I Saw Clearly And Walked From My Cheating Husband

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Synopsis

After I went blind, the only person I trusted completely was my husband.
Because these eyes were ruined saving him in the first place.
Every day, Damian personally brushed my hair, gave me my medicine, and guided me over every stair in the keep. He told everyone, "Anyone who mocks my wife for being blind is challenging me as Alpha."
So the day my sight came back, I practically ran home.
I wanted to tell him we had finally made it through.
But the door was open.
I saw his secretary leaning against him, laughing as she asked, "Don't you think cheating right under her nose is exciting?"
Damian was silent for a few seconds, and then he bent down and kissed her.
In that moment I understood that the blind one had never been me.
I did not confront him.
I still felt my way along the wall, still let him take my hand, still listened to him say late at night, "Mara, I can't live without you."
Instead, I started counting down the days.
Ten days until the Moonspring pack opened its pass again.
That was my last chance to go home.
On the tenth day, in a hurry to get to Kelsey, Damian signed the documents I handed him without looking.
He did not know it was not an ordinary asset authorization.
It was the mate release he signed himself.
When the doctor took off the last layer of gauze, I did not dare open my eyes.
Two years ago, a silver hunter's explosive round detonated right in front of Damian.
I threw myself in front of him, and the silver fragments pierced my eyes like fire.
After that my world was nothing but black.
"Mara." The doctor kept his voice soft. "Open them slowly."
First I saw a blur of light.
Then the window frame, the white wall, the name badge on the doctor's chest.
Last of all I saw the smile on his face.
"You have recovered better than expected."
I was frozen for a long time. Then tears suddenly spilled down my cheeks.
Damian did not know.
I had deliberately not told him that today was the final check.
In two years of blindness he had almost never let me walk anywhere alone.
Every morning, he laid out my medicine in order, and before he left, he checked the placement of every piece of furniture. When someone in the council hall mocked the Luna for being unable to see the steps, he expelled him from the elite guard on the spot.
He had sworn in front of the full moon altar, "Your eyes were hurt for me. If you never see again, then I'll be your eyes for the rest of your life."
So I wanted to tell him myself.
I could see.
We had finally made it through.
It was already dark when I got back to Blackwood Keep.
The entrance hall was empty.
Damian's coat was thrown over the back of the sofa. He must have come home earlier than usual.
I was about to call out to him when a woman laughed upstairs.
I knew that laugh.
Kelsey Reed.
She was Damian's executive assistant, and the one who had turned up in our house most often over the past year.
I went slowly up the stairs.
The main bedroom door was not shut properly.
Through the gap I saw Damian sitting on the edge of the bed with his collar open, Kelsey standing between his knees with her arms around his neck.
"You obviously can't let me go," she said with a laugh. "So why do you always act as though I'm forcing you?"
Damian took hold of her waist.
"Don't push it."
"What are you afraid of?"
Kelsey leaned in and lowered her voice. "She can't see anyway."
Standing outside the door, I felt like someone had poured silver over me a second time.
Damian did not push her away.
He only said, "Mara hears very well."
Kelsey laughed even more gleefully.
"Then we'll be quiet."
The next second she kissed him.
I saw all of it.
That was the first betrayal I saw after my sight came back.
I did not go in.
I turned and went downstairs, put the blindfold back on in the entryway, and knocked my cane over on purpose.
Footsteps came down quickly.
Damian hurried downstairs.
"Mara?"
I braced against the wall and lifted my head toward the sound, the way I had for two years.
"You're home?"
His breathing hitched.
"Yes. Just got in."
When he lied, his voice was no different from usual.
He came over and took my hand.
"Why didn't you call me to pick you up?"
"The doctor was only changing the dressing."
"What did he say?"
I paused a second.
"Still nothing."
Damian's hand tightened.
He pulled me against his chest.
"It's okay.
"Mara, I'm here."
Leaning on his chest, I could see Kelsey at the turn of the stairs.
She stood there barefoot, smiling, and put a finger to her lips.
That was the first time an embrace from him made me sick.Kelsey was at breakfast the next morning too.
She said it had been too late the night before, and Damian was worried about her driving the mountain road alone, so he had put her in a guest room.
"You don't mind, ma'am?"
She sat down directly across from me on purpose.
I kept the blindfold on and picked up my coffee.
"You've already spent the night. Why bother asking?"
She gave a small laugh.
Damian frowned. "Mara, she didn't mean anything by it."
"Neither did I."
Under the table, Kelsey stretched out her foot and brushed Damian's shin.
He glanced at her at once.
There was no real anger in the warning.
I suddenly realized that now that I could see, so many things that had never made sense before finally had answers.
Why she always sat so close to him when she came to report on work.
Why Damian sometimes showered before coming into our room.
Why he occasionally carried a sweet scent that was not mine.
After I went blind my sense of smell got sharper.
Damian explained it was a new air freshener at the office.
I believed him.
Halfway through breakfast, Kelsey took a small glass bottle out of her pocket and turned it over in her palm.
I recognized the label.
Mate scent blocker.
Wolves have an exceptionally sharp sense of smell. If a married wolf gets intimate with someone else, it is almost impossible to hide the scent completely. Blockers were originally used for medical isolation and tracking missions, but later became the easiest way to conceal an affair.
Kelsey deliberately set the bottle down near my hand.
Damian's expression shifted.
"Kelsey."
But she said with a smile, "What? My throat's dry."
Then she said to me, "Ma'am, could you pass me that throat spray? It's just to your right."
She was testing me.
I reached out and felt around, knocked over the sugar bowl on purpose, and did not find the bottle until last.
"This one?"
"That's it."
Malicious triumph gleamed in her eyes as she took it.
Damian had been watching me the whole time.
Only once he was sure nothing was off did he visibly relax.
It made me want to laugh.
So he knew how ugly this was.
He just believed that as long as I couldn't see it, it wasn't happening in front of me.
After breakfast I went to the bathroom.
A pregnancy test lay buried at the bottom of the wastebasket.
Two red lines.
I stared at it for a long time.
Kelsey had slept in a guest room.
And she had thrown the test into our master bathroom.
This was not carelessness.
She wanted me to catch the scent and feel the shape without ever being able to confirm it.
If I had still been blind, I would probably have doubted myself, and been too unsure to confront anyone.
This time, I simply put it back where it was.
In the afternoon Damian walked with me.
As always, he told me in advance where the steps and loose stones were.
"Three steps ahead, on your right."
I followed where he led.
"Mara."
"Yes?"
"Have you been feeling down lately?"
I could see the concern on his face.
It was real.
That was the most frightening part.
It wasn't that he didn't love me at all.
He simply believed that loving me and betraying me could exist at the same time.
"No."
"You haven't been as close to me these last few days."
I nearly asked how greedy a person had to be to have a child with another woman and still expect his wife to go on depending on him.
But I asked nothing.
That night I contacted my teacher at Moonspring.
"Corinne."
The line was quiet for a few seconds.
"Mara?"
I had been away from Moonspring five years.
That reclusive healing pack in a snowy mountain valley opened its pass just once a year, around the eclipse, allowing members who lived elsewhere to return home.
There were ten days left this year.
"I want to come home."
Corinne did not ask why.
She only said, "The gate will open for you."
Holding my phone, I felt for the first time that ten days could be short.The Blackwood pack's founding festival was moved up two days.
Damian said it was because I'd been feeling low lately and he wanted the celebration to be livelier.
"You don't have to join the hunt." He fastened my cloak himself. "I'll keep the safest place for you."
"Today everyone is going to know who matters most to me," he said just as Kelsey came in from outside.
She lowered her head, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
The festival was held in the valley.
Every year before that, the Luna had worn the silver laurel crown and lit the first torch with the Alpha.
I did not attend last year, after I lost my sight.
This year Damian said the ceremony would be simplified.
Only when I was seated on the platform did I learn that what he called simplifying the ceremony meant giving my place to someone else.
Kelsey wore a silver-white gown, with the laurel crown on her head.
The Elder presiding over the rite glanced at Damian, hesitating.
"Alpha, this is against the rules."
Damian said quietly, "Mara can't see, and she can't join the hunt. Kelsey handled all the preparations this year. Let her stand in once."
"Standing in is for lighting the torch. Not for the wife's crown."
Kelsey moved at once to take it off.
"Never mind, I shouldn't be wearing it."
Damian held her hand down.
"It's only a ceremony."
Then he looked back at me.
"Mara doesn't care about formalities."
Everyone believed I could not see.
So no one knew I was watching him leave the symbol of my status as his mate on another woman's head with his own hands.
I truly did not care about the crown.
What I cared about was that he decided for me that I did not care.
After the lighting came the first dance.
Damian was supposed to come back and take my hand.
Instead Kelsey turned her ankle on the steps.
He caught her immediately.
The crowd cheered them on.
Someone laughed and said, "If she's standing in anyway, she might as well dance the first dance too."
Damian hesitated.
For only two seconds.
Then he held out his hand.
Kelsey put hers into his palm.
I sat up above and watched the whole dance.
When it ended she walked past me, very slowly.
She mouthed the words without a sound.
"Blind women don't need pretty things."
I held my cane and did not move.
Damian finally came back that night.
He dropped to one knee in front of me and put my hand against his face.
"Was it very loud today?"
"It was fine."
"Kelsey filled in at the last minute. Don't read into it."
"What would I read into it?"
He gave a small laugh, as if relieved.
"True."
He put his arms around me.
I could smell the scent blocker on his collar, far too strong.
I knew exactly where he had just been.
I did not cry that night.
I only changed the count from ten days to seven.Over the next seven days I started packing.
I did not take the jewelry Damian had given me or any of the property the Blackwood pack had provided for the Luna.
I packed only a few clothes and an old medicine case.
It was the one I used before I married him.
Five years ago I was Moonspring's youngest healer.
Damian first came to Moonspring to deal with a silver poisoning incident on the border.
His shoulder was poisoned and everyone said the arm could not be saved.
I performed purification treatments on him for three nights.
Afterward he followed me all the way to the foot of the snow mountain and said I was the only mate he would ever take.
I left my pack for him.
Then I lost my eyes for him.
Now I only wanted to take away the part of my life that was still mine.
Leaving required two documents.
One was an ordinary dissolution of marriage.
The other was a mate release, the kind recognized between packs.
We were not fated mates bound by the Moon Goddess. We had exchanged mate oath blood by choice when we married. A bond like that can be dissolved, but it requires both signatures and confirmation before a neutral Elder.
I had already arranged a Moonspring Elder.
All that was missing was Damian's name.
I left the folder in the study.
It also held several of the keep's annual asset authorizations.
Nothing was forged.
Every page was clearly titled.
I simply did not point out what the second document was.
On the last morning, Damian sat at the desk going through papers.
Kelsey's call came in.
He did not want to take it.
When it rang a third time, he frowned and swiped it open.
Whatever she said, he stood up immediately.
"I have to go to the medical station."
I held the folder out.
"Sign these first."
"Is it urgent?"
"Yes."
He opened the first page, a routine asset authorization.
After signing it he clearly had no patience to keep reading.
"Which other pages?"
I fumbled at the paper, pretending I could not find the place.
He took the folder and turned straight to the page whose corner I had folded down.
The mate release title was right at the top of the page.
One glance down and he would have seen it.
But the phone rang again.
Kelsey was crying his name.
Damian flipped straight to the signature line.
He signed.
"We'll do the rest when I get back."
He pushed the pen back into my hand and kissed my forehead.
"Wait for me."
I did not answer.
After the door closed, I took off the blindfold.
Through the window I watched Damian run all the way to the garage.
It was the last time I would look at him as his wife.
At noon the Moonspring Elder arrived outside the city.
I let a drop of blood fall during the release ceremony.
The old oath mark slowly faded.
The change did not hurt.
It only left me empty.
I had thought I would not be able to let go.
When it actually ended, all I felt was relief.
I left a signed copy of the documents on the bedroom table.
Then I took my luggage and left.

Chapters (4)

Chapter 1   Chapter 2   Chapter 3   Chapter 4

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

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