Chapter 3
On the way back, my communicator buzzed.
Seeing Sophia’s name on the screen, I still slid to answer.
“Kathy, I have to tell you something. Alpha Noah is cheating! I just saw him outside the hospital, wrapped around another woman!”
“It’s Evelyn,” I said inwardly to Zoe, while calmly replying to my friend, “It’s fine. Let him do whatever he wants.”
“How can you be so calm?!” Zoe and Sophia’s exclamations overlapped in my ears.
I stared at my pale face in the rearview mirror. “We already signed the bond-severance agreement.”
As the words left my mouth, a familiar wrenching pain twisted in my stomach.
It was a side effect of the memory-erasing drug — a physical manifestation of the emotional shredding in my chest.
When I told Sophia everything — how Noah tricked me into taking the drug, how Evelyn pretended to be pitiful and manipulative — she cursed furiously on the other end of the line.
“He’s disgusting! You gave up your spot at the Healer Witch Training Camp to stand by him, helped him survive the Alpha challenge, and now he turns around and does this?!”
“Do you remember the border defense battle three years ago?” Zoe’s voice softened, and memories surged like a tide.
Back then, Noah had been shot with a silver bullet and was on the brink of death.
I had risked being consumed by silver poison and used a healing crystal to keep him alive for seven days.
He’d clutched my hand in his coma and murmured, “Kathy… I can’t live without you…”
“Everything he has now was built on your sacrifices!” Sophia’s furious shout snapped me back to reality.
Even after her long rant, Sophia wasn’t done. She took a deep breath and delivered her final judgment:
“I swear, he’s going to regret dumping you and forcing you to take that memory-wiping drug. And he has no idea, does he? That you never even made an antidote. Let him suffer. As for you — you’re finally free.”
I remembered how Alpha Noah and I used to sit on the balcony, gazing at the distant stars, dreaming about our future.
“When I become the pack leader, I’ll make our clan stronger than ever.”
Noah held my hand, eyes brimming with hope. “And you’ll become the greatest Healer Witch. Together, we’ll protect this land.”
I had leaned on his shoulder. “Mm, and we’ll have a whole litter of adorable little pups.”
He’d laughed and tapped my nose. “Deal. That’s our shared dream. Neither of us can go back on it.”
But now, those sweet promises echoed like ghosts, leaving behind nothing but betrayal and pain.
Late that night, I curled up in the empty living room. Moonlight filtered through the blinds, casting silver-gray stripes across the floor.
“He replaced our wedding photo… with a portrait of her,” Zoe said, her voice trembling. “And the Alpha token in the study drawer… it now has Evelyn’s initials engraved on it.”
I turned — and saw Noah standing in the doorway with Evelyn in his arms.
“Kathy, Evelyn needs someone to take care of her,” Noah said casually, his gaze flicking to the faint mark on my neck — the old bond imprint still barely visible.
“You’re not doing anything anyway. Just… think of it as repaying me for letting you stay here.”
