Alpha’s Badass Mate novel

---- Him and her She always feels it in her stomach. hollowing anguish, coiling around her guts, taking up every space, rough and sore. It's shock at first, smothering all other emotions. Shock is followed by betrayal, anger, and cold- hearted resolve. Tears keep falling and falling, wetting her hands, clothes, her phone, and their smiling faces. Then she thinks it's clear enough. He has a new love and a new life, and isn't it better and easier if he doesn't have to explain anything to her?

The photos disappear in the bin, and she'll pretend it was never hers to wear. He doesn't want to hear it anyway. Not a word, not a single one, not from her mouth, not in her voice, not while seeing her face. Never again. Monika understands everything now. It all makes sense. She can get over it; she will; she's done it before. She can't get over it. She takes out the pictures from the bin before anyone can get rid of them, and she keeps them in a box even when she moves.

---- She drinks too much to drown out the breaking sounds of her heart she keeps hearing every night, won't let her sleep, and can't close her eyes because all she can see is him, her tired, dazed mind's illusions, torturing her with memories of being loved by her mate, her Sam. It's not her fault; she didn't die because of her. She drinks the cruelty away. She takes sleeping pills to get through the days of pretending to be a whole person-a competent, confident, and respected person.

She fools everyone, but her close friends , whom she makes promises to never contact, or she will never forgive them for the rest of her life, Her eyes and voice are pure wrath, torn with despair. If one more person breaks her trust, she will lose it and not care for anything or anyone. They all promise.

She stops taking sleeping pills because the doctor said she shouldn't for so long, because since that day he came back and her mate broke up with her, her stomach has been an endless ache, wound up by sharp rawness, hollow soreness, nausea, tightness, and woundness.

And the pills make it worse, and part of her likes it, because part of her wants to punish herself for letting herself be fooled, for feeling so much without a doubt, for protection, or for caution, for still not completely ---- believing it's over just like this. She deserves the pain for that more than anything else.

But she has to function, so she functions, just enough to hide the shaking inside her limbs when her asshole mind suddenly reminds her of her mate, something he used to say or do, or just the way the expression in his eyes changed when they were looking at her. Enough to hide the pain coiling inside when she barely sleeps, barely eats, and still manages to act as if she's fine.

Enough to let cracks show only when she's drunk, mad, and vulnerable, or alone in her house, walking downstairs, a fleeting thought of What would she think? Would she like it here? invading her without a warning , her face torn up in ire, a sudden punch in her stomach, making her keel over, taking her breath away. The most pathetic, weakest part of her wonders Won't he come to scold her? Won't he show up when she's hurting herself like this to yell at her to stop and take care of her? Won't he?

Why won't he? How could he appear so sincere with his words, his face, and his actions and make Monika trust him completely ? How could he tell her about his feelings and dreams when it was so easy for him to change them and change himself? How could he do that?