Chapter 1 Chapter 1

Davina's POV

I checked my wristwatch again; it was 8:35 p.m. He should have been here 30 minutes ago. I tapped anxiously below the table, and the waiter, a slim fellow, came to check on me with a polite but concerned smile.

“My mate will be here soon,” I said so rigidly to him that I wondered after he left if I was trying to convince him or myself.

I looked through the glass walls, and that was when his car parked right outside. Relief washed all over me. But my smile shrunk as he sauntered in without so much as an apology for being late to our anniversary dinner.

“There was traffic,” he offered while he was still on his phone scrolling.

There were no flowers, no gifts… by the goddess, he wasn't even looking at me!

It was like I was invisible.

As if I would stand up and he wouldn't even notice or care.

“Why can't you dress like this?” he said, shoving the picture of a model I had been begging him to unfollow for weeks. The fabric she had would hardly be able to cover my palm.

“That's not really my style…” I said, forking my food awkwardly. He looked between me and the screen. “The least you can do is try. You know I could have my pick of women, but I still decided to settle for you? And don't you dare bring up the mate bond. I could have still rejected you and gotten with someone else in the blink of an eye.”

Hearing that, my appetite died completely, and I just kept pushing around the food on my plate. He got annoyed.

“If you're not going to eat, let's just leave. This dinner was a waste of time anyway.” He called for the waiter loudly, and the slim fellow reappeared. In the blink of an eye, our meal was paid for, and we were out the door before I could take more than three bites.

He saw the crestfallen look on my face, and his face curled downwards into a frown.

“Don't start your manipulation sh*t now. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't even be able to dream about walking into a restaurant like that.”

He held me possessively by the waist and pulled me towards the car.

In a moment, his hands were already under my shirt, reaching for my chest and squeezing with satisfaction before I could get a word out.

He was twirling my knob, trying to get it to react, when he looked down and saw that I was as dry as a desert.

“What's wrong with you?” He was quick to snap, like I was a machine that was failing to function rather than a person with a broken heart.

“Marcel… I'm not in the mood to do it tonight, okay? Can we just go home and wrap this evening up?”

He yanked his hand so forcefully out of my shirt that I jerked with his movement. Then, in the same moment, he shoved me to the side of the car and threw the door open.

I panicked because it was facing the road and other cars could be zooming past, but without wasting a second, he barked at me:

“Get out.” My chest was so tight that I could hardly breathe, and I knew that he was going to push me out anyway if I refused, so I got out on my own two feet.

He rolled down the windscreen, then in a condescending tone he said to me, without even looking in my direction, “Maybe you thought I was joking when I said I could pick up another woman if I wanted to. Don't even bother showing up tonight unless you want to lose your mind.”

He drove off in that moment, leaving me to inhale the smoke that came out of the exhaust of his car.

I knew he wasn't joking, and as I walked off the road before I could get run over, tears pooled in my eyes.

How much longer must I put up with this? How much longer will I even be able to before I eventually lose every sense of myself?

Things hadn't always been like this.

I used to work at a rooftop restaurant as a waitress, was having dinner with a date that was going pretty badly, when our eyes met from afar and we knew.

That magnetic connection that charged the air between the two of us with undeniable need. It awakened a primal desire that had always been inside of us.

That very night he took me home with him.

I had always been overlooked by men my entire life, the quiet type who faded into the background and had little to no friends. His attention was like a drug that I was hooked on instantly.

After all, I never thought that in a million years I would be mated to a Lycan Alpha.

He was everything I could have dreamed of and more: insanely good-looking, powerful, and so wealthy that his name sent vibrations through every circle of the crème de la crème of Greenfield City.

I kissed him every morning and thanked him for choosing me. With his smile on my face, I told him that if he was the only good thing that ever happened to me…

Back then I thought that appreciating him was only right.

But now I see that making him the center of my world was a big mistake.

A droplet of water fell on my face, and when I looked up, more of them came pouring down. I walked back home, but the gates were still locked. The guards who stood outside came over with an umbrella, which was the only kindness they could offer me, after he said in a very neutral voice that seemed forced:

“Alpha Marcel said we were not supposed to let you in tonight.”