Shattered Moonlight, Broken Luna Chapter 07

Shattered Moonlight, Broken Luna Chapter 07

In that moment, I heard the sound of my world collapsing.

I refused to believe Damien had sent it. He couldn’t possibly treat me this way.

I bolted out of the pack hospital frantically and ran through the storm to his building. By the time I reached it, I was soaked through. One shoe had come off somewhere along the way. Sharp gravel cut into the bare sole of my foot, hot and sticky with blood.

I looked up. The second-floor window of his apartment glowed with warm yellow light. Two silhouettes moved behind the curtain.

One was Damien. The other, by the shape, was Ella. They were close, too close, like they were wrapped around each other, like they were kissing.

In that instant, whatever courage I had left burned out.

So that was all it had been. All the promises, all the tenderness, all the forever, gone in one storm. Turned out the poor’s love was fragile enough to dissolve in a single night of rain.

I stood downstairs all night. Rain and tears ran into my mouth, bitter and salty. When the sky finally began to lighten, I dragged my numb, shivering body away.

I went to a nightclub, knelt in front of Lucas, the rich playboy who had been harassing me for months, and ground my pride into the dirty floor. In exchange, I walked out with fifty thousand for the surgery.

But it was still too late.

The healers operated, but the delay had done its work. Complications piled up, and after a week my father passed anyway.

Once the funeral was over, I dropped out of school. I had to pay Lucas back, pay off the relatives’ loans, and make my living.

So I vanished from Damien’s world.

I heard he went crazy looking for me, hated me to the bone, swore to make something of himself and make me regret it

None of that had anything to do with me anymore.

Back in the private room, the air felt heavy enough to crush bones.

“How could this happen… how could this happen…” He kept repeating the same sentence, over and over, like asking me, or questioning himself.

I looked at him, actually feeling a vindictive pleasure rise in my heart. But more than that was desolation.

“Damien, do you have any idea how I spent these seven years?”

I crouched down and forced him to look at my hands. Those hands had once been soft, skin never touched dishwater. He used to cup them, kiss each knuckle, and scold me if I tried to open a bottle by myself.

Now my palms were hard with calluses. Old burn marks crisscrossed the backs. My fingers were swollen and crooked from too many hours in cold water.

“To pay off the debt, I worked three jobs a day.”

“At four in the morning I went to a breakfast shop to knead dough.
Late morning I delivered food. At night, I came to places like this and waited tables.”

“In winter, my hands split open from the cold. The cuts bled, and I still had to wash thousands of dishes in icy water.”

“When I got sick, I could not afford a hospital. I ran a forty-degree fever and still rode my scooter delivering orders, until I passed out on the sidewalk and someone thought I was dead.”

“And what were you doing then?” I looked straight into his eyes and asked it slowly.

“You were in the UK on a full scholarship, living in a big villa, driving a luxury car.”

“You were enjoying Ella’s comfort, dating with her.”

“You were falling asleep beside her and telling yourself you hated your gold-digging ex who ran off with another folk, and that one day you would make her regret it.”

Damien’s pupils shrank so sharply it looked painful. He suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood. Rage and shock did that sometimes when your wolf and your body both lost control at once.

But he didn’t care. He lifted his hand, trembling, trying to touch mine.

At the last moment he pulled back.

He felt filthy.

Not because he thought I was dirty.

Because he finally realized how dirty he was.

“I am sorry, Chloe… I am so sorry…” Beyond that, he seemed to have forgotten every other word he knew.

Ella finally snapped out of her stupor. She knew she was finished.

She scrambled across the floor and grabbed Damien’s pant leg, nails digging in. “Damien! Don’t let her manipulate you with her sob story!”

“Fine, I deleted the text, but she really did sleep with Lucas. That is a fact!”

“She’s a slut! She would do anything for money! She never deserved you!”