Author’s note: Dear readers, this novel won bronze in the July 2026 Cupid’s Quill contest! Thank you for all your support and please enjoy one extra Chapter to celebrate the win!
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Sayan watched in heavy silence as Magnus turned on his heel and left the room without another word.
Magnus hadn’t spoken a single word to his uncle in five long years. After the dust settled, Hugo had dragged him out of the hospital, begging for forgiveness, trying desperately to repair the fracture between them.
He pleaded that he hadn’t known—that he, too, had been played for a fool, completely blind to the web of lies spun by Karina and her scheming family. But Magnus never forgave him. No amount of tearful assurances or desperate apologies could bridge the chasm forged by that brutal betrayal.
The treachery of his own bloodline had torn Magnus apart. He loathed them for it. He severed every tie, renounced the main family, and cast off everything connecting him to his past.
When he founded his own pack, he never expected the strength of the loyalty that followed him. Despite his youth, despite the staggering risk, nearly every high-ranking warrior who had once marched alongside his uncle defected to Magnus’s side.
They had witnessed the raw truth: he was right, his family had betrayed him, his fated mate had been slaughtered, and he was entirely justified in his fury. Above all, they recognized his terrifying, innate strength as a leader.
Yet Sayan’s words had stirred the dark, stagnant waters deep within his soul—a bitter sediment Magnus had tried for years to bury. He had never once visited his mother’s grave. Not since the day his uncle, in a desperate bid to save both Rose and young Magnus, ignored every order and smashed through the Lower District’s armored gates to pull them from that hellhole.
Hugo had known the truth: the obsessed rogue monster holding Rose captive would never let her leave alive.
It was during that violent raid that the ruler of the Lower District had aimed his gun directly at Magnus. The tyrant loathed the boy—he viewed the child of a true, fated pair as a living, breathing obstacle to making Rose his own.
The memory burned behind Magnus’s eyes with terrifying clarity. He remembered his mother shoving him out of the line of fire, shielding his small body with her own. She hadn’t been fast enough to dodge the second shot. The silver bullet struck her spine, dropping her instantly onto the cold pavement.
Magnus had screamed—screamed until his vocal cords tore and his voice gave out entirely—as his uncle forcibly dragged him into the fleeing vehicle. The district rogues were closing in fast; there was no time to retrieve her body.
They refused to release her remains afterward, not even when the Rainn family offered a staggering sum in compensation.
Magnus still carried the hollow shock of that moment—the exact second he realized his mother was dead, that he would never again see her radiant smile or hear her soft, comforting voice. The agonizing realization that a single man had stolen both of his parents burned his bones to ash, reducing everything inside him to dust.
He despised obsessed, possessive bastards. He loathed those who laid claim to what wasn’t theirs. And above all, he had prayed he would never suffer the curse of the fated bond himself. He feared it. He had watched the agonizing, slow-motion death his mother endured after his father was gunned down.
After his father’s death, Rose lived solely for Magnus. Her soul, however, remained anchored to the ghost of her mate—wasting away in quiet, hollow grief. Hugo often recalled how, despite the entire Blackthorne Pack opposing her move to the Lower District to be with a lowly rogue, she had packed her bags and left without hesitation.
Magnus remembered his father as a tower of strength. Born to ruthless warriors, the man had survived by doing grueling physical labor in the Lower District. Yet, the moment Rose arrived at his side, he carved out his own pack from nothing, striving every day to prove himself worthy of a Rainn princess.
That was, until the city lord lost his mind upon catching sight of his young wife, orchestrating a midnight purge with corrupt law enforcement to slaughter every Alpha in the area in a single night.
They burned an entire sector to the ground. Everything his father had poured his heart and soul into building was reduced to cinder and ash.
Now, Magnus could see his mother’s tragic story repeating itself through his own veins. He was clinging to a ghost—chasing a memory, a scent that had vanished into thin air five years ago. But his mother had at least possessed a living child to keep her grounded in reality. His little mate had left nothing behind.
His mother had been magnificent. He remembered her fierce, untamed spirit—how she would go toe-to-toe in arguments with anyone, how fiercely she protected him, the way her head threw back when she laughed, and how her eyes lit up with brilliant warmth whenever she was truly happy.
Magnus often found himself thinking that if his own fated mate had come from a normal family—instead of that cowardly pack of scum who abandoned her to the rogues—she would have shared that exact same fiery, stubborn edge. Even stripped of a family and a pack to shield her, the girl had still managed to wrap him around her little finger, arguing with him at every turn.
She had been terrified of him... Yes.
Yet she had defied him with astonishing regularity.
He would have surrendered everything—his power, his fortune, his very life—for just one more chance to see her, to inhale the wild, sweet scent of her skin. To bury his hands in her hair, to feel the warmth of her touch, to hear her voice, her laughter. For a single day. For an hour. Even for just one fleeting minute.
But there was no road back from the grave.
And now, as his heart hammered violently against his ribs—all because of a new maid who bore such a terrifying resemblance to his dead mate... The same soft curve of her face, the same delicate height, the faint, raspy cadence of her voice... It was so overwhelmingly, excruciatingly identical that it tore through his soul like a jagged blade.
It was a destructive, unbearable agony.
She had to be removed. He had to cast her out before the illusion drove him completely insane.
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