My Convicted Wife is My Mate (Bella and Kane) novel Chapter 3

chapter 3

KANE’S POV

I came back to consciousness slowly.

The first thing I registered was the bandaging. Someone had packed my side wound properly, wrapped my shoulder with enough technique to tell me they knew exactly what they were doing, and covered the back wound cleanly. The bleeding had stopped. My body was warm in a way it had not been an hour ago, and my healing was running again - not at full capacity yet, but close enough to feel the difference.

My wolf was awake.

He surfaced quietly at first, shaking off the suppression the way a wolf shook water from its coat - then stopped. His attention locked onto something - The bandaging.

He pressed forward and inhaled deeply. I felt the recognition move through him like a current.

Mate, he said.

The scent clinging to the bandages was a woman's. He pushed against me, suddenly agitated, urgent in a way he rarely was.

She was here. Find her. She is ours.

I sat up, pressing my hand against the freshly bandaged wound and waited for the dizziness to pass.

"No," I said flatly.

My wolf went still with disbelief, then started again, louder. He reminded me of the fiancée - the woman I had been politically matched to three years ago, who had died at a banquet, poisoned, before we ever exchanged a single real word. He had grieved that. He reminded me that he had endured one hollow political arrangement that ended in death, that he had waited, that this woman's scent was real, that I needed to listen to him.

I knew what the mate bond was. I also knew what it had done to my mother.

She had loved my father completely. She had trusted the bond, built her entire existence around it, believed in what it promised. My father had thanked her for that trust by taking everything she offered, using her for political advantage. She had died because of the bond.

I was never going to make that mistake.

"She is a stranger," I told my wolf. "I am not following a scent."

He howled in protest. I ignored him.

My earpiece crackled. Then a voice - Jayden my second-in-command.

"Alpha Stonewood. We have your location. Are you injured?" he asked.

"Previously," I said. "Report."

"The rebel faction has been neutralized. All twelve confirmed. The operation is clean." A brief pause. "There is also the matter of the wedding."

I said nothing

"Three days," he continued "Your father's arrangement. We completed the background check on the bride. She is not - the profile is not favorable. Reports describe her as frivolous, poorly mannered, and motivated entirely by status. Sir, should we proceed?"

My wolf got angry as he spoke. No. Find our mate. I will not do this again. I will not-

"Proceed," I said.

"Alpha-"

"She is a piece on a board," I said. "That is all. I don't care who she is. Confirm the date and move forward."

My wolf went silent in a way that was worse than the howling.

I stood up and walked out of the alley.

BELLA’S POV

When I got home, I stopped dead in the doorway.

The house was transformed. Candles lined every surface, their flames flickering against walls draped in white silk. Roses petals—hundreds of them—scattered across the floor like a path leading deeper inside. Everything gleamed. Everything whispered celebration.

My heart stumbled.

I thought of three years ago. Of Damien's voice through the prison glass, tired but certain: When you get out, we'll get married. You'll see her again.

I'd held onto those words like a lifeline in drowning darkness.

Was this... for me?

I stepped inside, following the petals. My torn shirt hung loose on my shoulders. I probably looked like garbage next to all this beauty, but I didn't care. If Damien had kept his promise—if after everything, he still wanted me—

I reached the living room entrance.

And stopped breathing.

Damien was on the couch, his back to me, body moving over someone. Between them, a bare leg curled against the red leather—slim, pale, twisting with pleasure. I heard her moans before I saw her face. Heard the words falling from his lips like honey.

"God, Kathy. You feel incredible."

Kathy.

My sister's face appeared over his shoulder. She saw me. Her eyes met mine—and she smiled. Deliberate. Triumphant. Then she pulled him closer and moaned louder.

"I'm better than her," she breathed. "My body, my taste—you know I am. She never knew how to please you, did she? Always so cold. So broken."

"She was," Damien agreed, his voice rough. "I don't know why I waited so long."

I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. The room spun around me.

She never knew.

So broken.

They kept going. Right there. Like I wasn't standing ten feet away.

When they finally finished, Damien turned. Our eyes met. For one second—one tiny second—I saw something flicker in his face. Guilt? Shame?

Then it was gone.

"Bella." He reached for his pants, pulling them on without hurry. "You're out."

You're out. Like I'd been on vacation.

"Damien." My voice came out wrong—too high, too thin. "What... what is this?"

Kathy stretched on the couch like a cat, not bothering to cover herself. "What does it look like, sister?"

"Don't call me that." I stepped forward. My legs shook. "Damien. We're mates. You promised—"

"I promised a lot of things." He wouldn't look at me now. "Before."

"Before what? Before she spread her legs for you?" The words came out ugly. I didn't care. "Damien, I had your child. Where is Ezra? Where's my son?"

The room went quiet.

Damien's jaw tightened. Kathy's smile flickered—just for a moment.

Then Damien said, flat as stone: "The child didn't make it."

The floor dropped beneath me.

Something inside me snapped.

"How dare you—"I lunged.

She just stood back up.

"Servants," she said lightly.

They came immediately. Rough hands grabbed me, dragging me across the floor. Pain exploded everywhere as they hit me again and again. I couldn’t breathe.

Blood filled my mouth. My vision blurred until the world became blurry.

I winced in pain, blocking my head from hits. My body was filled with so much pain that I became numb. I didn’t know where the pain started or where it ended.

“If you refuse, I’ll pay the guards a huge amount of money to beat you up every single day” she said, laughing softly “Who knows? You might even die. Money is a great motivation, you know?”

The thought of going through more of this made me sick to my stomach. I was tired. My body couldn’t take anymore.

Kathy looked at her nails.

"Three," she said.

"Two—"

"Yes," I said. The word tasted like defeat. "I'll do it."

-

They put me in the basement.

It was cold and barely furnished.

It was better than prison. That was the most honest thing I could say about it. The cold was the same, and the helplessness was largely the same, but the ceiling was higher, and no one was standing guard outside the door. These few things were enough for me to be pathetically grateful.

I thought about the man in the alley, his wounds. I wondered if he had woken up yet.

Then I thought about what Kathy had said. A wedding. The groom needs a bride.

An arranged marriage with some unknown alpha from somewhere, needing a political match. Under normal circumstances, the thought would have made me furious. I had been used as a piece on someone else's board before.

But then a different thought came in.

Three years ago, I had been accused of poisoning the fiancée of Alpha Stonewood - the most powerful alpha in the territory. I had been imprisoned for it. I had been tormented for it, had lost my wolf because of it, had lost three years, my son and my license because of that accusation.

Now I was out, and free. I was unprotected.

Alpha Stonewood was still out there. He was not going to forget what he thought I did. He wasn’t going to let it go.

If he found me as I was - nameless, expelled, a criminal with no one to speak for her - there would be nothing to stop whatever he decided to do to me.

But a new name, a new identity, a bride in a political marriage, absorbed into a different household, documented under different papers.

This might be a good thing.

I was terrified. I was exhausted and in pain. I just found out my son was dead.

I had just lost the last version of a future I had been holding onto.

But I was going to survive this. I was going to survive it because I always had.

I closed my eyes.

One thing at a time.