She wanted to believe the man she had loved for three years was still fighting for them, that everything she had seen inside that bedroom was not the whole truth.
Then his mother spoke again, and whatever hope remained inside her quietly fell apart.
“It no longer matters what you want.
The Pairing Authority has already registered your match, and the law recognizes Miss Evelyn Ashford as your destined mate.
If you reject the pairing, your inheritance will be suspended, your position within the Reeves family will be revoked, and once the family Council learns that you chose a human over your fated mate, you will lose far more than your family.”
Nathan said nothing.
Outside the apartment, Lena remained rooted to the spot, her fingers resting against the cold wall as she struggled to steady her breathing.
Only minutes ago she had believed fate alone had stolen the future she and Nathan had dreamed of together.
Now she understood that his family had been waiting for this opportunity all along, and the Pairing Authority had simply handed them the perfect excuse to erase her from Nathan’s life.
But even that truth could not silence the images replaying relentlessly in her mind.
Nathan had opened the apartment door for another woman.
He had brought her into the home they had shared and taken her into the bedroom where they had spent countless nights planning their future together.
And when Lena had walked through that door, she had found them in the same bed.
Her heart refused to separate those memories from whatever explanation anyone tried to offer.
Maybe his family had manipulated him.
Maybe the pairing bond had clouded his judgment.
Maybe there were things about werewolves she would never fully understand, but none of it changed what she had seen with her own eyes.
The betrayal was real.
The pain was real.
And the life she had believed they were building together had come to an end the moment another woman lay in the place where she had always believed she belonged.
She could not stay there any longer, listening to people decide her worth or argue over a future that no longer felt like hers.
Whatever Nathan wanted, whatever his parents wanted, whatever fate had planned for them, she no longer had the strength to hear another single word.
As she turned away from the apartment, Nathan’s voice echoed behind her once more.
“Lena deserves better than this!”
Her footsteps faltered for only a heartbeat before she continued walking away.
She did not answer; she couldn’t.
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime, and she stepped inside.
As they slid shut, cutting off the hallway and the voices beyond it, she stared silently at her reflection in the mirrored wall.
The woman looking back at her wore the face of someone who had just watched three years of love collapse in a single afternoon.
She closed her eyes, and despite every effort to stop it, the same images returned once more—the unfamiliar woman in Nathan’s bed, the discarded clothes scattered across the floor, and the look on his face when he realized she was standing in the doorway.
Some wounds were too deep for explanations.
Some moments changed everything.
For Lena, this was one of them.
Soon the elevator doors opened again with a soft chime, and Lena stepped into the lobby.
The building was as elegant as ever, its marble floors gleaming beneath warm lights while soft music drifted through the spacious entrance.
Residents came and went, exchanging polite greetings with the concierge as though it were any other ordinary evening.
No one had spared Lena more than a passing glance.
No one knew that the woman walking past them had just watched her future fall apart.
She crossed the lobby in a daze, barely aware of the automatic doors sliding open before her.
And soon, a cool gust of wind greeted her the moment she stepped outside, carrying with it the scent of rain that had already begun to blanket the city.
For a brief second, she stopped on the top step and looked back at the towering apartment building.
Somewhere on one of those upper floors was the home where she had laughed, celebrated birthdays, dreamed about marriage, and imagined growing old beside the man she loved.
Lena lowered her gaze and walked away without looking back again.
By the time she reached the street, the rain was falling in steady sheets, soaking the city beneath a curtain of gray.
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, her entire body trembling as the storm washed over her.
Around her, people hurried past beneath umbrellas, casting curious glances at the young woman standing motionless in the rain.
She barely noticed them.
The pain inside her chest drowned out everything else.
“Why?” she cried, her voice breaking as it echoed through the busy street.
“Why is it like this?
What kind of fate is this?” Her breathing became uneven as tears streamed down her face, disappearing into the rain almost as quickly as they fell.
“Three years…” she whispered, clutching at her chest as though she could somehow hold her broken heart together.
“Three years of loving him.
Three years of believing we’d spend the rest of our lives together… and all of it was erased by a single notification…
It’s his family…
They are the cause of all this!”
She lifted her tear-filled eyes toward the towering government screen overlooking the city.
The silver crescent moon—the symbol of the National Pairing Authority—glowed brilliantly against the dark sky, a silent reminder of the system that had stolen everything she had believed in.
Hatred unlike anything she had ever known surged through her from the depths of her heart.
“Damn all of you!” she screamed into the storm.
“I curse this ridiculous pairing system!
I curse the people who created it!