Rewriting the Bond: An Email to My 18-Year-Old Luna Chapter 08

Rewriting the Bond: An Email to My 18-Year-Old Luna Chapter 08

Maeve’s POV

I remembered everything.

Three years ago, after the eighteen-year-old Maeve read my last email, she cried until there was nothing left in her.

She went to Cassian with the email in her hand, barely able to get the words out. “Cassian, I have to reject you.”

“The future can’t be changed. You’re going to end up with Serena. The two of you are going to kill our pup.”

“She begged me not to be with you. She begged me not to let her pup die again…”

Cassian read the email, and the color drained from his face.

“Maeve, believe me. I won’t let that happen. Please. We can change it together, I swear…”

He held on to her hand and begged again and again until his voice gave out, until he was on his knees.

She kept crying, kept shaking her head, backing away from him step by step until she was at the curb.

She tore her hand free and ran into the street.

A semi-truck came barreling out of nowhere.

Cassian didn’t think. He threw himself forward and shoved her out of the way.

The impact sent him flying.

When Maeve turned around, Cassian was on the ground.

Blood spread beneath him, and everything in her world went red.

The eighteen-year-old Cassian died right in front of her.

He’d sworn to love her with his life. And that’s exactly what it cost him.

In the other timeline, I died at the same moment.

But in this one, it was Cassian who didn’t make it.

Fate always balanced its scales, and it always collected.

…

In the months after Cassian died, the eighteen-year-old Maeve shut herself away.

She stopped talking. Stopped smiling. She’d just sit there scrolling through the photos on her phone, over and over.

Eventually she pulled herself together on the surface, went to college, made friends.

But at night, she buried herself under the covers and cried.

Then the depression swallowed her.

The first time, her packmate found her in time and got her to the pack clinic.

The second time, her pack healer and classmates talked her down.

She spent three days in the clinic.

The third time, they almost didn’t save her.

Every time they brought her back, she screamed at them for not letting her go.

Eventually, the girl she used to be just went dark inside.

I pushed up my sleeves. The scars along my arms told me everything I needed to know. The tears came before I could stop them.

None of it had been accidental. She’d done all of this to herself.

That girl. That sweet, reckless girl who loved so fiercely she couldn’t survive losing him.

By the time I got to Moonstone Cemetery, Serena was already there.

I’d expected to feel rage when I saw her. Expected to want to hit her.

But there was nothing. Just quiet.

“Maeve, how could you forget him? He loved you more than anything.”

I didn’t answer. I just stood before Cassian’s headstone.

His photo was set into the stone. I was finally looking at the face of the boy he’d been at eighteen.

I never imagined it would be like this.

In this timeline, Cassian only made it to eighteen.

His whole life, caught in one summer.

He’d asked me to trust him. He said he’d change the future.

And he did.

Because for the rest of my life, he wouldn’t be in it.

Before she left, Serena turned to me. “He really did love you. He cut me out of his life over an email about a future that hadn’t happened yet. Ten years of friendship, gone. Just to make sure you’d feel safe.”

“Maeye… I never stood a chance against you. Not once.”

I already knew all of it.

The twenty-eight-year-old Cassian betrayed me. The eighteen-year-old one gave his life for me.

I knelt in front of his headstone and let it all out, every ounce of grief, every scrap of love, every last bit of anger I’d been holding.

When it was over, I stood up and dried my face.

The love that belonged to eighteen could stay at eighteen.

Everything else, the love, the hate, all of it, I let the wind take it.

The person I was now deserved a fresh start.

…

I graduated. Landed a good job.

A few years after that, I opened my own clothing studio. Business boomed.

I bought a sleek sports car and traded my rental for a loft of my own.

In a world without Cassian, I built a life that was entirely mine.

While packing for the move, I found the old phone in a box, the one from when I was eighteen.

I charged it, turned it on, and hundreds of emails flooded in.

All from the twenty-eight-year-old Cassian.

[Maeve, are you and Sia okay wherever you are? I miss you so much. I know I don’t have the right to.]

[It’s the anniversary of the day I lost you. You must have hated me when you left. I’m the one who destroyed everything.]

[Maeve, I miss you so much. Every night I try to dream about you, but you never come.]

[Maeve, I’d give anything to do it over. I would love you the way you deserved.]

…

I read them one by one, all that grief, all that longing, spilled across the screen.

I felt nothing.

After all these years, the twenty-eight-year-old Cassian was someone I’d made peace with losing.

When I thought of him at all, it was only ever the boy, the eighteen-year-old version, frozen in summer light.

Two years later, I mated with Elias Sterling, a male who loved me the way I deserved. We had a pup, a little girl.

Elias asked what we should name her.

I smiled. “Sia. Her name is Sia.”

When my pup turned five, one last email came through.

Just one line.

[Maeve, I’m coming to find you.]

I stared at the screen for a long moment. Then I closed the phone, picked up my pup, and walked out the door.

We were halfway down the street when my pup looked up at me. “Mom, Sia loves you.”

I held her so tight she could barely breathe. My voice broke.

“Mom loves you too.”

In this timeline, I finally got to live.

And this time, no one was ever taking her from me.