Broken heart of a warrior

Prologue

Many questions circle around one single word: LOVE. What is love? What does it mean? What is its purpose? Will I ever fall in love? Will the person I love be the right one? Does my family love me? Am I even lovable? Can I truly be loved by someone... or will I always be chasing a shadow of it?

That word—love—should mean devotion, connection, the fire that binds hearts together. It's meant to awaken strong feelings, affection, a profound attachment that fuses two souls while keeping their identities intact. Love is supposed to be beautiful, awe-inspiring, kind, and passionate. It's meant to be our anchor, our sustenance—the thing that keeps us moving forward when everything else falls away. Love should exist between family, friends, and lovers. Love should be unconditional, without restrictions or limits. If you truly love, you love someone in spite of themselves—the good, the bad, the ugly. Their failures, their poor choices, the disappointment they bring into your life... these should barely ripple the depth of your devotion. Love is a choice: you either love, or you do not. It exists, and everyone deserves it.

I believed that. I clung to that. I soaked it up from the books, the hours spent with cherished friends, the dreams I allowed myself to dream. I believed it was true.

But let me tell you something—the truth is darker than that.

It's a lie.

Love—the one thing I believed could never fail me, the one thing I thought would always shelter me—betrayed me. I took it for granted, I valued it above all, I craved it with a hunger I didn't even understand. And yet... it crushed me. Love shattered me into pieces I didn't think I could survive. The despair it brought was physical: the kind that makes you curl into yourself, begging the universe to be merciful; the kind where your chest feels hollow, your lungs refuse to fill with air, and your soul feels as though it's bleeding from the inside out. It's the kind of pain where every heartbeat is a hammer, where every memory of love feels like a knife twisting deeper. It is cruel, unrelenting, inescapable—and yet, somehow, I survived. I am alive.

This is my story. It's a tale of endurance, of existing despite devastation, loss, and searing heartbreak. It's about surviving when death would feel easier.

But there's something you need to know, something that makes my story... different. I am a werewolf. Yes, we have mates. And yes, it's true what they say about us: we love with a fire no human can comprehend. The bond with a mate is beyond passion; it's primal, inescapable, consuming. To live without them after mating them is unbearable. Often it ends in death. For the lucky ones who survive the initial loss... we become rogues, shadows of ourselves, drifting through life with no fear, no care, no connection. Existing becomes mechanical. Remorse fades. Only survival remains.

What I have become is the result of what—or who—I once loved. There is no shame in my existence, but there is a question I still carry: is there love for me, after what I have become? Until the answer reveals itself, I have chosen to submit, to wait, and to see what fate has decided.

And yet... even in this darkness, a flicker of hope persists. Because for a werewolf, love is not just passion—it is life itself. And life... refuses to be ignored.