They call fated mates unbreakable, sacred threads woven by the goddess herself. But Aiden was never mine by fate. I chose him anyway. Loved him with everything I had left in this shattered world. He promised the bond didn’t matter. Swore his love was real, chosen, eternal. Vowed he’d pick me every single time, no magic required. Yet here I stand in the doorway of our bedroom, watching him lose himself in another woman’s arms, her name spilling from his lips like a sacred vow. Around his neck hangs a cursed pendant. Dark, forbidden magic pulsing black, strong enough to sever the mate link and hide his sin from me. He thought he could cheat without consequence. He was wrong. I felt every thrust, every whispered lie, like sharp pieces of glass tearing through my chest. Rock bottom should have been the end. Instead, it brought him. Alpha Damon. Young. Ruthless. Dangerous in ways that make the elders whisper warnings. Too powerful for his years, too intense for someone like me who's older, scarred, supposedly used up. He’s hunting the source of that same illegal magic. The pendant. The spell that lets mates betray without the soul screaming in agony. Turns out, my crumbling marriage is only a single thread in a vast web of black-market bond-breakers—a conspiracy rotting the packs from the inside. He needs my knowledge. My proximity. My secrets. He wants me embedded in the investigation, close enough that his scent lingers on my skin long after he leaves the room. Every time he says my name, something long-buried awakens inside me. A pull. A hunger. A dangerous spark I thought Aiden had extinguished forever. I shouldn’t crave him. He’s too young. Too lethal. Too much like salvation wrapped in shadows. But when he looks at me, there’s no pity. No judgment. No sense that I’m damaged goods or yesterday’s discard. For the first time in years, I feel seen. Wanted. Worth the war he’s willing to wage. The empty place where a true bond should have lived? It’s starting to hum again… and this time, it’s not echoing Aiden’s name.