He Marked Me, Then Forced Me to Bow to His Mistress Chapter 08
Grayson abandoned the affairs of the werewolf realm entirely.
He spared no expense, pulling every string he had, to search for any trace of me.
His annual Alpha King evaluations were marked with one failure after another.
Eventually, the Elders of the Werewolf Realm stripped him of his position.
He didn’t care.
It was as if he’d lost his mind. Every day, he sat clutching my photograph, muttering endless stories from our
life in the Wolf Citadel.
But none of it had anything to do with me anymore. Not now. Not ever again.
I was the daughter the Lycan King had lost twenty-eight years ago.
Back then, a maid bribed by one of my father’s enemy packs had smuggled me out of the Southern Territory.
Later, terrified of the Lycan’s revenge, she lost her nerve and abandoned her mission halfway-dumping me
outside an orphanage near the border.
I remembered none of it.
But the DNA match against the Lycan King’s bloodline told the entire story.
I was a princess of the purest royal bloodline-ten thousand times more noble than Grayson, who had merely
clawed his way up through war.
It wasn’t until that day in the banquet hall that they finally found me-and pulled me from that pool of blood.
By the time my parents arrived, I had already gone into shock from blood loss. The pup couldn’t be saved.
I lay unconscious on the healers’ sacred altar for half a month before I finally opened my eyes.
After surviving that ordeal, I truly believed I would never see Grayson again. I was wrong.
On the day of the recognition banquet, he burst into the palace like a madman, begging desperately to see
My parents had long since exhausted their patience.
The Royal Guards dragged him away and beat him until he coughed blood.
Even then, he refused to leave. Injured and exhausted, he staggered back to the palace gates.
The guards broke one of his legs.
Still, he remained.
By the third day, he was standing in a torrential downpour, leaning on a crutch-pale, exhausted, and
half-dead.
Yet he refused to move.
My father slammed a hand against his throne. His fury shook the hall.
“Throw him into the Southern Territory’s Forbidden Lands.”
“It’s fine.” I rose from my seat. “I’ll go.”
Some debts deserved to be settled personally.
Rain poured from the heavens.
A servant held an umbrella over my head as I walked outside.
Grayson stood in the mud, looking worn down and defeated.
The moment he saw me, his dull, lifeless eyes suddenly lit up.
He tried to lunge toward me, but his broken leg buckled, sending him crashing into the mud at my feet.
“Layla…” He reached for the hem of my clothing.
Yet the instant he met my icy gaze, he withdrew his hand.
“I’ve cut all ties with Daisy.” His voice trembled.
“Layla, I was wrong. I was so sure you loved me enough to never leave.”
His eyes reddened.
“But once you were truly gone, I finally realized-the one who couldn’t let go… was never you. It was me.”
Rainwater mixed with tears on his face.
He looked like a pitiful stray dog abandoned by the world.
“I don’t want anything anymore.”
“My title’s gone. I’ve lost it all. I’m right back to who I was twenty-eight years ago.”
He looked at me desperately.
“Let’s start over-please. This time, I’ll cherish you. I’ll give you all my love. All of it.”
I gave a bitter laugh. “Why would I take back someone who’s already thrown me away?”
His face went pale.
I stepped back. My eyes were filled with undisguised disgust.
“Save that cheap, disgusting love and those empty promises for Daisy.”
“If there’s any justice in the world, you should already be dead.”
His face turned ashen.
I looked at him one final time.
“This is the last time I’ll say it. And I’ll only say it once.”
“Stay away from me.”
“I don’t want you dirtying my eyes or ruining my mood.”
Grayson’s mouth opened and closed.
He was trembling all over, clearly desperate to say more-to beg, to explain, to cling to some shred of the
past.
But under my cold, unwavering gaze, he could no longer find even the smallest trace of the love I once had
for him.
He finally understood. The Layla who had loved him with all her heart was gone.
The woman who had once made him the center of her world no longer existed.
And he was the one who had killed her.
Grayson collapsed into the mud, his anguished sobs swallowed by the storm.
I turned around.
Walked back into the palace, and shut the doors behind me-leaving his cries, those muddy twenty-eight years, all of it, outside.
Six months later, I officially became the Alpha of the most powerful pack in the Southern Territory.
As my vehicle crossed an intersection, I spotted an overturned delivery scooter-soup and takeout containers scattered everywhere.
A familiar figure limped through the mess-Grayson, back bent, his once-proud posture long gone.
Several Beta wolves shoved him around impatiently as he cowered, begging like an omega.
I looked away, indifferent.