My cheek burned. I turned my head slowly and saw the hatred carved into his face. I could barely process what I'd just heard.
For the sake of Corvina's pup, he had cursed ours.
The mate bond between us, that fraying thread I had held onto for five years, pulsed once. Weak. Sickly. Like a heartbeat trying to keep going when the body around it had already given up. My wolf pressed her nose against it from the inside, and I felt her recoil. His end of the bond tasted like ash. Like scorched iron gone cold.
"Yeah, Seraphina, how could you do that? She just gave birth. You shouldn't have hit her!"
"No wonder Theron says he's more comfortable with Corvina. Seraphina's temper is way too much."
They all talked over each other, a chorus of noise that split my skull open. My breathing turned shallow and ragged. Their voices blurred into a single wall of sound, and beneath it, I could hear my own pulse. Too fast. Too thin. My wolf was pacing now, frantic circles in the dark, her claws scraping against something inside me that felt like it was coming apart.