Rewriting the Bond: An Email to My 18-Year-Old Luna Chapter 02

Rewriting the Bond: An Email to My 18-Year-Old Luna Chapter 02

After I sent the email, the phone died.

Ever since I found out about Cassian’s affair, I’d held myself together.

I signed the severance papers without flinching. Penned my name on the Mate Bond Dissolution Contract. Sat through every court date like it was nothing.

Even when his lawyer backed me into a corner and I couldn’t get a word out, I never cried.

But reading those promises from eighteen-year-old Cassian broke something open in me. All the unfairness I’d swallowed rushed back up at once.

Because no one knew better than I did how real his love used to be.

When I was sixteen, the Moonridge Pack fell apart financially. My family lost everything, our territory, our standing, all of it.

Cassian drained his trust fund to bail my family out.

The Stormfang Pack refused to accept a nobody Omega as Luna. They told Cassian to drop me or face the consequences.

He chose me anyway. He would’ve given up his Alpha title without a second thought.

I begged him through tears to walk away, and he kissed my forehead and said, “Maeve, I don’t need anything else. Just you.”

He swore I’d be the happiest Luna alive, and that our pups would never know anything but love.

But the day I finally moved into the Stormfang Pack House, the day I got everything I’d wanted, was also the day this mate bond started dying.

I cried the entire drive.

The next morning my eyes were so swollen I could barely see, but I called every person in my phone anyway, begging anyone who’d listen to help me pull together enough for Sia’s surgery.

I’d barely set the phone down when the pack nursery called.

“Are you Sia’s mother? She collapsed. We’re taking her to the hospital now.”

…

By the time I got to the hospital, Cassian was already there.

He was standing over Sia’s bed, staring down at her, pale and tiny and hooked up to monitors. His face was pure fury.

“Go ahead, Maeve. How much are you after this time?”

My hands fumbled through the bag, pulling out a stack of medical records.

“Cassian, it’s bad this time. It’s really bad. If you don’t believe me, just look at the…”

Cassian grabbed my wrist. His grip was so tight I thought the bones would snap.

“Cut the act, Maeve.”

He tossed a debit card onto the bedside table.

“I know what Sia needs. There’s enough in there for both of you. PIN’s your birthday.”

I pulled free and snatched it off the table.

Cassian glanced once more at Sia, then turned to go.

He stopped when he reached the door.

“You know, Maeve, if you’d just looked the other way back then, we’d still be together. The three of us. A family.”

“I was never going to marry her. You’re the one who turned it into this whole disaster.”

Every part of me was shaking.

Look the other way?

I walked in on them. Him and my best friend, in our bed.

I was eight months pregnant.

The shock sent me straight to the floor. My body just gave out.

I labored for twenty-four hours, bleeding through the sheets, and Sia came into the world too early.

She’d been fragile ever since. Her tiny body had been paying the price for what he did.

Hospital after hospital. Emergency after emergency. I lost count of how many times they told me she might not make it.

Every time I fell apart in a hospital hallway, Cassian was somewhere else, running pack affairs, or with Serena.

He gave Serena more of his time in a week than he gave his own pup in a month.

I braced myself against the wall and stood up. The old phone, the emails, flashed through my mind.

I’d charged it overnight. The battery was full.

A flood of emails lit up the screen.

[Twenty-eight-year-old Maeve, I asked Cassian for you.]

[He said there was no way he’d be the man on that invitation. He swore he’d never betray me.]

[He severed ties with Serena. She was a wreck, crying, demanding to know why. He said he didn’t want to be the reason the future version of me got hurt.]

[Serena was supposed to go to the same university as us, but now she’s decided to transfer to a pack in Europe. See? The future isn’t set in stone.]

[Cassian also said if the version of him ten years from now really turns out like that, then he wants to apologize to you now, for that man.]

I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted iron and refused to make a sound.

Something shifted inside my head. Memories flickered, dissolving at the edges.

A moment later, new ones took their place.

After graduation, Cassian and Serena’s friendship ended. She left the territory, furious.

But four years later, Serena came back.

She came back with the full weight of the Frostvale Pack behind her, and walked right back into Cassian’s life.

The Frostvale Pack and the Stormfang Pack formed an alliance.

And Cassian and Serena? They still ended up together.

I wrote it all down for eighteen-year-old Maeve, every last thing that was coming.

At the end, I added: [Maeve, if you want to change what’s coming, you have to leave Cassian. Completely. For good.]

[If I could go back and do one thing differently, it would be this.]

…

Sia was unconscious through the night.

The next morning she opened her eyes, barely, and reached for my hand. “Don’t worry, Mommy. Sia’s okay.”

I pulled her close and pressed my face into her tiny hands.

The doctor came over, voice low. “Ms. Holloway, your daughter’s condition is serious. She needs surgery soon. As for the cost…”

I cut him off with a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “I’ll figure it out.”

But what was left to figure out, baby? I had nothing.