept together.”
She thought it would destroy me.
Instead, it set me free.
Damon fell to his knees.
The powerful Alpha crumpled like a broken wolf, stripped of all its power and pride.
“Elena, I was wrong. I was blind. Please come back. I’ll cut her off. I’ll do anything.”
I looked down at him.
“No, Damon,” I said quietly. “I already died once. You and Sarah killed her. And she’s never coming
back.”
He stared up at me, his eyes full of terror.
I turned and walked away.
Snow fell softly, dusting the ground in a thin white layer.
