(Aria's POV)

"Aria, I want to end our mate bond," my fated mate, Florian, said solemnly over the phone.

The words hit me like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs. For a moment, I couldn't process what I'd just heard. The phone felt heavy in my hand. My heart stuttered, then began to race, pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, in the very tips of my fingers gripping the device.

Inside me, Ava stirred-no, not stirred. She erupted. My wolf surged forward with a violence I'd never felt from her before, her presence flooding my consciousness with white-hot fury and disbelief. The mate bond, that sacred thread connecting us to Florian, suddenly felt like it was being pulled taut, stretched to its breaking point. I could feel it thrumming painfully beneath my skin, a warning, a protest.

"What the hell? What are you talking about?" The words came out sharper than I intended, but I couldn't help it. Ava was clawing at my control, her growl reverberating through my chest.

Memories flashed unbidden through my mind-Florian, bloodied and broken, stumbling into Meadow Brook territory six months ago. The moment our eyes met and the mate bond had snapped into place, fierce and undeniable. Moon Goddess, I had been overjoyed. Ava had been overjoyed. Yes, we'd both sensed his wolf's weakness, the strange frailty in his aura that didn't match a typical warrior. But we had accepted it without hesitation. The Moon Goddess had chosen him for us, and we had chosen to honor that bond.

I had spent months healing him, pouring my energy and skill into mending his wounds. I had held him through nightmares, soothed him when memories of his attack haunted him. I had given him everything-my care, my devotion, my trust. And now, now he wanted to sever our bond?

"I've discovered something important about myself," Florian continued, his voice maddeningly calm, as if he were discussing the weather and not destroying everything between us. "I'm not just some warrior from Meadow Brook Pack. I'm actually the son of the Alpha of Redwood Pack in Northgate City. I've taken my rightful name-Florian Redwood."

Alpha heir. The words echoed in my mind, hollow and bitter.

I forced myself to breathe, to think past the roaring in my ears. My free hand clenched into a fist at my side, nails digging into my palm hard enough to hurt. The pain helped ground me, kept me from completely losing control.

"That's... unexpected," I managed, my voice coming out steadier than I felt. "Congratulations, I guess."

The word tasted like ash on my tongue. Congratulations for discovering you're someone important? Congratulations for deciding I'm no longer good enough?

"As the future Alpha of Redwood Pack," he continued, and there was something in his tone now-pride, satisfaction, things I'd never heard from him before, "I need to reconsider certain... arrangements. Our mate bond isn't suitable anymore."

Arrangements. He called our sacred mate bond an arrangement. The mate bond the Moon Goddess herself had forged between us.

"You're just a healer from a small, remote pack," Florian said, each word a carefully placed knife. "You don't have the status required to be an Alpha's mate. I need to mark someone more appropriate-perhaps an Alpha's daughter from another powerful pack."

Status. Appropriate. The words swirled in my head, each one more insulting than the last. I felt something inside me begin to crack, a fissure spreading through the careful composure I'd been maintaining.

Ava howled in rage, a sound so fierce it threatened to burst from my throat. 'Weak! Coward! Ungrateful dog!' she snarled in my mind. 'We saved his pathetic life and this is how he repays us?'

My blood boiled, heat flooding my veins as fury mixed with something darker-humiliation, betrayal, grief all tangled together into something that made my chest feel too tight, too small to contain it all. The mate bond pulsed erratically now, as if sensing its imminent destruction, and the sensation was nauseating.

"So you're breaking our bond because I'm suddenly not good enough for you?" I asked, my voice low and dangerous.

"Don't be dramatic. I'm being practical," he replied dismissively, and somehow that casual dismissal hurt worse than anything else. How could he sound so unaffected? How could this mean nothing to him when it was everything to me?

Then he said something that made my stomach turn: "I could still keep you as my lover, of course. You'd have certain privileges-"

The world seemed to tilt. Lover. Mistress. He wanted to reduce me to that? After everything?

Something inside me snapped. Not just cracked-shattered completely. The hurt, the humiliation, the sheer audacity of his words crystallized into a cold, burning fury that swept through me like wildfire. Ava's rage merged with mine until I couldn't tell where she ended and I began, until we were one single force of righteous anger.

"You disgusting piece of trash!" The words exploded from me with a force that surprised even myself. "You still want me to be your mistress? Are you worthy of that? Listen well, I, Aria, hereby declare my rejection of you, Florian Redwood, as my mate."

The moment the rejection left my lips, agony tore through my chest. It felt as though someone had reached into my ribcage and was ripping my heart out with their bare hands. The mate bond, already strained, didn't just break-it shattered, splintering into a thousand cutting shards that sliced through every nerve ending I possessed.

I gasped, doubling over as white-hot pain seared through me. It wasn't just physical-though Moon Goddess knew it felt like I was being torn apart from the inside. It was deeper than that, more fundamental. It was the severing of something that was meant to be eternal, the destruction of a connection that should have been unbreakable.

Ava's anguished wail filled my consciousness, so loud, so devastating, that tears sprang to my eyes. I felt her grief as acutely as my own, her sense of loss mingling with mine until I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but feel the enormity of what we'd just done.

And then, as suddenly as it had come, the pain began to recede. The mate bond, that constant presence I'd carried for six months, was gone. Simply... gone. In its place was a hollow emptiness that felt almost worse than the pain. I felt unmoored, adrift, as if part of my very soul had been carved away.

But beneath that emptiness, beneath the grief and the hurt, something else was rising. Relief. Liberation. And from Ava, fierce satisfaction.

'We should have gotten rid of that coward long ago!' Ava's voice roared in my mind, strong despite the pain we'd just endured. 'He was never worthy of us!'

She was right. Moon Goddess help me, she was right. I should have trusted my instincts when I'd first felt his wolf's weakness. Should have questioned why the bond felt right but the man himself felt... lacking.

I hung up without waiting for his response, my hands still shaking with rage and the aftershocks of severing the bond. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of hearing my voice break, of knowing how much this hurt. He'd made his choice. I'd made mine.

"I take it that was an unpleasant conversation."

The voice made me jump. I'd been so consumed by the phone call, so overwhelmed by the severing of the bond, that I'd completely forgotten I wasn't alone.

I looked up to see the handsome man in a wheelchair still sitting across from me, one eyebrow raised in what might have been concern or curiosity. Ambrose Crest. The man who had appeared at my healing clinic just five minutes before Florian's call, introducing himself with claims so outrageous they should have been laughable.

Heir to the Alpha King of the Northern Territories. Future Alpha of the Crest Moon Pack. And according to him, I was the long-lost daughter of the Silver River Pack's Alpha.

I should have been more affected by his presence, more concerned with verifying his wild claims. But right now, with the phantom pain of the broken bond still echoing through my chest, with Ava's continued snarling in my mind, I couldn't quite bring myself to care about the timing.

A laugh bubbled up from my chest, bitter and sharp. I smiled at him, though I knew it probably didn't reach my eyes.

"Is this a coincidence?" I asked, gesturing vaguely with the hand that still held my phone. "You, the heir to the Alpha King, just appeared before me, and my ex-mate also discovered that he is a long-lost Alpha heir. Is today April Fools' Day or something?"

The absurdity of it all was almost funny. Almost. If my chest didn't feel like someone had hollowed it out with a dull knife, I might have actually laughed.

"I assure you, everything I just told you is true," Ambrose said, his expression remaining grave, unaffected by my sarcasm. "You really are the daughter of Francis and Lucia Silver, rulers of one of the most powerful packs in Northgate City."

I studied him as he spoke, really looked at him for the first time since his arrival. Even seated in a wheelchair, his presence was commanding. Golden eyes that seemed to see right through me. Strong, aristocratic features that spoke of generations of powerful bloodlines. Dark hair that fell just so across his forehead. And underneath all of that, despite his obvious physical limitations, an aura of strength that made something in my chest tighten.

Something about him felt... right. Different from Florian. Where Florian's presence had always felt slightly off, slightly weak despite the mate bond, Ambrose's felt solid. Grounded. Real.

But I pushed that observation aside. Now was not the time to analyze why a stranger in a wheelchair felt more substantial than my fated mate had.

I laughed again, the sound even more bitter than before. "First my mate dumps me for not being high-status enough, and now a stranger claims I'm some lost princess? This day keeps getting better."

I turned away from him and began organizing the medicinal herbs scattered across my workbench, needing something to do with my hands, needing to feel like I had control over something, even if it was just arranging plants in neat rows. My mind was racing, trying to process everything that had happened in the last ten minutes.

"Even so," I said slowly, keeping my voice level, "why did you come to find me? What about my biological parents?"

If I really was this lost daughter, why had they never looked for me? Why was it this stranger who found me first?

"Because I'll be your fiancé," Ambrose stated simply.