Trista’s POV
Cassian’s brow knitted together.
He didn’t back down; instead, he took a step inside.
As his foot crossed the threshold, the mangled bond in my chest gave a violent yank. My wolf felt cornered, snapping back with a feral resistance.
My emotions finally hit the breaking point. I lunged forward to snatch the cake from his hands, my voice rising to a shout. “I told you to take it and get out!”
Cassian set the cake down and, with a smooth motion, kicked the door shut behind him.
The heavy thud of the door sounded like my last exit being sealed off.
The next second, he clamped a hand over my wrist–his grip was restrained, yet it held that habitual, Alpha aura he used so effortlessly.
His gaze locked onto mine, trying to pierce through every layer of my rejection and armor.
“I fly halfway across the world to spend your birthday with you, and this is the attitude I get?”
My eyes were pinned to the matcha cake on the table.
That shade of green felt like a needle in my eye, making my stomach churn with bile. The fractured mating bond throbbed in rhythm with my heartbeat, feeling like a knuckle grinding repeatedly into an open wound.
The dam finally broke.
I wanted to flip the table, to hurl that box and his pathetic “compensation” out into the hallway.
But Cassian was faster.
He pulled me in, forcing me into a hard embrace that I couldn’t break.
In that instant, his Alpha aura crashed over me like a tidal wave.
His scent invaded my senses–heavy, cold, and carrying that sharp Ironthorn edge–forcing the scent gland on my neck to flare with heat.
The wolf inside me bristled in rebellion. Claws threatened to emerge beneath my skin as I struggled to pull away, nearly triggering a partial shift just to escape him.
We were pushed to the absolute limit.
I thrashed in his arms, my voice trembling but unbroken. “I don’t want you at my birthday ever again! I wouldn’t touch a cake from you if it were the last thing on earth!”
Cassian used one hand to cup the back of my neck, forcing me to look him in the eye.
The position of his hand was too familiar–it felt like the precursor to a marking–and the memory of it only made the pain sharper.
I heard my wolf let out a low, pathetic whimper. It was fighting him, yet it was still being dragged by that broken bond, tearing itself apart.
Cassian stared down at me, his voice a low vibration. “Trista, we’re mates, not enemies. How long are you going to keep this up?”
My eyes were blurred with tears.
I used every ounce of strength to make each word count. “The second you went behind my back to bake a blueberry cake for your precious mistress, you stopped being my mate. You can stop pretending you give a damn!”
We were too close.
His breath fanned across my cheek, but I only felt like I was suffocating.
His scent, which used to be my sanctuary, felt like a thousand needles reminding me that he’d given this same tenderness to someone else.

15:13 Fri, Jan 2 G
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