Shattered Bonds A Second Chance Mate (by Yui) novel Chapter 190

hapter 190

Chapter 190

The garden had a way of asking for small things.

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It never demanded grand gestures–just dirt under fingernails, a patient hand, a little water poured at the base of a hopeful shoot.

Today it asked for exactly that: patience.

I had told myself I came back for drawing. But charcoal still lay rolled and untouched in my satchel. The that had been so honest with me that morning now felt like a mirror I didn’t want to stare into.

So, instead, I found my knees in the soil, the cold grain of it between my fingers, and I planted.

Maybe it was childish.

Maybe it was foolish.

But there is a kind of prayer in planting: an argument with time that says, I believe in tomorrow.

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So I dug small holes and pressed tiny roots into the earth like promises. Lavender, for scent on heavy days. Rosemary, because Monica swore it steadied the heart. A small espaliered rose, tentative and stubborn, for the blue rose in Florence that had once smelled of a beginning.

Each seed, each sprig, felt like a stitch in the side of the wound that had opened in the ward.

Audrey hovered nearby as she always did–a patient blade in boots, her presence steady as the edge of steel. Monica supplied an absurd number of tiny gardening tools and a lecture about drainage that I pretended to understand but absolutely did not. Maria–gentle, practical Maria of the kitchen, who knew the pain of me being rejected–brought me a small watering can and stayed with the quiet knowledge of someone who had walked a road like mine.

They moved around me like the orbit of quiet moons, respectful of the small liturgy I was performing.

They tried to coax me into eating, but I refused.

So they stayed instead, kneeling in the dirt, helping me, letting silence do the work. Their loyalty was a balm, even when words felt useless.

So I keep planting.

With each movement, I told myself a litany.

When I came to Florence, my heart was shattered. I knew about Francesco losing Anastasia, about his mourning, only to find out she had used him. Now I see another woman doing the same,

I thought being rejected was the worst pain–that it would end me. But knowing his story makes my pain feel

small.

I am not the girl who ran. I am the woman who was left because my mate chose another. Now, I am the Luna

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Chapter 190

he chose.

The words were small and soft and only mattered because I spoke them. The earth listened. The rosemary rooted itself as if it had been waiting for me. Even the stubborn fig, with its leaning trunk, seemed to incline a little, like approval.

Sometimes, when hands are busy, the heart can do its work without the tongue. I rubbed dirt into the lines of my palms until the soil felt like ink–like work I could show him later, proof that I fought back with growth, not bitterness. He would see the garden and know I had used pain to build something that could keep us both

Hours passed.

The sun tilted west.

Shadows sharpened and softened.

I hadn’t noticed the time until a voice–not loud, not dramatic, only a soft footfall and the weight of my name -lifted the back of my skin.

“Ellaine.”

The name warmed the air as it always did.

He was there before I turned–the world narrowing to the slope of his shoulders, the dark flare of his eyes. He carried the tiredness of the day across him like a cloak, but when his gaze found me, the wear folded away. Audrey, Monica, and Maria had followed at a respectful distance; they had read the signs of a woman who needed space–and of the man who would always give her shelter.

“I was told you’re still here,” he said, and the way his voice held the words felt like confession and promise at

once.

Audrey stepped forward then, practical as ever. “She’s been here all afternoon. We tried to tempt her with food. She refused.”

Damn Audrey.

Francesco’s mouth tightened in a way I recognized–the loop of worry that always closed on him when he saw me slip behind myself.

He crossed to me without hurry, his hand brushing over the mound of soil as if he touched something alive that mattered to both of us. Then he crouched, the way a man lowers himself to a child, with a gentleness that made my heart ache.

“Why didn’t you eat?” he asked.

There was no rebuke in it. Only the raw need of someone who could not abide the thought of losing the one thing he could never replace.

I wanted to answer with tidy words–I planted. But words were not enough.

Instead, I let my hands fold into his, soil smearing between our fingers, warmth sinking into warmth. The

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Chapter 190

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bond hummed, taut and sure, like a string plucked between us.

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“I have no appetite,” I whispered, my voice giving on the last syllable. I swallowed, tasting iron and rosemary. “I know you must have heard… about our conversation.”

Francesco’s fingers tightened once around my wrist.

His face didn’t harden into rage; it softened into sorrow. “I heard everything, amore mio. And you heard the truth that matters most.” He pressed his forehead to mine, the world narrowing to the small, steady beat of him. “Not my family name. Not the stories in men’s mouths. But, it’s me. You. Here. Now.”

The tears came then–quiet at first, then falling like small rain.

They burned hot into the soil and I didn’t wipe them away. They felt like part of the season. Audrey’s hand drifted to my shoulder; Monica bent with a cloth. But it was Francesco who gathered me without question, lifting me into his arms as though I were something fragile and necessary.

“You should not have to hold that alone. I am okay–I have you now.” His voice shook, not with anger but with the ache he had carried from years of being mistaken, misunderstood. “I hate that they turned my love into a story meant to make me small.” His arms were strong around me, steadying. “You were never meant to know that pain.”

But I did know. And that was why I wept–for him.

For the most amazing man, who deserved better.

My tears slowed only when his ribs moved steady under my cheek. He carried me toward the manor like a man carrying home. The garden watched us go, the little plants tilting like faces toward a blessing.

He set me gently on our bed, his hands tender as prayer. He didn’t let me move until my breath had steadied.

“You planted hope,” he said softly. “You did well. Don’t think about the past–my past. I am okay now. I have you.” He brushed a smear of dirt from my cheek with his thumb, and I leaned into the touch like shelter.

I rested my head against his chest, listening to the slow, sure beat there.

He patted my back like a mother soothes a child, and whispered: “Whatever they whisper about me, we will answer with dirt under our nails and food in people’s bowls. We will not meet venom with venom, but with the stubbornness of growth.”

I nodded against him, a truth taking root in me.

Love was not a trophy or a weapon. It was soil and sun and the daily act of tending. If anyone thought it was a weakness, we would show them how strong it could make us both.

He tightened his arms around me, firm and possessive, worshipful.

Outside, the manor hummed with life–soldiers on patrol, servants laying coals, the steady scrape of a quill.

Inside, my cheeks were wet, my hands carried the faint scent of rosemary, and the small shoots in the garden waited for morning.

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Chapter 190

“It’s sad that you’re sad because of me,” he murmured, naming the shadow I hadn’t spoken. “I am sorry. They will come with questions about Isolde. We will answer–together.”

1 lifted my face to him, and for a brief, luminous second the ache thinned into resolve. “Together, I echoed.

He kissed my brow, then my lips, then every dirt–stained knuckle.

And I let him–because that is where love gets rebuilt: in tiny mercies, in soil under fingernails, in the way two people choose to hold one another through rumor and rain.

The night folded its cloak over the manor.

And together, we planned with quiet ferocity to meet the dawn.

AD