Third Person's POV
Vivian gripped his coat until her knuckles turned a bloodless white. She looked up through a mask of tears, clutching at him like a drowning woman. "Morty... are you really just going to leave me?"
Mortimer looked down at her hand.
In that second, the mating bond backfired. A memory hit him with the force of a physical blow: another hand.
On the Alaskan ice, Seraphina had handed him her goggles. Her fingertips were a raw, frozen red, yet she hadn't made a single sound. She'd given him everything she had, and he had taken it and walked away without looking back once.
Now, under the sterile, fluorescent lights of the Shadowfang Healing Center, he looked at Vivian's calculated expression. Something snapped.
He reached down and uncurled her fingers from his coat, one b
