The Fallacy of the Fifth Year
A werewolf seer once prophesied that my mate, Alpha Kaelen, would betray me in the fifth year of our union.
Kaelen scoffed, shattering the seer's prophecy crystal with a single swipe of his claw.
"Elara and I have been bound for thirteen years. Our bond is not something a senile old fool can tamper with."
For the next four years, his devotion to me grew fiercer, as if he would pluck the very moon from the sky for me.
Until a young werewolf in the pack, Selene, presented him with a token of her affection, her eyes red-rimmed.
In front of the entire pack, Kaelen burned that token to ashes.
He invoked his Alpha authority, swearing an oath to make his boundaries clear.
From that day on, my faith in him grew even stronger.
But on the fifth anniversary of our bonding ceremony, I received an anonymous magical message.
Inside was a magical memory stone.
It showed Kaelen and Selene, entangled in the moonlit forest, their scents mingling.
On the back of the memory stone, a provocative line of text was magically branded: He might be bound to you, but his body is mine. Tell me, who does he truly love?
At the bottom of the box, there was also a silver wolf fang imbued with Selene's scent, identical to the one she wore in the memory stone.
After seeing it, I sat numbly in the living room for three hours. I didn't use our mind-link to question Kaelen, who had not yet returned.
Instead, I had the priestess draw up the forms to sever our mate bond and placed them on the living room table.