I am mated to the Beta triplets of my pack. Every night, I endure the desire of three men. Everyone in the pack knows I’ve been spoiled rotten by them. The best food, the best clothes, and I snap at them whenever I want. Because I am loved and cherished, I act without restraint. Until a healer named Iris arrives in the pack. Her previous pack was destroyed, and she comes to Silver Moon Pack with a pup. Unlike my spoiled and temperamental nature, she is gentle and radiant, and many male wolves are drawn to her. But she never depends on any of them. She raises her pup alone and lives her life with ease and strength. Slowly, my first mate Aiden begins to grow tired of how spoiled I am. When he leaves, the other two mates are furious for me. “Aiden, you were the one who chose to leave! Don’t you ever think of coming back to Selene!” But not long after, my second mate Damon leaves as well. I look at the only one left, Liam, and my nose stings. “Liam… do you think I have a bad temper too?” Liam pats my head. “Don’t overthink it. They’re the ones who are trash. They don’t know how to cherish you.” Until I see it with my own eyes. He shifts into wolf form and follows behind Iris, step by step, so humbly, so desperately, as if begging her to pet him. I turn and run. Stumbling all the way, I rush into my Alpha father’s house. “Father, let me go to the Northern Pack marriage alliance.” — “Selene, are you insane?!” My father snaps back to reality, eyes wide. “That’s the Northern Pack! Other she-wolves pray not to be chosen, and you want to send yourself there?!” My eyes are red as I clutch my clothes tightly. The Northern Pack lies at the far north of the werewolf world, a place of extreme cold, ruled by ice wolves. They are cursed by the Moon Goddess. Their she-wolves are born without wolf nature and cannot form mate bonds. To continue their bloodline, they must form marriage alliances with other packs every year. The Northern wolves are not only powerful, but also fiercely loyal to their mates. Yet no she-wolf willingly goes to that frozen wasteland. “Did they… do something again?!” my father’s voice turns cold. He stands up immediately, but I stop him. “Don’t go! Father, please don’t!” I rush forward to hold him down, shaking my head desperately. “Don’t stand up for me anymore…” When Aiden and Damon left, I had already cried and begged my father. Because of that, Iris nearly got expelled from the pack. She later moved farther and farther away, but they still never came back to me. Their cold eyes are still so clear in my mind that I tremble thinking about them. “Selene, stop using your privilege to bully people. Iris did nothing wrong, yet she almost got driven out because of you.” “Without your Alpha father, what are you worth?” “I can’t believe I ever liked a disgusting she-wolf like you.” That night, I held onto the only one left, Liam, and cried until I blacked out. But now, even he doesn’t want me anymore. In silence, my father lets out a heavy sigh. “Selene, you’re my only daughter. I don’t want you going somewhere that far.” “But I also can’t bear to see you suffer. Three days from now, there will be a draw. Think it over and come back to tell me, alright?” I leave my father’s room. At a glance, I see Liam waiting outside. He leans against the pillar, holding a small yellow flower, staring at it absentmindedly. I recognize that flower. He got it from Iris today, wagging his tail like a fool. When he sees me, he hides the flower and smiles softly. “Selene?” I wipe my eyes and walk straight past him without looking back. “Selene, where are you going?” I don’t answer. After a few more steps, I suddenly realize there is no sound behind me. I turn back abruptly. Liam has stopped at a distance far away from me. His brows are slightly furrowed as he carefully protects the small yellow flower in his hand, afraid it will be bent by the wind. Something in my chest tightens. I shout at him angrily, almost losing control. “Liam! Why aren’t you following me?!” My voice gets louder and louder. The surrounding wolves start to look over. But he only lifts his eyes slightly, his shadow stretched long under the setting sun. An unfamiliar panic rises in my chest. I stomp my foot and, gritting my teeth, start walking toward him. But the next second, I hear him say. “Selene, I won’t be able to walk you home anymore.” He turns and walks toward Iris’s house.

The house is left with only me. The fire in the fireplace is still burning, crackling softly Liam lit it early this morning. I reach out to add more wood, but a spark jumps out and burns my hand. My lips curl down in instinctive grievance. Only then do I realize no one is here to care about me anymore. My nails dig into my palm. I suddenly stand up and run outside. I stumble all the way, falling again and again, getting back up again and again. Until finally, I end up standing in front of that door, knocking in a mess. But the one who opens the door is not Liam. Aiden freezes when he sees me. His gaze falls on my injuries, his expression unreadable. “What are you doing here?” He is my first mate. When he was by my side, he always disliked how I ran around, afraid I would get hurt. He would frown and scold me for being reckless, but still silently follow behind me to clean up my mess. His words were never gentle when he lectured me. And yet I remember it too after every cold shoulder, he would quietly come to my bed. Wipe away the tears I stubbornly refused to show with his fingertips. Then, in the sound of my pretending-to-sleep breathing, he would leave clumsy, burning kisses. I lower my eyes and don’t look at him. Instead, I anxiously search inside. Aiden, ignored, unconsciously tightens his grip on the doorframe. He lets out a cold laugh and calls into the house. “Liam! Did you not even clean up your tail properly and now she’s come chasing you? What are you going to do if Iris finds out?” The wind of early winter slaps against my skin. I’m only wearing a thin dress, my face pale as I watch Liam walk out. His clothes are messy, his hair disheveled. On the side of his neck is a fresh bite mark. He glances impatiently at Aiden, then finally looks at me. A flicker of irritation crosses his eyes. Coldness spreads through my body. I take a step back instinctively. Then suddenly, a cloak is placed over my shoulders. I look up, only to see Aiden’s tight jawline. Liam walks up to me, still wearing that familiar gentle expression. For a moment, I almost think I saw wrong. “Selene? How did you end up like this?” I bite my lip. “Liam, I… I won’t throw tantrums anymore asking for berries from miles away. I won’t complain about the fur being too rough. I won’t bother you when you’re tired anymore…” “From now on, I only want you. I don’t want anyone else. Don’t leave me alone, okay?” My words come faster and faster, completely unaware of Aiden’s changing expression beside me. Liam listens, but his gaze keeps drifting to my bloodied knees. I unconsciously slip back into the spoiled habits I used to have with him. I even reach out to grab his hand. “You promised you would always stay with me! Liam, you can’t break your word! I—” But I grab nothing but air. Liam pulls his hand away. “It’s cold outside. Come in first, alright?”

The room is warm. I sit on a wooden chair lined with soft animal fur. Everything around me is neatly arranged. The wooden walls have been carefully sanded smooth, and the corners are stacked with enough firewood to last deep into winter. I think of my own room, cold at this very moment. After Aiden and Damon left, Liam did keep it maintained—but he is always distracted. The leak in the roof never seems properly fixed. Firewood is always only chopped when it is almost gone. When it gets too cold, I no longer dare to complain so openly like before. I only secretly press myself into Liam’s arms, afraid he might leave me too. Then suddenly, I hear low voices from the inner room. “What, are you softening up?” “Let me tell you, if you regret this, don’t even think about coming back here!” I freeze. Quickly, I turn slightly to listen. But then I hear Liam’s cold voice. “No. I’m just worried she’ll go crying to the Alpha again, or cause trouble for Iris.” “Don’t worry. She’s easy to pacify.” My mind goes completely blank. Aiden lets out a short laugh. Footsteps fade away. Someone crouches in front of me. Liam lowers his eyes and uses a cloth to slowly wipe the blood and dirt from my knees. His tone is still as gentle as I remember. “Selene, from now on… I will be Iris’s mate.” “You are the Alpha’s daughter. You can choose any outstanding male wolf you want in the pack.” Something flashes through his eyes, and he even smiles slightly. “Didn’t you say before… that you wanted to kick all three of us out and go find other she-wolves?” That was just words said in anger, wasn’t it? Why did it not matter before but now it suddenly becomes real? Tears blur my vision as I look at him, shaking my head again and again. “No…” Liam stares at the tears at the corner of my eyes, his expression darkening slightly. He reaches out slowly, wipes them away, and pats my head like he used to. Then, in silence, he stands up to get water and medicine. Suddenly Bang. Something heavy is thrown at me. I turn around and see Iris’s pup standing there, glaring at me with hatred. He lifts a hot water kettle high. “Bad woman! You bullied my mom! Get out!” I instinctively raise my arm to block it. But the movement makes the splashing water bounce back. A few drops of boiling water land on the pup’s exposed leg and hand. He freezes for a second. Then bursts into piercing, heartbreaking cries. At that moment, the wooden door is pushed open from outside. A blast of cold wind rushes in. A hand grips my throat. Damon’s green wolf-like eyes lock onto me, and he lets out a cold, furious laugh. “So you couldn’t bully Iris enough, and now you’re bullying her pup too?” “Selene… you really never disappoint.”

Damon’s departure was the most humiliating. Because of my complaints, Iris nearly got expelled from the pack. To protect her and her pup, Damon silently accepted a border patrol mission that was basically a death sentence. He traded his near-death experience just to keep Iris and the child in Silver Moon Pack. The last time he cut the mate bond with me, the way he looked at me was ice cold. “I was stupid,” he said. “The biggest regret of my life is ever chreshing you.” I didn’t understand. They were the ones who betrayed me first, yet they spoke as if I were the guilty one. I clutched his wrist, my strength slowly fading. Tears blurred my vision. When I looked up again, my eyes were empty. Damon’s pupils tightened. “Damon!” He froze, then quickly let go when he saw I was struggling to breathe. I fell hard onto the ground. Coughing, gasping, barely able to catch my breath. Liam rushed in right then. He was about to pull me into his arms when Iris opened the door from the inner room. In that instant, he pushed me away. I stumbled backward, pain shooting through my body. Aiden came out right after. He paused when he saw me on the ground, his expression unreadable, but he didn’t move. Damon glanced at Liam and raised a brow. “Didn’t you say you’d stay by Selene forever? Why are you here too?” Then he laughed, like he suddenly understood everything. “Oh… so even you’re tired of her now.” “What a coincidence. All of us ended up choosing the same mate, over and over again.” His eyes landed on me curled up on the ground, and he sneered. Liam said nothing. But he met my eyes. And then looked away. I felt like I forgot how to breathe. I froze completely. “Your arm… are you okay?” Iris suddenly spoke. Only then did everyone notice my forearm. It was bright red, blistered, the skin rising in painful patches. They all seemed to expect me to cry or lash out. But I didn’t. I slowly pulled myself up on my own. Then I looked at Iris in silence. Her expression was soft, almost kind. They said even in winter, she could grow rare herbs from barren ground. No wonder everyone in the pack liked her… except maybe me. Sensing the tension, Iris gently patted the pup in her arms. “Alex, say sorry to Aunt Selene, okay?” The child buried his face in her chest and refused to speak. Iris sighed helplessly and looked at me. “He’s still young. I’ll apologize for him. I have good burn medicine, I’ll go get it for you.” “No.” Everyone turned to look at me. “I want him to apologize.” Iris’s smile faded slightly. “He’s just a cub. Making him apologize now might be too much…” “Apologize.” “Selene!” Damon cut me off sharply and stepped in front of Iris and the cub, his face dark. “Why are you arguing with a child? Iris already apologized. Do you really need to make him cry?” Aiden didn’t speak, but his furrowed brows said everything. Even Liam shook his head slightly. The three men who once belonged to me now stood together, shielding another woman’s child. Iris gently tugged Damon’s sleeve. She lowered her head and whispered something to Alex. Finally, he turned around and muttered, “…Sorry.” It was reluctant. Muffled. Full of unwillingness. Even so, their expressions stayed grim. Iris looked at me apologetically. “Selene, he said sorry. The burn needs treatment. Let me help you.” She turned to get the medicine. But I suddenly felt cold. So cold I could barely stand. “No need.” I forced the words out. Before anyone could react, I pushed the door shut behind them and stumbled into the freezing wind outside.

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The Whitmore heir is cold. I am insufferable. He refuses to share a bed with me, so I spend entire nights reciting the legal obligations of a spouse at his closed door. He starts coming home past midnight just to avoid me. So I go crying to his parents. The elder Whitmores make him kneel and take thirty lashes with a belt. I’m about to intervene when the comment feed flickers across my vision: [Can this dumb-ass woman just fast-forward to her miserable end already? Can’t she see he doesn’t want her?!] [His body is reserved for OUR female lead!] [Let her keep acting out. The female lead already got hired as Callum’s personal assistant — Callum’s going to fall for her soon, and their kid will start calling him Mommy. [Then this idiot wife throws a fit all over town, calling our female lead a homewrecker. [Gets tossed out by Callum himself, ends up in a psychiatric facility, degraded and broken every single night. [Honestly, just thinking about it is satisfying!] My hand jerks. I nearly drop my glass. The elder Mrs. Whitmore raises the belt again. I lunge forward. The strike lands across my back instead. Through Callum’s stunned stare, I bite down on the pain: “It’s all a misunderstanding.” …… That one actually hurt like hell. I suck in a sharp breath. Callum looks at me like he’s never seen me before. The comments explode with question marks: [What is Madeleine Shaw doing? This idiot wife just took a hit FOR him?] [Please. Wasn’t it her tantrum that got Callum punished in the first place?] I try to stand. The movement pulls at my back and sends a white-hot bolt of pain through me. Callum reaches out and catches my arm. [Oh, I see it now — classic manipulation!] [She took one hit so he’d have to help her up. Now she gets to use it against him!] [What a disgusting woman. I want to reach through the screen and slap her.] [Callum took ten lashes. She took one. And somehow she’s made herself the victim. Nobody calculates like she does.] My hand goes stiff. I pull away from Callum’s grip and manage a thin smile: “I’m fine. It really is just a misunderstanding between Callum and me both.” Callum’s hand freezes mid-air. [Oh, the old push-pull. Worse than any cheater I’ve ever seen.] [It’s fine. Once he ends up institution-bound and broken, I’ll have reason to keep reading.] I nearly lose my footing. When I turn back, Callum is still watching me. His gaze is exactly what it’s always been — distant and untouchable. I was the one who swore I’d marry no one but him. He was the one who never had any interest in me. But… a psychiatric facility? Humiliated. Destroyed. By his hand? Callum… could he really become that cruel?

Back at the penthouse, I lie face-down on the bed while the housekeeper tends to my back. Callum comes home. His sleepwear hangs loose at the collar. Bandaging wrapped across his chest — from where they’d gotten to him before I arrived. [Oh my god, battle-worn Callum?! That silhouette. That ratio. I can’t breathe.] [Cover up! Don’t let that woman take advantage!] [Your body belongs to the female lead! Don’t let her near you!] Callum can’t see those comments. He sets a basin of water beside the bed. Kneels at the edge. Wrings out a warm cloth. My back wound means no shower — just a wipe-down. The comments nearly swamp my vision: [So THAT’S why she suddenly grew a conscience! Took a hit just to get him on his knees in front of her!] [One calculated move and now he has to clean her up out of guilt. Pathetic.] [Her schemes and her reputation are perfectly matched. Does she think about anything besides power plays?] [Hold on, girls — the female lead just joined Callum’s company as his personal assistant.] [Callum’s glacier is going to melt. He’s going to discover he can love someone. And then she’ll pay.] [Just wait — when she goes around calling our female lead a homewrecker, Callum will make her pay for it.] [The author said she ends up beaten to death by a hundred men in that facility. FINALLY. Now I can keep reading.] I pull my hand back from his. The cloth Callum was pressing against my knuckles hangs in the air. “Go do what you want,” I say. Callum frowns. “What would I go do?” “Work late. Sleep in the guest room. Isn’t that your favorite routine?” “Madeleine.” He drops the cloth back into the water. “What are you scheming now?” I look at him. He’s kneeling — technically the lower position — but the look he aims at me is pure contempt. He has always been like this. Cold. Self-contained. He only agreed to this marriage because my family once saved his, and even that was a concession he resented. And yet — in these eight years of marriage, I have never let him breathe. He pulls away, I report it. He snaps at me, I report it. He disappears for a night, I take it straight to his parents. I’ve used the title of “wife” like a weapon, marking territory everywhere. But… I never wanted to actually hurt him. And yet he would end up doing that to me— My eyes sting. Why? He is my husband. The father of my child. A few arguments between us, and I’d die at the hands of some other man, broken and unrecognizable. “Callum.” I sit up. “I signed the agreement.” He stiffens. The steward lays a document on the bed between us. The marital non-interference agreement. The one he drafted before the wedding. A paper marriage. No physical contact. No intimacy. It had triggered every stubborn nerve in my body. My husband. Why shouldn’t I touch him? “From now on, I won’t push you anymore. Do whatever you want.” Callum stares at me like he doesn’t recognize the language. I expect him to say something. Instead, the agreement tears — strip by strip — between his fingers. “Callum?” He drops the shreds into the wastebasket. “What good does it do now?” Before I can make sense of that, the comments ignite: [She didn’t sign it at the wedding, waited until after she’d already had her way with him and there’s a child involved, and NOW she wants non-interference? Hilarious.] [Not just an idiot — a dramatic idiot.] [Our clean, untouched Callum — ruined. Because of HER.] [It’s fine. Everything she taught him, our female lead gets to enjoy later.] [I’m blushing — STOP.] Something in my chest pulls tight. So according to that feed — not only would Leo stop calling me Mom. Everything I’d ever taught Callum would become some other woman’s reward. I breathe through it. Then: “If the marital agreement is too late — what about divorce papers?” Callum goes very still.

“You want to divorce me?” Callum’s voice drops. “Yes.” I meet his eyes. “You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?” He looks away. He’d proposed it himself, at the start. Three years. After three years, we’d separate. I could walk away with half his assets — the Whitmore family’s acknowledgment of what my parents had sacrificed for them. Three years was also enough time to make it look dignified. I refused. Took it to his parents. That day, Callum got torn apart in front of everyone. I’d stood there with my arms crossed, watching, pleased with myself. He’d looked back at me then — expressionless. No grief. No anger. Now that I’m finally offering to let him go, that look has only gotten colder. “What are you actually trying to do?” “Callum. I mean it. You write the terms. “Sign it, and I walk out with nothing. Whatever you want.” Callum’s brow creases. Then — a slow, bitter curve of his lips. “Madeleine. Stop it.” He stands, picks up the basin, and carries it out. That night, he doesn’t come to our room. Same as always. He’d never come to me unless I cornered him into it. Good. I didn’t want to share a bed with someone who was going to destroy me. I didn’t sleep. Callum could let go — fine. But the comments said Leo would stop calling me Mom? The next morning, still half-asleep, I found Leo already waiting in the doorway. My rule. Every morning, say good morning to both parents. Who says my son is going to belong to someone else? Look at him — standing right there, perfectly on schedule. But when breakfast hit the table, he opened his mouth: “Did you find out about aunt Ellie?” I blinked. “If you’re going to divorce Daddy, why do you have to make Ellie look bad?” Who was Ellie. How had I made him look bad. The comments lost their minds: [Leo’s defending our female lead!] [He’s right — filing for divorce now makes it look like Ellie broke up the family. Like she’s the other woman!] [She’s so calculated. God, I want to reach through the screen.] [She can’t fool Callum or Leo though — they’ve already called her out!] [Go for it, Leo! She only cares about her pride — her own kid is her only weak spot!] I stared at him: “You knew about this?” “Dad told me everything. Dad said you’re manipulative.” My fist tightened. So that was why Callum had been so hostile last night. I looked at Leo carefully. “If your dad and I actually divorced — who would you go with?” [Does she even have to ask? Leo’s already calling the female lead Mommy at the office. She’s so behind.] I went cold. Leo’s eyes fixed on mine. “You… you’re sure about the divorce? No taking it back?” [Ha! Leo’s already planning his new life.] [She did this to herself.] My own son… really didn’t want me? I ignored the pain in my back and sat up straight. “Leo.” I reached for his hand. He stepped back. I tried for his sleeve. He pulled free. I’ve had high expectations for him, it’s true. But every book, every activity, every choice — I thought through carefully. For him. I’m someone who never sat still for crafts in my life, and yet I became a passable bracelet-maker just for this child. I reached for his wrist. The woven bracelet there. Not one I’d made. “Don’t touch that!” Leo yanked his arm back like I’d contaminated something, retreating to the doorway. [Ha! Leo’s protecting it — Ellie made that for him!] “Leo…” I stared at him. He scrunched his nose. “Mom said it’s precious.” Then he turned and ran. The comments dissolved into laughter: [Those two are so in love with the female lead it’s embarrassing.] [Ellie braided Leo’s bracelet. Callum told him not to ruin it. Madeleine’s crafts? Leo can’t even be bothered to wear them.] [Love and indifference really are that obvious. Good. Let her hurt. It means our female lead wins.] I curled my fingers into my palm. Swallowed everything down. Fine. Fine, Madeleine Shaw. You brought this on yourself. I picked up my phone. “Usual place. Nobody better be missing.”

The private room erupts the moment I walk in — a dozen men, all different types, surging toward me at once: “The queen is back!” I drop onto the couch. Immediately, half of them are around me — offering drinks, working out the knots in my shoulders. “You disappeared after the wedding. We thought you’d forgotten us.” “Speak for yourself. I cried the hardest when she settled down.” “Please. I still look at her pictures every day. You don’t even compare.” “Alright, alright.” I wave them quiet. “Where’s Ryan?” Ryan Mercer. My favorite, back when I was the worst kind of player. If Callum hadn’t appeared out of nowhere when he did — I honestly don’t know if Ryan and I would’ve ended up together. He hasn’t changed much. Still exactly my type. I’m about to stand when my phone buzzes. “Word is the legendary heartbreaker is back in circulation?” “Finally woke up, babe! You’ve got a whole room of men there, don’t you?” I smirk. “Sending you the address.” A few minutes later, a small child is delivered to the door. My friend’s voice crackles through the phone, laughing: “My husband and I are on our honeymoon! Have your little fan club babysit for me!” “Sara Collins, I swear to god—” There’s a kid here. What am I supposed to do with a room full of men now? Ryan laughs and scoops the boy up: “Maddie, look at him — he’s got a bit of both of us, don’t you think?” “Mama!” The child reaches for me with both arms. Just like Sara. Shameless. Instant attachment. I pinch the bridge of my nose. Fine. “Can you handle a kid?” I look at Ryan. “With you? No problem.” I wave the others off. Just Ryan with me was enough. I couldn’t exactly let loose with a child in the room. Watching Sara’s boy around Leo’s age, I feel something bitter settle in my chest. The things I’d normally do aren’t an option right now, so I take the two of them to the mall instead. We’re in the middle of holding a tiny jacket up against the boy when every sales associate in the store suddenly straightens up: “Ms. Ellie! Mr. Whitmore! You’re here!” I look up. Callum is holding Leo’s right hand. A woman — sharp-featured, warm smile — is holding his left.

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Ding! My inbox flashed. A “message sent” notification popped up in my screen. I frowned. I hadn’t sent anything and was sitting at my desk, fixing a bug. Then I opened the outbox, and found a resignation letter. My name at the bottom. What the hell? ···································································· Before I could even process it, every monitor started chiming. Notification after notification. The company’s Slack channel exploded. Our CEO, Vance, dropped a laughing emoji in the main channel. “Briar’s just showing off her talent! Don’t panic, people. I’ll recall every resignation.” Garrett, the useless CFO who hadn’t closed a deal in months, jumped in to suck up. “Vance, my resignation went through too. Guess I’m out, huh?” Vance fired back instantly. “Garrett, cut the crap. Even if this whole place walks, you’re staying. Who else is gonna cover my ass at the investor dinner?” It turns out that intern, Briar, wanted to flex her so-called “hacking skills” on TikTok. So she exploited an admin loophole. And mass-emailed a fake resignation letter under every employee’s name. Watching the banter, I figured I’d join the fun and wait for my recall notice. My screen refreshed. My request wasn’t recalled. It was approved. Out of a hundred employees, Vance pulled back ninety-nine resignations. The only one he greenlit was mine, the woman who single-handedly maintained the core infrastructure. So if Briar was the new “tech prodigy” and Garrett was his drinking buddy, then I, the corporate doormat who actually did the work, had outlived my usefulness. Before I packed up, I opened my terminal and revoked the personal licensing protocol for Aegis, the independent AI I’d been letting whole company use for free. A company-wide notification pinged: All resignations successfully recalled. I scrolled to the bottom. Only mine showed the green “Approved” stamp. HR Director Linda slammed my exit paperwork on my desk. “Sloane, you’re the only one who didn’t get recalled. Shame, huh? Performance bonuses drop Friday. You won’t be around to collect.” My stomach dropped. “Linda, please. That $200,000 is mine. My family needs that money for—” She shrugged. “Hey, I just process the paperwork. You wanna beg? Go beg Vance. Maybe he’ll throw his workhorse a bone.” I marched into Vance’s office. He was rolling a Cuban cigar between his fingers, and waved his assistant out the door. “Vance, I need an explanation. Why was I the only one let go?” He blew out a plume of smoke and gave me a lazy, condescending smile. “Sloane, we need to make room for fresh blood. You’re just too outdated.” He propped his Italian loafers up on the mahogany desk, smirking. “But hey, I’ll tear up your resignation if you really want that bonus. There’s just a catch.” I forced the words out through gritted teeth. “What catch?” Vance held up five fingers. “Demotion to L1. Intern-level pay. Say, sixty grand a year. Consider it a paid internship to get you back up to speed.” I froze. My ears were ringing. “Sixty grand? When you begged me to co-found this company, you promised me equity.” Vance’s face turned to ice. “That was then. The company’s restructuring. Me keeping you on at all is a favor. Take it or leave it.” My palms were slick with sweat. My phone buzzed. Children’s Hospital. Another invoice for my daughter Lily’s cardiac care. $5,000 a day, minimum, and we were still waiting on a donor match. Since my husband’s unexpected death, I only have my daughter. For that $200,000 that could save my little girl’s life, I swallowed everything and nodded. The second I stepped out, Vance clapped his hands and announced to the whole floor, “Everyone, meet our new Tech Lead! Briar is stepping up, effective immediately!” The bonus that should have been mine just landed in a nepo-baby intern’s lap. Garrett started the applause, shouting, “Briar’s the future of NexCore! Take notes, people!” A courier showed up with an obscene tower of coffe and artisanal pastries. The office erupted in cheers. Briar pranced around handing out drinks. When she got to me, she rattled an empty carrier in my face. “Oops, Sloane. I didn’t count you. Maybe hit the tap water fountain? Keep it intern-appropriate.” She giggled. Garrett chimed in, making a show of spitting on the carpet near my shoes. “Interns stay in their lane. You don’t get lattes.” I picked up my laptop bag and walked into the supply closet they’d assigned me as a “workspace.” Mold bloomed on the wall. Three years ago, Vance and I hauled servers through a flooded parking lot in the middle of a Bay Area storm. He swore we’d split the company fifty-fifty. Now he was popping champagne for the girl who just took my job. I wiped my face and started typing. You want a prodigy? Fine. You don’t get to keep my AI. I opened the Aegis admin console and typed: Revoke all licenses. Effective upon separation. I didn’t say a word. I just watched the circus play out. This place didn’t deserve me.

The next morning, Briar was parked at the core engineering console, cackling at a block of code throwing errors on the main monitor. “Oh my God, this loop bug has been sitting here for three years? No wonder the whole stack runs like turtle.” Her finger hovered over the Enter key, smug as hell. “I’m patching this out. Deleting it clean.” My scalp went electric. I bolted across the floor and grabbed her wrist. “Don’t touch that! That isn’t a bug. That’s a load-balancing patch I wrote to handle legacy hardware!” My throat was sandpaper. I locked eyes with her. “It throws errors on purpose. Delete it and every other processing unit goes into overload. The whole system will eat itself.” Briar ripped her arm away and brushed off her sleeve. “Sloane, just admit you wrote trash code and can’t fix it. You’re making up words now.” The commotion pulled Vance out of his office, hands behind his back, forehead creased. “What’s the yelling? It’s 10 a.m.” I grabbed onto him like a lifeline. “Vance, Briar is about to delete the throttle patch. It will crash the entire production environment. You have to stop her.” Vance glanced at Briar, then at me. A flicker of hesitation crossed his face. Briar’s lower lip started trembling on cue. Her eyes welled up. “Vance, she’s just jealous. Patching this will boost performance by 20 percent, minimum. She doesn’t want me to make the company better.” The hesitation died. Vance turned on me, cold. “Sloane, give the new generation a chance to innovate. Stop holding us back.” He patted Briar’s shoulder. “Go for it, kiddo. Anything breaks, I’ll take the heat.” I stood there, paralyzed, as Briar slammed the Enter key. Every light in the server room died. The central rack let out a low, grinding hum, and every screen went black. The whole floor fell silent. Only the emergency LEDs flickered, washing everyone in that sickly white hospital light. Briar’s face went the color of printer paper. She jumped out of her chair. “I… I only deleted one line…” The red phone on Vance’s desk started screaming. That was the direct line to Titan Financial, our biggest client. Fifty million a year in contracts. Vance fumbled the receiver. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “Marcus? You’re up early.” Marcus’s roar leaked through the earpiece so loud I heard every word from ten feet away. “Vance! We’re getting red-flag security alerts from your end! What the hell are you people doing?” Vance was shaking so hard his knees buckled. Before he could stutter out an excuse, the server rack chimed. Power returned. The screens flickered back on. The red warnings vanished. Briar stabbed a finger at the monitor and let out an earsplitting squeal. “It’s back! Vance, it rebooted! It worked!” A green banner scrolled across the display: SYSTEM LOGIC OPTIMIZED. She ran a performance test. The progress bar flew. The final number froze on the dashboard. Overall System Efficiency: +30%. Vance exhaled like he’d just dodged a bullet. His face snapped into customer-service mode. “Marcus, huge misunderstanding. We were pushing a core upgrade. All systems green now.” He hung up and gestured at the monitor, practically vibrating. “You see that? You have to break things to build them! Thirty percent, people!” Briar lifted her chin at me. “Sloane, who was it saying the sky was falling? Your face okay?” Garrett led the cheer. “Briar is a goddamn rockstar! Not like some people who squat on their chairs and scream about doomsday!” He shot me a sideways glare. “That’s what we call talent. It makes deadweight obvious.” The office erupted. They were popping Veuve Clicquot and doing shots at 10:30 in the morning. Only I knew the truth. That dashboard wasn’t a win. It was the final dying pulse of a system burning out its own to stay alive. I walked back to my closet and my phone buzzed. Unknown number. I picked up. “Ms. Reeves? This is the Chief of Staff at Stellaris Tech. Kellan Cross would like to know if you’ve reconsidered our offer.” Outside the closet door, they were still howling. Briar was balanced on a desk, pouring champagne straight down her throat. “I accept,” I said, keeping my voice flat. “But I’m still owed a $200,000 year-end bonus here.” A pause. Then, “Understood. Mr. Cross will handle it personally.” I ended the call and let out a quiet laugh. Vance. You picked your “prodigy.” Now watch me collect what’s mine, and watch your skyscraper burn down from the inside.

Day three. Last day of my transition period. The company was going berserk. Bonus deposits had hit everyone’s accounts, and the numbers were jaw-dropping, way higher than any previous year. I swiped open my banking app, finger trembling. Deposit: $2,000.00. Before I could even process it, my phone rang. UCSF Medical Center, Pediatric ICU. A heart monitor screamed in the background. “Ms. Reeves, your daughter is coding. We’re doing CPR.” The doctor’s voice cut through like a blade. “We have a potential donor match, but we need immediate authorization and a fifty thousand dollar deposit to lock in the surgical team. She won’t survive another arrest.” The world went white. My knees almost gave. “Save her. Please, God, save her. I’m transferring now.” I hung up and ran. I didn’t knock. I kicked Vance’s door open. He was stuffing a stack of dollar bills into a Tiffany gift bag, handing it to Briar. “Vance! That $200,000 commission. Give it to me now. My daughter is dying.” I was crying. My voice cracked. Vance didn’t even look up. He tied the gift bag closed with a little red ribbon. “Sloane, stop making a scene. That money’s been redistributed.” He gestured to the cheering floor outside his glass wall. “Briar boosted performance by 30 percent. The team earned it.” My entire body started to shake. Something hot and red climbed up my spine. “That’s my daughter’s surgery money. You can’t just hand it out like party favors.” Vance smiled. He stood up, grabbed my collar, and dragged me out into the open floor like a dog. “Everyone! Gather round!” He shoved me into the middle of the bullpen. A hundred pairs of eyes locked on me. Vance threw up his hands, performing for his audience. “Sloane here wants her $200,000 bonus back. Problem is, I’ve already Venmoed it to all of you as bonuses. So if she gets it, you all cough yours up.” He scanned the room, baiting them. “Any volunteers?” Garrett was the first to bark. He shoved his envelope deeper into his pocket and pointed at me. “Hell no! You think we’re just giving our money back because her kid is sick? Not my problem!” “Sloane, have some shame. You trying to raid the team to pay your own bills?” One voice became ten, then fifty. The jeers piled on top of each other. Briar raised her hand like a kindergartener, giggling. “Vance, since Sloane’s leaving anyway, why not split her salary budget into raises? Five hundred a month for everyone!” People were jumping, screaming her name. Vance waved both arms like a game show host. “Approved! Briar’s got the heart of a leader. Unlike some people who only take.” I stood in the middle of it, something jagged twisting in my chest. Last year, my team pulled five straight all-nighters to patch a critical zero-day. We slept on the server room floor. I begged Vance for a $500 bonus per engineer for three days straight. He smashed a glass in my face and screamed, “Sloane! We’re a startup! Stop thinking about money! Think about the mission!” Now he was buying loyalty with my daughter’s surgery fund and looked like the most generous man alive. “Briar for the win! Briar’s our real team mom!” The faces around me shifted from contempt to something darker. Pure hatred. Like I was the villain trying to steal food from their mouths.

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On my wedding night, my husband Kael forced me to drink liquor laced with a heat inducer, then threw me into a rogue den. The drug plunged my body into a state of shameless, uncontrollable need. I was pinned down by those feral rogues who had lost all reason, their bodies slamming into mine again and again in waves of agony. And Kael simply stood to the side, watching with a cold smile. As I drifted toward unconsciousness, I could not understand how I had gone from a bride that everyone envied to a she-wolf that anyone could use. That year I was eighteen years old, and my father, Alpha Howard of the Red Moon Pack, had decreed that I would be assigned as Kael’s chosen mate. I had counted down the days to the ceremony with a full heart. Because Kael had rejected his fated mate for me, and had sworn before the entire pack that he would be faithful to me forever. Everything shattered so fast, the fall from bride to pack whore taking no more than half a night. I dragged my ruined body back to Red Moon Pack, and my wolf told me we needed an answer. I needed my mate to tell me why, but what I received was not an explanation. It was exile. My entire family was destroyed along with me, and my pack was renamed Autumn Moon, the name Kael’s pack had carried before it was wiped out. I knelt in the mud. Kael tilted my chin up, his gaze cold. “If your father had not framed my father, my pack would never have been slaughtered by rogues.” “One hundred and eight wolves in my family, all destroyed because of your father’s greed.” “I endured years of humiliation in Red Moon Pack, living like a stray dog, all so that one day I could make your entire bloodline pay in full.” “What you owe me has only just begun to be repaid.” Red Moon Pack was erased from existence. I was stripped of my name and my identity, discarded into the most desolate stretch of the border, reduced to the most degraded shared omega in the entire outpost. Five years later, Kael came to inspect the border. I was draped in nothing but a sheer, tattered piece of gauze, straddling a Beta’s lap with lazy, provocative eyes. I took a mouthful of sharp liquor and passed it mouth to mouth into the man’s lips in full view of everyone present. The moment I turned my head, I met his cold, indifferent gaze. Kael sat in the seat of authority, and the look he gave me was thick with contempt. Five years apart, and he had not changed at all, still carrying the sharp composure of a top-tier Alpha, the arrogance of someone born to command written into every line of his face. It was nothing like the filthy, broken creature my father had brought back to the pack all those years ago. I curved the corner of my mouth, my gaze lazy and provocative. “Alpha Kael, looking at me like that, does it mean you want me to serve you the same way?” Kael’s face darkened as he let out a cold snort. “A degraded omega, fit to serve me? You don’t find yourself disgusting, but I find you filthy.” I ignored his contempt and leaned against the Beta with deliberate softness, letting my fingertips trail across his chest until his breathing grew ragged. The Beta exhaled roughly, plastering on a fawning expression as he looked toward Kael. “Alpha Kael, she’s the best piece we have out here, the kind that knows how to pull a man apart. If you don’t want her, I’ll take her out right now.” The room erupted in laughter. The warriors mocked without restraint. “Shev’s been too long at the border. Looks like he’s desperate for a release.” “As if Alpha Kael would want something like that. You’re the one getting lucky in the end.” “I heard Leah used to be the heir of Red Moon Pack. She’s a plaything now, but there’s still that proud streak underneath. Bet she’s a different kind of ride. Shev, leave some for the rest of us when you’re done.” I buried my face in Shev’s chest with a show of shy hesitation, using it to hide the humiliation burning behind my eyes. Five years of living worse than death, drowning in degradation, and I had never once been able to go numb to it. The wolves at the border were rough and careless, and no one would ever treat a traitor’s daughter with anything resembling tenderness. Every time they threw me out, I was covered in wounds. The worst time, I lay in the snow through an entire night and nearly did not survive it. My body was a map of bite marks and lash scars without a single unmarked patch of skin. The pain reached all the way into my bones, but I had no choice except to endure it in silence. No one cared how badly a worthless omega was hurt. I had thought about dying, more than once. But I could not. My younger sister Mia had been exiled alongside me. Her wolf had not yet awakened, and her body had been weakened by the silver dust that seeped into her blood the night our pack was destroyed, slowly eating through her healing ability from the inside. As long as I stayed alive and kept these wolves satisfied, I could earn enough to keep her going. I smoothed the pain out of my expression and gave Beta Shev a slow, seductive smile. “Tonight, whatever you want, I can give it to you.” Shev had already lost what little patience he had, and he scooped me up and headed for the door. In the next instant, someone seized my wrist and wrenched it hard. I cried out and fell, sprawling across the ground before I could rearrange my expression into something safe. Kael looked down at me with eyes full of vicious intent, and he drove his boot into me and sent me rolling across the floor. —

The taste of blood filled my mouth. I bit down and refused to let myself make a sound. After years of navigating these brutal border wolves, I knew better than anyone that crying and begging brought no mercy. It only made things worse. I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and let my smile grow more inviting. “So Alpha Kael likes it rough. I promise I can give you exactly what you want.” Kael fixed his crimson eyes on me without blinking. After a long pause, a cold smile surfaced at the edge of his mouth. He pressed his boot down on my chest and held me flat against the ground. “Leah. A few years gone, and you’ve sunk to this. I really did underestimate you.” Sunk. But when I had tried to die alongside my parents, he was the one who arranged everything and made sure I ended up thrown into the border outpost instead. I still remember kneeling in front of my parents’ bodies and begging him to give me a clean death, while he wrapped his hand around my throat and let his smile go cold. “Die? It won’t be that easy.” “Your father destroyed my entire pack, but he left me alive, and then played the generous savior by taking me in and bringing me into Red Moon Pack, forcing me to swallow my rage every single day while the hatred ate me alive.” “He wouldn’t give me the mercy of a quick end. So what gives you the right to die?” “Leah. Children pay the debts of their parents. I will make sure you can neither live in peace nor die in peace.” Now I was exactly what he had intended me to be, and yet he still looked at me with that disgust. Seeing that I kept my jaw locked and made no sound, the fury in Kael’s eyes deepened. He ground his boot harder against my chest, and the thin gauze I was wrapped in tore apart beneath it, leaving me exposed, the last scrap of dignity shredded along with the fabric. I reached to cover myself by instinct, but he grabbed me by the hair and wrenched me upright. Alpha Kael let his mouth curve in a cold, deliberate arc, his eyes full of cruelty. “Cover what? There’s no one in this room who hasn’t seen you like this before.” “Get on your knees. Let me see exactly how far you’ve fallen.” I ran my tongue over the bleeding corner of my mouth, then knelt at Alpha Kael’s feet with a look of perfect compliance, bending forward and pressing my face against his shoe like a broken stray. “Whatever Alpha Kael wants to do, I can take it.” “If you want me to be your dog, that works too. Why not have someone bring a chain and collar, and walk me around on a leash?” Kael gripped my jaw and forced my face up. His eyes were full of something I could not read. After a moment of silence, he raised his hand and struck me hard across the face. The corner of my eye split open and my vision flooded red. I smiled as though nothing had happened. “Does that feel better, Alpha Kael?” “If it’s still not enough, you could always have someone bring a whip.” Kael kept his face blank as he took the handkerchief a wolf guard held out and scrubbed the blood from his fingertips, his expression flat but his tone soaked in contempt. “Filthy. Leah, why don’t you just die.” I pulled one corner of my mouth up in something that was almost a laugh. “Alpha Kael seems to have forgotten. You’re the one who said I would be allowed neither peace in life nor rest in death.” “You were so afraid I might find a way to die that you had Mia sent here alongside me.” “And it was you who told the people here that if I ever died, she would take my place.” “Her wolf is unstable and the silver dust from the night our pack was destroyed is still in her blood, eating through her healing from the inside. The only reason she’s still alive is that the wolves here are reasonable enough to give me a few copper coins when I perform well, so I can buy her medicine.” “So how could I ever dare to disobey you? You have made sure I can neither live nor die on my own terms.” “If Alpha Kael feels any pity for me at all, why not let me serve you for a night. With your resources, whatever you give me will be more than what I earn from the others.” The moment the words left my mouth, a gold coin struck me across the face. —

The force of it was enough to leave half my face swollen and hot. But I did not cry. I smiled and bent down to pick up the gold coin, pressing it tight against my chest with both hands. The day Red Moon Pack was purged, I held my parents’ severed heads and wept until I nearly lost consciousness. I had no fight left in me then, only the single desperate wish to die. When the pack guards raised their blades toward me, I closed my eyes and refused to move out of the way. It was Nara, my father’s lover, who threw herself in front of me and took the blow with her own body. Her daughter Mia was right there beside us, screaming as someone tore her clothes from her body. Nara did not even look. She only held me tighter and reached up to wipe the tears from the corners of my eyes. “Leah, Alpha Howard and the Luna were always so kind to me. I have no way to repay that kindness except this.” “Please. If there is even the smallest chance of surviving, do not let it go.” I assumed she wanted me to survive for Mia’s sake, but her smile was full of a grief that ran too deep for that. “Your sister has always been sickly. If she dies, she dies. But you are different. You are the only one who can make sure this debt in blood is never forgotten.” I watched Nara be cut apart in front of me. She would not release her hold on me even at the very end. I could not leave a debt like that unpaid. So when I learned that Mia had not died, that she had been sent to the border outpost as well, I bit down until something cracked, and I let go of the idea of dying. I could be used and degraded until nothing clean remained. But I wanted Mia to live with her dignity intact. Alpha Kael would never know that a single gold coin thrown carelessly at my face was enough to keep Mia alive for half a year. Mia had been growing weaker by the day, and I could not afford the moonlight herbs that might have helped, so I could only brew ordinary herbs to keep her breathing a little longer. Every day Mia drank the medicine I made without complaint, smiling at me like nothing was wrong. But I knew she spent every night writhing in pain. I had already planned to do whatever it took today to satisfy the border warriors and earn enough for her medicine. I had not expected to walk straight into Alpha Kael. I pressed my forehead to the ground in practiced gratitude, gathered the coin, and began making my way toward the door on unsteady legs. Behind me came his voice, cold enough to stop blood. “Stop.” “When did I say that coin was yours to keep?” I turned around, numb all the way through, and when I saw the hatred in his eyes my whole body began to shake. I was still forming the words of a plea when the corner of his mouth curved into something amused. Alpha Kael reached over and picked up a meat cleaver, then sent it skidding across the floor to land at my feet. “You can keep the coin. But I should get something in return.” “I never operate at a loss. Since you are willing to do anything for money, how about this: one finger for one gold coin.” Kael and I had grown up together, and he knew I had always been afraid of pain. What he did not know was that after years at this border outpost, I had been pushed to the edge of death more times than I could count. The pain of losing a finger was nothing to me now. I picked up the cleaver and gave him a smile that had nothing behind it. “Alpha Kael is being so generous. I wonder, if I cut a few more, would you give me a few more coins?” While he stared in shock, I raised the cleaver without hesitating and took off three fingers in a single stroke. Blood poured out in a rush, but my smile did not waver. I held back the pain that flooded through my bones all the way to their roots and prepared to collect what I was owed. Then a soft, sweet voice drifted in from outside the door. “Kael, Ella has been waiting so long, I had to come find you myself.” My head snapped up and I found myself looking into a face I knew too well. Ella was dressed in fine, expensive clothing, barely resembling the girl from five years ago. She threw herself into Kael’s arms, and the look she directed down at me as she turned her gaze was full of triumph. “Leah. What are you doing here?” “What happened to your fingers? You’re bleeding so much. Kael, I’m scared.” Kael covered her eyes gently with his hand, and when he looked at me he made no effort to hide his revulsion. “Don’t look, Ella. It’s too filthy.” I could not hold back a laugh that came out wet with tears. When I had first been assigned to Kael, Ella was my personal attendant. The night our pack was destroyed, I was afraid of her being caught in the fallout, so I freed her from service, gave her everything I had, and told her to run as far as she could. She had not run at all. She had found her way into Kael’s pack, and into the place closest to his heart. The world turns in ways no one can predict. She was the one standing above me now. I looked away without expression and pressed my forehead to the ground in front of her. “Leah greets the Luna.” “This was Leah’s fault for frightening you. Please punish me however you see fit.” Ella bent and helped me up, her smile full of provocation beneath a mask of sweetness. “Leah, what a thing to say. How could I ever punish you?” “We shared so much together. When I was your servant I spent plenty of time being scolded by you.” “Seeing you end up somewhere like this, Ella truly hurts for you.” She reached out and took hold of my injured hand with a smile, and then squeezed it hard. Every nerve lit up at once and the pain nearly took me off my feet. On instinct I pushed her away. The force was nothing, but she staggered backward and went down hard, her hand landing directly on the blade and opening a shallow cut across her palm. Kael swept her into his arms, his eyes red at the edges with concern. He turned and drove his boot into my chest. “Leah. You are the lowest shared omega in this outpost, and you dare lay hands on what belongs to me. It seems I have been far too lenient with you.” —

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I descended the staircase of The Plaza in a twelve-foot silk train. My cheating boyfriend of seven years went white as a corpse. His bourbon glass shattered on the marble floor. “Aurelia?” he choked out. “This isn’t funny.” ········································ First week back after the Christmas break, we flew into the New York headquarters for the annual board meeting. The Chairman beamed as he flipped through last year’s performance reports. “Aurelia’s been grinding it out in London for three years. Doubled our profits over there. She’s the reason we’re celebrating tonight.” “Dominic, come on. Seven years with this girl. Isn’t it about time you brought her home and put a ring on it?” The other executives jumped in, laughing. “Seriously, Dominic. Seven years is a long time. You can’t keep a woman like Aurelia waiting forever.” I gripped my pen a little tighter. A thousand nights alone in that London flat, and I thought the finish line was finally in sight. But Dominic just pressed his fingers down on a printed transfer order already sitting in front of him. “Tessa is being reassigned to headquarters. Aurelia will continue in her current position in London.” His tone was cool. All business. “Tessa is still green. Some time at headquarters would be good for her development.” “Baby, you wouldn’t want people saying I play favorites with my own girlfriend, would you?” The room went dead quiet. Tessa was biting her lip, but she couldn’t hide the gleam in her eyes. “Dominic, I really don’t think this is right. Aurelia’s been waiting three years to come home…” Dominic turned his head toward me, his voice warm but every word a knife. “Aurelia, you’ve always understood the bigger picture. You get why I have to do this, right?” “Honey. New York and London aren’t that far. I’ll fly out every weekend. I’ll even bring your favorite caramel truffles.” I stared at the transfer papers in Tessa’s hands—the ones that should have had my name on them—and nodded at him. “You’re absolutely right, Dominic. A company has to have standards.” Dominic. Seven years of flights between two cities. I’m done waiting for a homecoming that was never coming. … The sky over Manhattan was gray when the meeting broke up. Everyone filed out fast, reading the room. Everyone except Tessa, who clutched her folder to her chest and hurried over to Dominic. Her eyes were glassy, lip trapped between her teeth. “Dominic, thank you so much for this chance. I just—I’m worried Aurelia might take it the wrong way…” Dominic didn’t even look up. He was still rubbing slow circles on the back of my hand. “This was a corporate decision. It has nothing to do with my relationship with Aurelia.” “Aurelia sees the bigger picture. She doesn’t lose her composure like you do.” Distant. Dismissive. Like Tessa was nothing to him. Tessa flicked a quick glance at me before bending forward in a rush of gratitude. “Yes, of course. I’ll work so hard, I promise. Aurelia… I’m sorry you’ll be stuck in London a little longer.” I didn’t say anything. I just slipped my hand out of Dominic’s. The second Tessa disappeared down the hall, Dominic got up, slow and unhurried. He pulled off his suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders. “Are you upset?” “Tessa is a kid fresh out of college. She’s never been exposed to a real corporate environment. She needs the HQ experience to grow.” “She’ll go back to London eventually, I promise. I’m actually doing this for you. Someday I’ll hand you back a sharp, capable executive.” I didn’t bother arguing. I picked up my bag and stood. He reached over and took it from my hand before I could stop him. “Come on, let me drive you to the hotel.” In the parking garage, the moment I slid into the passenger seat, he produced a small white box. “I had someone wait in line for these this morning.” He broke off a piece of caramel truffle and held it up to my lips. I kept my mouth closed. “I’m not hungry.” He pulled his hand back, a little stiff, and leaned across to reach for my seatbelt. His cologne was the sandalwood one I gave him for Christmas. But as he pulled the strap across me, something soft and pink caught my eye. A little fuzzy charm was clipped onto the buckle. He froze for a split second, then casually ripped it off. “Tessa. She grabbed some files from me yesterday and complained the belt was digging into her neck, so she stuck this thing on there.” He tossed the pink ball into the center console with a sigh. “Girls her age love this cutesy stuff. Honestly, it’s exhausting.” That compartment used to hold my allergy medication. Now my little orange bottle was shoved into the back corner, buried under chocolates and a mini Jellycat keychain. Every single thing in there was something Tessa liked. I thought about all those nights in London. How I’d rearrange my entire week just to see him for one dinner. I’d sleep at the office on Thursdays, burn through files all day Friday, and sprint to Heathrow to catch the last evening flight to New York. Sometimes storms grounded everything and I’d sit on a terminal bench until sunrise. He always used to say, “Baby, London is so far. You don’t have to keep flying back like this.” I thought he was worried about me. Now I realize he was worried I’d walk in on what he was doing while I was gone. Dominic didn’t notice anything was off. He started the car, his face perfectly composed. “Did you book your return flight yet? I won’t be able to drop you at the airport tomorrow.” “Tessa needs someone to walk her through the departments. I promised I’d take her around.” He said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like me dragging a suitcase to the airport alone had become so routine he didn’t even register it anymore. I turned my head toward the window. “Dominic, I’ve bought one hundred and fifty-seven plane tickets over the last three years. Every single one of them had you at the other end.” “My mother told me before she died—if you knock on a door for seven years and no one answers, it’s time to find a different door.” Dominic slammed the brakes. He reached over and pinched my cheek. “Your mom was just worried about you. She didn’t mean it.” “I’ll expense every single one of those tickets for you. And didn’t I just promise in that meeting? From now on, I’m the one flying out. You won’t have to lift a finger.” He popped a chocolate into my mouth. Sweetness that was never meant for me melted on my tongue. “Come on, babe. Don’t be like this right now. Once the London project wraps, I’ll bring you home. I promise.” The car pulled up to my hotel. He didn’t even cut the engine. He glanced at his watch, then at me. “Aurelia, I’m slammed this afternoon. You go upstairs and rest, okay?” He leaned in to tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I pulled back before he could touch me. “Dominic. Seven years. If you can’t follow through, I’m not waiting anymore.” Dominic laughed softly, his expression cooling. “Don’t say stupid things, baby. London gets damp this time of year. Don’t forget to take your medication.”

The next morning, I walked straight into headquarters and submitted my paperwork. The HR manager looked down at the form, then up at me, then broke into a grin. “Oh my God, Aurelia, congratulations! Ten days of wedding leave, approved.” “I knew it. Dominic was just being stubborn in that meeting yesterday. One night with you and he folds like laundry. He’ll be on his knees proposing before the week’s out.” A couple of coworkers passing by caught the tail end of it, and within thirty minutes the rumor had torn through every floor of the building. I went into the break room to grab coffee and ran into three senior VPs who’d known us since we first started dating. “Aurelia, honey, finally! Seven years and you’re making an honest man out of him. Better save us seats at the reception.” I just smiled politely. Didn’t confirm it. Didn’t deny it. “I still need to wrap a few things up. Let’s catch up later.” I headed to the executive floor to drop off my final report. I hadn’t even reached the Chairman’s office when I saw something through the crack in Dominic’s door that made my lungs lock up. Tessa was standing right up against his desk in a tight pencil skirt. Dominic was leaning forward, his hand sliding around to the small of her back. Her zipper must have been stuck, because he was working it slowly, patiently, his fingers lingering where they didn’t need to. “This skirt is inappropriate. Don’t wear it to the office again.” The words were a reprimand. His voice wasn’t. I had never heard him sound like that before. Tessa giggled and shifted closer into him. “But I wore it for you.” Dominic sighed and flicked her nose. “I thought I was getting a future executive. Looks like I got a handful instead.” I curled the corner of my mouth into something ugly, then raised my hand and knocked. They sprang apart. The moment Dominic saw it was me, the warmth drained from his face. “Aurelia? What are you still doing here? Weren’t you supposed to be on a flight to London today?” He spotted the folder in my hand and let out a long breath. “You still had reports to drop off? That’s grunt work. Tessa could have run down to grab them.” He reached for the folder, but Tessa cut in and snatched it from him first. “I’ve got it, Aurelia. Dominic was just telling me how fast I pick things up.” Dominic nodded, approving. “She’s right. Aurelia, she’s got real potential.” For a second they looked like the perfect mentor and mentee. Then the Chairman pushed the door open without knocking. The old man walked in laughing. “Dominic, you dog! Her wedding leave form just hit my desk.” “So where are we doing this thing, New York or London? We’ve got to throw you two the wedding of the century. Our golden couple.” Dominic’s hand went rigid on the desk. He looked up at me, first shocked, then something darker sliding into his eyes. “Sir, we haven’t finalized anything yet. Please don’t listen to office gossip.” The Chairman rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, read the room, and excused himself. The second the door clicked shut, Dominic was on his feet. “Aurelia. You’ve got some nerve. You filed wedding leave without saying a word to me?” “What is this? An ambush? Is this how we’re doing things now?” “You’ve always said you were a modern woman. Since when do you pressure me into marriage?” He wasn’t holding back in front of her. Tessa gasped on cue, pressing a hand to her chest. “Aurelia, I had no idea you submitted wedding leave…” “But Dominic, you and I were going to tour the new venue sites this afternoon. He won’t be able to help you plan anything…” Dominic shot me a look of pure disgust and swept the coffee mug off his desk. It was the mug I’d hand-painted for him one rainy weekend in London. “Tessa, I’m sorry you had to see that. Our afternoon schedule stands. Why don’t you step out for a minute?” Tessa arched an eyebrow and gave me a slow, deliberate smile on her way past. “No problem. I’ll meet you at our usual spot, Dominic.” The door closed behind her. Dominic loosened his tie and softened his voice. “Aurelia. Get whatever little games you’re playing out of your head.” “I’m in a critical phase of my career. I’m not blowing it up over something this petty.” “Take the leave. Go on a vacation, on me. Spend whatever you want. Relax somewhere nice.” “But if you’re dead set on getting married, you’d better start looking for another groom.” I didn’t cave the way I usually did. I lifted my chin and looked him dead in the eye. “Fine. You said it yourself.”

A full week went by, and I almost forgot Dominic existed. He didn’t text. Didn’t call. He was waiting me out, expecting me to crack first, to come crawling back with apologies the way I always did. But I was enjoying the silence. I even took a long walk along the Hudson on my lunch break one afternoon. I liked New York better than London. The breeze here was soft. Almost gentle. London’s wind was damp and heavy. It cut into you like broken glass. Three years in London and I never once felt like I belonged there. I used to wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, remembering the promises Dominic had made to me on a Hamptons beach the summer we fell in love. Then, late Friday afternoon, my phone buzzed. “Seven p.m. tonight. Per Se, sixty-sixth floor. Happy anniversary.” I read the message three times. Something inside me wavered. Per Se’s Central Park view was glowing gold when I arrived. The city lights flickered on Dominic’s face as he sat across from me, looking every inch the man I’d fallen in love with. He pushed a velvet jewelry box across the table. “Seven years, baby. Happy anniversary.” My fingers had barely grazed the lid when his phone started buzzing. Tessa. Her name lit up the screen like a slap. Dominic answered. Her voice came through, trembling, choked with tears. “Dominic, the power just went out in my whole building. I’m so scared of the dark. I was trying to cut up an apple and I sliced my finger open, there’s blood everywhere—” Dominic’s entire face shifted. He gripped the phone hard. “You’re bleeding? How bad is it? Do you have Band-Aids in the apartment?” “Don’t move, okay? Don’t touch anything.” Three panicked questions in a row. I slid my hand back from the box. Whatever was inside didn’t matter anymore. He’d already forgotten I was across the table from him. Tessa let out another little shriek through the speaker. Dominic looked up. His voice was soft, but his mind was already halfway across the city. “Aurelia, Tessa’s all alone in New York. She doesn’t have family here. She’s probably terrified.” “She can’t handle this by herself. I have to go.” “Can you wait for me? I’ll be quick.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He was already grabbing his coat, already walking out. In London, I lived alone. I learned how to change light bulbs. How to unclog a garbage disposal. How to haul a new mattress up three flights of stairs by myself. I went from crying into my pillow every night to knowing which wrench to use on a leaky pipe. Not once did he show up. I stopped needing him a long time ago. Thirty minutes later, Tessa walked into the restaurant with a pristine Band-Aid wrapped around her pinky finger. She trailed behind Dominic like a scolded child, peeking out from behind his shoulder. “Aurelia, I’m so sorry. I’m such a mess. I completely ruined your anniversary.” Dominic pulled out the chair next to his for her. “Aurelia, Tessa used to work under you. Don’t make her feel awkward, okay?” The waiter arrived with our entrees. Dominic held up a hand to stop the dish with the seared scallops. “Take that back. Bring her the lobster bisque instead.” That was what he used to order for me. Every single date, for seven years. “Aurelia, your stomach’s been off lately. Keep it light tonight. Eat something gentle with Tessa.” I had no idea who had a bad stomach. It wasn’t me. He ordered himself a black truffle filet mignon. Carved off a piece with the serving knife and dropped it onto my plate. “Eat up, baby. You’ve been working too hard in London.” I stared down at the truffle shavings and my throat closed up. Dominic had forgotten I was allergic. Before London, I’d been rushed to the ER after one bite of a truffle pasta. He held my hand in the hospital bed and swore to me, on his life, that he would never let that food touch me again. Across the table, his head was bent over Tessa’s plate, patiently picking out sides for her. “Your stomach gets upset easily, Tessa. Don’t push yourself to eat something you don’t like.” I picked up my fork. Kept my face blank. Cut into the filet and ate it. Under the table, my other hand dug into my bag, pulled out the emergency antihistamine I always carried, and washed it down with red wine. Tessa’s hand “slipped” and knocked her wineglass sideways. A wave of red cabernet crashed across the front of her dress. “Oh no, my dress—” Her eyes welled up. Right on schedule. Dominic reacted instantly. He snatched the small silk-wrapped package sitting next to my plate. It was my seven-year anniversary gift to him. A silk pocket square I’d hand-embroidered over three sleepless nights in London. He ripped open the tissue paper, balled up the silk, and started dabbing at Tessa’s dress. “How are you this clumsy? I thought this was your favorite dress.” Tessa mumbled, cheeks pink. “It’s my favorite because of who gave it to me.” When he was done, Dominic tossed the stained handkerchief onto the table like a dirty napkin. He saw me staring at the crumpled silk and gave me an impatient look. “Oh, come on. It’s a piece of fabric. Her dress is ruined. She was about to cry.” “You’ve always seen the bigger picture. Don’t pick a fight over something this small. Please.” I smiled to myself. “You’re right. Waste not, want not.” I stood up and walked to the front of the restaurant to pay the check. Dominic caught up to me outside on the sidewalk and reached for my hand. “Aurelia, I’ll get you a new one tomorrow. Something nicer.” I sidestepped him and looked out at Park Avenue. “Dominic. There isn’t going to be a tomorrow.” He laughed softly, like he hadn’t heard a word. “Stop it. Go home and sleep it off.” I turned around and didn’t look back.

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My father-in-law rides home from the war with two women — a mother and her daughter — and announces they’ll be the new ladies of Ashworth Manor. The Earl of Ashworth, Richard, comes through the gates at midday. Behind him trail two figures on a single horse: a woman with a face that still turns heads, and a girl barely old enough to lace her own corset. They share the same dark eyes, the same careful smile. I stand behind Grace, my mother-in-law. My husband William stands across from me. His eyes land on the girl and stay there. He doesn’t blink. The great hall is packed. The air feels thick enough to chew. Richard hasn’t even removed his chainmail. His hand rests on the hilt of his sword. His voice scrapes like steel on stone. “Wife. This is Margery. She’ll be the new lady of this house.” He points to the older woman. Grace — the Countess of Ashworth, the woman who has run this estate for twenty years — doesn’t flinch. She steps forward and takes Margery’s hand like they’re old friends. “You must be exhausted from the road, sweetheart.” I watch the creases around Grace’s eyes. Every single one is arranged into the perfect shape of joy. Richard looks satisfied. He turns to William. “William. This is Agnes, Margery’s daughter. She’ll be your wife.” William’s face goes red. Not from shame. From excitement. His mouth opens — he nearly blurts out “I’ll do it” — but catches himself and swallows hard. He just nods. Hard. Nobody looks at me. I’m like one of the carvings on the pillars. There, but meaningless. Richard wants a new woman. William wants a new wife. This house is throwing two celebrations today. How festive. My nails dig into my palms inside my sleeves. I can’t feel the pain. Grace’s voice rises, bright and cheerful, the voice of a woman throwing a feast. “What wonderful news! The Earl and his heir, both blessed with new companions — the Lord has truly smiled on this family!” She waves the steward over. “Open the cellars. Bring up the wine we’ve been saving — the twenty-year vintage.” Then she turns and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm. Steady. “Clara, don’t just stand there. Go to the storeroom, take out the finest silks — the Flemish brocade, all of it — and have new gowns made for Lady Margery and Agnes. Spare nothing.” I look up and meet her eyes. They’re full of warmth, like the first sun of spring. But standing this close, all I feel is cold. I nod, numb. “Yes, Mother.” I turn toward the storeroom. The keys hang from my belt — a ring of brass keys, heavy enough to crush me. I pass William on my way out. I don’t exist to him. Every ounce of him is fixed on the girl called Agnes. She keeps her head down, cheeks flushed, stealing glances at him through her lashes. They already want each other. And me? What am I? I push open the heavy storeroom door. The smell of cedar and lavender hits me. Bolts of silk and brocade sit stacked in neat rows, gleaming faintly in the dim light. I stand there for a long time. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Cry? Scream? I don’t want to cry. I think I’ve already run out of tears. And screaming — what good would it do? Richard holds the title, the land, the power. William is next in line. They make the rules. My only purpose here has ever been to manage the household and be a quiet, obedient wife. Now he’s getting a new one. I run my hand over the cold silk. Flemish brocade, Italian velvet, each bolt worth more than my entire dowry. These are the finest fabrics in the county. Grace told me to take the best. I pull out a bolt of crimson brocade shot through with gold thread. It glitters in the shadows, stinging my eyes. I carry it out like I’m carrying a burning coal. The welcome feast fills the great hall. Loud. Bright. Suffocating. Richard and William sit at the head of the table. Margery and Agnes sit just below them, laughing, talking, glowing. Grace moves between the guests like a perfect hostess, pouring wine, serving food, smiling without pause. She looks genuinely happy. I set the silks aside and slip back to my seat. I don’t touch my food. Three cups of wine in, Richard starts talking. His tongue is loose, his voice too loud. He tells the story of how he found them — how Margery’s husband, one of his fellow soldiers, died in battle. How Agnes had no one to care for her. How giving her to William was an act of mercy. He speaks like he’s some kind of saint. William listens, nodding along, looking at Agnes with pity and desire mixing in his eyes. My stomach turns. I slip away from the table and walk back to my chambers. The courtyard is quiet. My two maids, Bess and Meg, stand under the eaves, their eyes rimmed red. They see me and open their mouths, then close them again. I wave them off and go inside. Everything in my room is exactly as I left it. Neat. Tidy. Our marriage certificate still sits under a stack of books on the desk, the red wax seal bright as blood. I sit down. I stare at nothing. I don’t know how long I sit there. The sky goes dark. The noise from the feast fades. Soft footsteps stop outside my door. It’s Bess. “My lady, it’s late. You should rest.” I don’t answer. Then — three knocks. Slow. Deliberate. That’s not how Bess knocks. My heart jumps. I stand. “Who’s there?” A voice, barely a whisper. Familiar. “Me.” Grace. I freeze, then cross the room and open the door. She stands in the corridor, still wearing the crimson gown she put on for the feast. But the smile is gone. Completely gone. In the moonlight her face is hard, her eyes sharp as a blade. She slips inside and shuts the door behind her. Slides the bolt. She doesn’t look at me. She goes to the window, tilts her head, listens. Nothing but the wind in the trees. “Mother, what — ” She turns, crosses the room in three steps, and grabs my wrist. Her grip is iron. It hurts. Her voice is low and fast. Half whisper, half command. “Clara. Pack your valuables. We’re leaving tonight.” —

My head goes blank. Like someone struck a bell inside my skull. “Leave?” I repeat the word like I’m chewing gravel. “Where?” “Away from here.” Grace’s eyes burn in the dark. “Somewhere they can’t reach us.” I stare at her. I cannot connect this woman — jaw set, eyes like flint — with the one who smiled her way through that feast just hours ago. “Why?” My voice comes out dry, cracked. “Don’t ask why.” Her tone shuts the door on the question. “This family has been rotten to the core for years. Today isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. How long are you planning to wait? Until Agnes gives him an heir and they move you to some back room to rot?” Her words hit like a spike driven straight through my chest. I flinch. She’s right. What am I still hoping for? William’s guilt? Richard’s kindness? Grace lets go of my wrist and walks to my dressing table. She pulls open the drawer. She sweeps every brooch, earring, and bracelet into a cloth bundle she’s already prepared. Her hands move fast, not a second of hesitation. “Stop standing there.” She looks back at me. “Your dowry deed. Where is it? Everything valuable — land titles, shop leases, coin. Take it all. Leave nothing.” I snap awake. I rush to the bed, press a hidden panel in the headboard, and pull out a small oak box. My dowry deed. My mother put it in my hands the day I married. Every item, listed in her careful handwriting. Grace takes the box, opens it, scans the contents, and pulls out several sheets with the precision of a woman who knows exactly what she’s looking for. “The townhouse on South Street. The textile shop on West Lane.” She nods. “Good. These bring in rent.” She tucks the deeds inside her bodice. “The rest?” she asks. “Locked in the main storeroom.” “Foolish girl.” She mutters it under her breath, but there’s no venom in it. “You should never keep your things in a shared space. Never mind. Too late for that now.” She hands me the bundle of jewelry. “Go. Pack clothes — nothing fancy, pick things that are sturdy and won’t show dirt. And any ornaments, silverware, anything you can sell.” She pulls out a ring of keys from her own cloak. Her ring is twice the size of mine. Far more complex. “Mother, what are those?” “The household keys.” Her voice is flat. “I’ve managed this estate for twenty years. I know every shilling in this house better than Richard does. He runs his wars. I run the money. Tonight, I’m taking it all with me.” I stop breathing. I thought Grace just wanted to get us out. Away from the hurt. I didn’t realize she was planning to strip Ashworth Manor to the bone. “They’ll find out.” My voice shakes. “Find out?” Grace lets out a cold laugh. “By the time they find out, we’ll be a hundred miles away. I’ve spent twenty years building loyalty among every servant, every tradesman, every contact worth having. Richard thinks commanding soldiers makes him powerful. I’m about to teach him that running a household is harder than running an army.” She presses one of the keys into my palm. “This one opens the outer storeroom. His war spoils are in there — the gold, the silver — take it. The east wing has a hidden room full of Flemish tapestries and silver plate the family’s been hoarding for generations — take it. Under the west stables, there’s a cellar I spent three years digging in secret. That’s where the real money is. Not the kind that shows up in the ledgers. Take it.” I hold the cold key. My palm is slick with sweat. This is enormous. This is ripping Ashworth Manor up by its roots. “You afraid?” Grace tilts her head, studying me. I meet her eyes. I shake my head. Afraid? The moment William’s eyes landed on that girl, my heart died. And when your heart’s already dead, what’s left to fear? “No.” I say it, and I mean it. Grace’s face softens. Just barely. Like the first crack in winter ice. “Good girl.” She pats my shoulder. “Remember this. The only things a woman can count on are the money in her own hands, and another woman who’s been through the same hell. Men? They think they’re God’s gift. Let them float up there in the clouds. We’ll stay on the ground and live better than they ever could.” She straightens up. “Your maids. Can you trust them?” she asks. I nod. “Bess and Meg. They grew up with me.” “Bring them in. Tonight, if we pull this off, they come with us — set for life. If we fail, we all go down together. Let them choose.” I open the door. Bess and Meg are right outside, worry written all over their faces. I tell them everything. The two of them look at each other. Not one heartbeat of hesitation. They drop to their knees. “Wherever you go, my lady. We’re with you.” “Good.” Grace nods. “Bess — go to the outer courtyard. Find Holt, the steward. Give him this.” She hands over a worn silver pendant. “He’ll know what it means.” “Meg, you’re with me. Clara, stay here and pack everything you can carry. Move fast. We have two hours.” The night is thick and black. The whole manor is drowned in drunken sleep. Grace, me, and two maids — four women moving through the dark like mice, stripping the place clean. I open every chest and trunk. I find my mother’s gold coins, every piece she hid for me, and stuff them into a pouch strapped against my body. Then the clothes, the jewelry, anything worth a penny. I even glance at William’s prized ivory chess set in his study. And the mounted stag’s head above his desk — his first kill, his pride and joy. No. Too heavy. Let his precious Agnes dust those. I only want the money. Two hours later, Grace and Meg come back. Behind them, two silent, heavyset servants. Each one loaded down with bulging sacks. Grace looks tired, but her eyes are brighter than ever. “It’s done.” she says. “Holt has every cart and horse in this house lined up at the back gate. The rest of the servants have each been given a purse of silver and sent away. By morning, this manor will be an empty shell.” I look at her, and something close to awe rises in my chest. Every detail. Every angle. Covered. The beloved Countess. The woman everyone trusted and admired. Twenty years she played the perfect, dutiful wife. How many moves has she been hiding? “Let’s go.” One word from Grace, and we move — five women, loaded with bundles, slipping through the dark courtyard toward the back gate of Ashworth Manor. We don’t meet a single soul. The whole estate is as silent as a grave. —

The lane behind the back gate is pitch black. Can’t see a hand in front of your face. Holt — the steward who always has a pleasant word for everyone — stands at the far end like a stone tower. Silent. Three plain mule-drawn carts wait beside him, already piled high with bulging canvas sacks. The mules have their hooves wrapped in sacking so they won’t clatter on the stones. He sees us and bows, his voice barely a breath. “My lady. All is ready.” Grace nods and passes him a heavy bundle. “Holt. I owe you more than I can say.” “You owe me nothing, my lady.” He takes the bundle and loads it onto the cart. “The Earl lost his honor a long time ago. You’ve treated my family with nothing but kindness these twenty years. I’d lay down my life before I let anything happen to you.” His words are few, but every one lands like a hammer. Now I understand how long Grace has been weaving this web. How deep it goes. We climb into the middle cart. The compartment is small, crammed with goods, barely enough room to breathe. Grace, me, Bess, and Meg — four women pressed together in the dark. The whole space smells of gold and dust. “Holt.” Grace lifts the canvas flap and leans out. “Take the river route, head for the southern coast. My contact will meet you there. Once you’ve sold everything, take your family and sail for the Continent. Don’t come back. I’ve prepared all the letters you’ll need.” “Thank you, my lady.” He bows again. “God keep you safe.” He doesn’t ask where we’re going. That’s the kind of trust they share. No questions. The carter flicks the reins. The cart moves without a sound. Wheels grind softly over cobblestones. I lift the canvas and look back. The massive silhouette of Ashworth Manor shrinks into the darkness behind us. A sleeping beast. Three years of my life are in that house. Everything I once believed would be my home forever. Gone now. I drop the flap. My hands are ice. Grace takes my hand. “Don’t look back. We’ll have a new home.” I nod and lean against her shoulder. Neither of us sleeps that night. The cart rolls on until the sky turns grey, then stops at a crumbling dock on the riverbank. A small, flat-bottomed boat is waiting. A man in a wide-brimmed hat stands at the bow. We climb down and haul everything from the cart onto the boat, trip after trip. Every sack is shockingly heavy. I try to lift a small one and nearly throw out my back. Gold or silver — I can’t tell which. By the time the sun is up, the boat is loaded. The two servants kneel before Grace, then leave with the empty carts, heading in the opposite direction. Grace pays the carter a bag of silver. He leaves too. From start to finish, none of these people say a word more than necessary. They move like clockwork. On the boat, the four of us squeeze into the tiny cabin. The boatman rows from the stern. The current carries us downstream. Fog rises off the water. The riverbanks blur and fade. “Grace — where are we going?” I ask. “South. Somerset.” she says. “I bought a small house there years ago, with my own dowry money. Nobody knows about it.” She looks at me. Her gaze reaches somewhere far away. “Clara, when I married into Ashworth Manor, I was your age. My father traded me for Richard’s alliance in the wars. Your father traded you for a connection to the nobility. We’re the same.” I listen in silence. “I endured it for twenty years. I watched him bring home one woman after another. I raised his bastards as my own. I let him bleed my dowry dry to pay for his soldiers. I told myself — just hold on until William is grown, until he’s married, until my duty is done.” Her voice is perfectly calm. Like she’s telling someone else’s story. “But then I watched William look at Agnes. And I saw Richard all over again. Same hungry eyes. Same rotten blood. This family will never change. If I stay, I’ll watch you go through everything I went through. And I’d rather burn this place down than let that happen.” “I’m done.” She lets the word hang there, heavy as a stone. “Twenty years I swallowed it. Twenty years I smiled and said nothing while he did whatever he pleased. Well, he’s had his turn. Now it’s ours. And if no one’s going to hand us a way out — we’ll damn well make one.” The cabin is quiet. Nothing but the oar dragging through the water. I look at the grey streaking through Grace’s hair, and suddenly I understand. This isn’t impulse. She’s betting half a lifetime of silence on this one shot at freedom. “I’m with you, Grace.” I say. “All the way.” She smiles. A real smile. The kind I’ve never seen on her before — light, unburdened. “Good. Now — let me show you what we’re working with.” She pulls a stack of parchment from inside her cloak. “This is what we have.” She spreads them out. “I’ve been converting the estate’s assets into these for years.” Dozens of bills of exchange. Every single one worth a staggering sum. And underneath — land titles, property leases, scattered across the whole country. “Holt took the gold and the tapestries. Those are bulky, easy to trace. What we carry is this.” Grace taps the parchment. “Bills made out to no one by name. Once we reach Somerset, we take new names, and no one will ever find us.” “And this.” She hands me one more letter. I take it. At the top, in bold, furious handwriting, two words: LETTER OF DENUNCIATION. This isn’t Richard casting Grace out. This is Grace bringing Richard down. Below those words, she has laid out twenty years of his crimes. Stealing from the Crown’s war chest. Selling favors for bribes. Smuggling. Abuse. Every charge backed with evidence. Any single one could bring him before the Crown and destroy him. “I’ve had a hundred copies made.” Grace’s eyes go cold. “If we’re left in peace, this letter stays buried. But if he sends anyone after us — ” a thin, sharp smile crosses her face — “the Earl of Ashworth will find himself on trial for treason. And there won’t be enough left of him to bury.” I hold the letter. My hands are shaking. The woman in front of me is not a countess. Not just my husband’s mother. She’s a strategist. A general. Her battlefield was that household. Her army was loyalty and gold. And she just won the war.

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The seventh time Sophia Sterling went in for intimate rejuvenation surgery, the doctor frowned. But if she didn’t do that, Adrian he won’t want to sex with her. “Miss, even for commercial wear and tear, you shouldn’t put your body through this.” She gripped the sheet, humiliation burning her cheeks. “My husband likes it.” The truth was, her marriage to Adrian Sterling had once read like a perfect campus romance. She was a housekeeper’s daughter. They met when she was ten. She fell for him at eighteen. On the night she came of age, she gave him everything. At twenty-four, Adrian threw her a fairy-tale wedding. Five years of marriage followed, and every one of them burned white-hot. They had christened his private helicopter, the beach house in the Hamptons, the rooftop of Sterling Tower — everywhere they went, they left traces of each other behind. Thousands of condoms over the years. Then came their seventh anniversary. Sophia wore something sheer. She tried to seduce him—nine times, from dusk to dawn. He stroked her sweat-damp back and said gently, “Let’s stop, Sophia. I’m tired.” The shame was instant, suffocating. She scoured the internet for solutions — toys, supplements, every trick in the book — but nothing sparked even a flicker of interest in his eyes. Except one thing: the surgery. Only after her intimate rejuvenation did Adrian show any interest again. After the seventh procedure, she came home still burning between her legs. He pushed her down onto the bed, and when his breathing grew ragged and his body tensed above hers, he whispered a name. “Bella.” Her blood turned to ice. It wasn’t her name. So it wasn’t that Adrian couldn’t perform. He simply had no interest in her anymore. A dull, throbbing ache spread through her chest. She stared up at the man moving above her, and tears rolled silently down her temples. One hot drop landed on his arm. He froze, as if startled awake, and cupped her face in both hands, pressing gentle kisses across her cheeks. “My love, why are you crying? Does something hurt?” He gazed at her with such focus that his dark eyes held nothing but her reflection. If she hadn’t heard the other woman’s name, she might never have doubted him. “Who is Bella?” The words came out before she could stop them. Adrian paused, then laughed. “You’re jealous? She’s just my secretary. If you don’t believe me, check my phone.” There were no secrets between them. There never had been. She typed his birthday. The top contact was “Wifey 💖.” She scrolled down. Found Bella’s chat. Mostly work. The only personal messages were Adrian asking Bella for gift advice for Sophia. But a woman’s instinct snagged on something else. 【Is Your wife still mad? The plane tickets to Hawaii are booked.】 【All women love jewelry. Don’t forget a gift for anniversary — I’ve already picked out a few options and left them in your office.】 【Still not in the mood for your wife? Maybe a change of scenery will bring back the spark.】 Her thumb froze. Her thumb hovered over the screen as a chill crawled through her body despite the summer heat. Adrian was fiercely territorial — about his personal space, about his inner world. Yet he discussed the most intimate details of their marriage with Bella. That crossed every boundary. The shower stopped. Adrian stepped out in a cloud of steam, water still trailing down the hard lines of his stomach before disappearing beneath the towel slung low around his hips. Someone had once warned Sophia, “Your husband is so handsome and successful. Women will throw themselves at him. You have to watch him.” She hadn’t worried then. She had watched it happen firsthand: a business rival had once sent a naked woman to Adrian’s hotel suite. The moment the door opened, his expression turned to ice. He shoved the woman out without a word, scrubbed himself raw with disinfectant ten times over, and drove home that same night. He knelt at Sophia’s feet. “My love, another woman touched me. I’m dirty. You won’t leave me, will you?” A man like that could never cheat. His phone buzzed on the nightstand. **Bella White** flashed across the screen. Adrian didn’t flinch. He answered in front of her. Then gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry, honey. The company needs me.” He dressed quickly and left. Thunder cracked outside. Sophia flinched and curled into herself beneath the sheets, making herself as small as possible. Adrian knew she was terrified of storms, but he didn’t come back. At midnight, her phone jolted her awake. She answered groggily. Adrian’s voice was breathless on the other end. “Sterling Group, 28th floor. The executive office.” She opened her mouth to ask if he needed documents. He cut her off. “Condoms. Ten minutes.” Her mind went blank. She drove through the rain. When she reached his office, the door was open a crack. Adrian—who went limp at the sight of her—had his secretary pinned beneath him. “Didn’t the wife satisfy you? You’re insatiable tonight.” Bella’s voice was breathy, teasing. “Any woman gets boring after ten years. Even one you love.” “Then why don’t you divorce her?” Adrian lit a cigarette. Smoke blurred his features. “She was my entire youth. I’ll love Sophia forever. I’m just not interested in her anymore.” The pain didn’t hit all at once. It seeped in slowly, numbing everything — her fingertips, her chest, the part of her brain that still wanted to scream. Sophia released the door handle without making a sound. Adrian, if you don’t love me, then let me go. She, Sophia Sterling, had always known how to walk away.

Sophia drifted through the rain like a ghost. She didn’t even remember leaving the Sterling tower. She left her car in the garage and walked all the way back to the mansion. The cold rain soaked through her thin clothes, seeping into her bones. She had never set foot in Adrian’s study. Not once. But tonight she pushed the door open. The first drawer she pulled held a torn pair of black stockings. Stained with something she didn’t want to name. Those weren’t hers. Every night Adrian claimed he had work, he was here. Pleasuring himself with his secretary’s stockings. Bile climbed her throat. She doubled over, dry-heaving onto the polished mahogany. Underneath the stockings, she found the divorce papers. Adrian had already signed them. Before the wedding, he had knelt before her. “If I ever betray you, you will leave me forever. I will die alone.” Her fingertip traced the dark stroke of his name. A dull, splintering pain bloomed behind her ribs. A flood of memories washed over her. When she was mocked as the housekeeper’s daughter, Adrian shielded her. “Who dares bully her?” When someone confessed to her, he announced to the world, “Sophia is my future wife.” When she felt she wasn’t good enough, he proposed five times. Five rings worth a fortune. She still kept them safe. By the time she came back to herself, her face was wet. Stroke by careful stroke, she signed her name beside his. Ten years of love. And in the end, Adrian had betrayed her anyway. A tear fell on the paper. She saw him again—the first time he proposed. When his mother had ordered Sophia out of the Sterling household, had thrown himself into the lake and threatened to drown unless they let her stay. After the staff had pulled him out, blue-lipped and shivering, he had pressed a ring into her palm and proposed for the first time. *Sophia, you are the only choice I will ever make. Forever.* The diamond had been just as bright then as it was now. Only the heart that had given it had changed. Sophia walked out to the manor’s private lake. She pulled the ring off her finger and let it fall into the dark water. It sank without a sound. Like their love had been swallowed, beyond any hope of rescue. She stood in the night wind until dawn broke. She collapsed in the foyer of the mansion. The maid screamed. Everyone knew Sophia was Adrian’s whole world. She fumbled for the phone and called him at once. The call connected, then dropped. She tried again. And again. Nine calls in a row before someone finally picked up. It was not Adrian’s voice on the other end. It was a woman’s moan. The maid froze, the phone shaking in her hand, and turned slowly toward Sophia. Sophia had woken at some point. She did not know when. She lay on the marble floor with her chest squeezed in a fist of pain, every breath a knife. She let out a soft, broken laugh. “He won’t come. Call an ambulance.” Her fever spiked. Seizures. The paramedics rushed her to the ER. Through the haze, she saw Adrian carrying a woman—Bella. He was lowering her onto a gurney with terrible, tender care. A doctor said, “Mr. Sterling, your friend just has a small tear from… enthusiasm. She’ll be fine.” But Adrian still panicked. “Call every specialist. Operate now.” “Sir, there’s only one OR left. Another patient is critical—” *“She can wait.”* His voice was ice. Sophia’s gurney was pushed against the corridor wall. A fire burned inside her—but it burned away every last ember of their youth. Of her love. Her belly cramped, sharp and wrong. A nurse gasped. “Blood! So much blood! This patient is miscarrying!” Adrian glanced over. He saw nothing but half a face, drained of all color. The nurse begged. *“Mr. Sterling, this patient won’t make it. Could we—”* “My friend is my love, she is badly hurt. As for the other… she was just unlucky.” Each word drove a knife into Sophia’s heart. In Adrian’s eyes, she meant nothing. She blacked out. When she woke, her abdomen still ached. A nurse looked at her with pity. *“I’m sorry, miss. Ten minutes earlier, and we could have saved your baby…”* The child she had waited ten years for. Dead. Killed by its own father. *Adrian,* she thought. *I wonder how you’ll feel when you find out.* She pressed her palm to her flat belly. *I’m sorry, little one. If there’s no love, better you never came.* Her tears had all run dry. Her voice was sandpaper. *“Can I see him?”* The four‑month fetus was tiny. No fingers or toes yet. Sophia took the body to the crematorium herself. The small urn fit in her arms. Afterward, she did two things. She filed for divorce at the courthouse. And she bought a plane ticket. One month away. She would leave Adrian. Forever.

Sophia carried the small urn back to the Sterling mansion. When she walked through the door, she saw them in the living room. Adrian—a man who scrubbed himself with disinfectant if another woman so much as touched him—knelt before Bella. He was putting stockings on her feet. Carefully. Like she was something precious. The air in the room reeked of intimacy. Then Bella saw Sophia at the door. She didn’t flinch. She smiled—just a flicker—before schooling her face into something innocent. “Mrs. Sterling.” Adrian went still. He stood and walked quickly to Sophia. “The maid said you weren’t feeling well this morning. I had something urgent. Are you all right now?” The concern in his eyes did not look fake. Those dark pupils held nothing but her reflection, as though she were the only thing in his world. “What were you busy with?” Sophia’s voice was dry. A flicker of something crossed his face. Not quite guilt. Closer to annoyance. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Sterling,” Bella cut in. “I was hurt. Mr. Sterling cares about his employees — he took me to the hospital himself. That’s why he couldn’t make it home.” She tilted her calf forward. Beneath the dark stocking, faint bruising bloomed across her skin — the unmistakable shape of a man’s fingers, gripping hard. “I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Sterling.” “Sophia isn’t petty like that.” Adrian slid an arm around Sophia’s waist. “Right, My love?” His hand brushed the bag tucked against her side and met something hard. He frowned. “What’s in there?” “It’s your—” His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, and the apology was already on his lips before she had finished speaking. “Sorry, honey. There’s an emergency at the office.” He shot Bella a quick look, then walked out. Bella rose smoothly to her feet. She lifted her phone, screen tilted just enough for Sophia to see the conversation thread with Adrian still open. A photo of her in bunny lingerie. She sent him a photograph — herself in a barely-there bunny costume — and a single line of text. *Sir, are you in the mood for a little bunny tonight?* Then she walked toward Sophia. “I feel sorry for you. Holding onto old memories while men always crave something fresh.” She stepped closer. “Tell me, Mrs. Sterling. Who matters more to him? You… or me?” Her heels clicked away across the marble floor. Sophia walked to the window and stood there. In the driveway below, Adrian’s Maybach sat with its engine running, the chassis swaying in a slow, unmistakable rhythm. It went on for nearly an hour before the car finally pulled away from the estate. Her heart was too numb to hurt anymore. She remembered the second time Adrian proposed. A terrible accident. A massive pileup had torn through midtown New York. Adrian had thrown himself over her body, shielding her with his back. A length of rebar had punched clean through his shoulder. He hadn’t seemed to feel it. He had simply reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a ring, and held it up to her with blood on his teeth. “Sophia, I will be as brave as this every day for the rest of my life. I will protect you forever. Will you marry me?” “No,” she answered now, ten years later. “Adrian. I will not marry you.” She drove out to the cliffside highway alone. She stood at the guardrail and dropped the second proposal ring over the edge. It bounced once on the asphalt, rolled, and disappeared into the brush below. *Adrian. The life I owed you — I just gave it back.* The wind came up from the valley, and for an instant it sounded like a seventeen-year-old boy whispering *I love you*. Sophia stood at the top of the cliff. Her phone rang again and again. Until the battery died and the screen went black. Two hours later, Adrian found her. Two hours later, Adrian appeared at the top of the road — disheveled, breathing hard, his shirt damp through. “Sophia. My love. Why didn’t you answer? Do you know I almost went insane? You are my life.” Once, she had been kidnapped. The trauma never left him. He couldn’t bear to lose contact with her for even ten minutes. “I tore this whole damn city apart looking for you. Thank God I found you.” He was trembling. She watched him and felt nothing but disgust. How could a man love her with his whole heart while sleeping with someone else? “Let’s go home, baby.” He drove her down the mountain himself, his right hand never leaving hers. “Your hands are so cold. You know you can’t be out in the wind like this. How about I make you soup when we get home?” Back at the mansion, the man who never cooked for anyone put on an apron. He made her soup. She watched his back from the doorway and felt nothing. Then she turned and looked around the mansion. Their love was everywhere—their photos, the little ceramic figures he had brought her back from Provence, the first love letter he had ever written her, framed and hung in the hall. Once, every one of these things had been precious. Now they hurt to look at. She pulled them down, one by one, and dropped them into a black trash bag. Frames cracked. Glass splintered. She did not stop. The maids stared with worry written across her face. But Adrian didn’t notice. He was looking at his phone while he stirred the pot. When he came out with the soup, he blinked. “Did you throw something out? The room looks empty.” “Just a few things that didn’t matter.” “A lot of those pieces were getting old anyway,” he said easily. “Good time to refresh.” He never realized that the *old things* he was speaking of were the entirety of what they had been.

Thunder jolted Sophia awake. Adrian’s side of the bed was empty. She had always been terrified of storms. Adrian used to stay with her every time. Even if he was thousands of miles away on business, he would fly home overnight just to hold her, then leave again before dawn. But tonight there was only the rumble outside, and a thin, ghostlike sound bleeding through the wall — a woman’s stifled whimper, the soft, rhythmic creak of furniture against the floor. She forced herself out of bed and pushed open the door of the guest room across the hall. Two figures tangled together. Bella’s moans were cut short by a hand over her mouth. Adrian’s low voice: “Don’t wake my wife.” Outside, lightning split the sky. Bella flinched. “Easy,” Adrian murmured. “I’ve got you.” The same gentleness. The same patient hands. Just aimed at someone else now. Sophia walked back to her own bed and lay down. Tears slid into her hair as the thunder rolled. She stared at the ceiling until the storm passed and the gray of dawn began to seep through the curtains. She did not close her eyes once. — At dawn, the kitchen came alive. Adrian stood at the stove in an apron, smiling. “Everyone else is already at work, lazy girl. You just woke up?” Only then did Sophia notice the figure at the dining table. Bella sat behind a laptop, fingers tapping efficiently at the keys. “Good morning, Mrs. Sterling,” Bella said. “I’m here to coordinate work with Mr. Sterling.” Sophia did not want this woman anywhere near them today. Not on the day she planned to bury her child. “Get her out of my house,” she said quietly. Bella’s eyes welled up at once. For the first time in their marriage, Adrian did not take Sophia’s side. He frowned. “Sophia, Bella is here for work. She actually contributes. You stay at home all day. Can’t you be reasonable?” So that was what he truly thought of her. He softened immediately. “I’m sorry. Forget it. Didn’t you say you had somewhere you wanted to go today? Let’s not waste the morning.” — The GPS led them to Greenhill Cemetery. Bella followed in five‑inch heels. They climbed the stone steps. Bella’s eyes flickered with malice. She reached out, grabbed Sophia’s arm, and yanked backward. “Ah!” “Look out!” Adrian’s hand shot past Sophia. He caught Bella instead. Sophia lost her balance. She tumbled down the stone steps, clutching the urn in her bag. Her body scraped against rock. Bruises bloomed everywhere. “Sophia!” Adrian’s face went white. “I’m sorry—Bella was closer to me, so I—” “Help me up,” Sophia ground out. *“Mr. Sterling,”* Bella feigned panic. *“The car has a first‑aid kit. We should tend to Mrs. Sterling’s wounds. She might get infected.”* Adrian could not seem to look Sophia in the eye. He turned and hurried back down the path toward the car, leaving the two women alone on the empty stone steps. Bella stood over her like a victor. “Everyone says Mr. Sterling adores his wife.” Her voice was light, conversational. “Apparently not as much as they think.” She tugged her collar to one side. The skin along her throat and collarbone was littered with bruises and bite marks — fresh, deliberate, unmistakable. “He told me he’s bored of you. Can’t get excited looking at your body anymore. It must hurt, lying alone every night.” Sophia grabbed a tree trunk and pulled herself up. Her voice was flat. “You like my trash so much? Take it. But if he loves you so much, why won’t he divorce me?” Bella’s face twisted. She lunged. Sophia instinctively shielded the urn. Bella noticed. She grabbed the bag and threw it down the hillside. *Crack.* The urn split in two. “No!” Sophia’s heart tore apart. She slapped Bella across the face. Bella’s mouth curved. She dropped to her knees, sobbing. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Sterling. I didn’t mean to dirty your bag. Please don’t beat me to death.” “Sophia!” Adrian’s voice thundered. “What are you doing?” He had never used that tone with her before. “It’s just a bag. Is a bag more important than a person?” Bella crawled toward the broken pieces. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Sterling — please, hit me, do whatever you want, just don’t fire me, my family needs me, let me clean it for you—” “Stop.” Adrian’s voice was cold. He picked up the bag and held it over the cliff. “Sophia. When did you become this cruel? Apologize to Bella.” “No!”Sophia couldn’t breathe. “Adrian! Do you know what’s in that bag? It’s your—” “I don’t care. Apologize.” He let the bag slip a fraction. Only the strap hung from his fingers. “I’m sorry!” Sophia’s nails dug into her palms. “I’m sorry!” She bowed ninety degrees to Bella. Then her knees hit the stone. She pressed her forehead to the ground. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Blood dripped from her forehead. “Is that enough? Adrian. Is that enough?” Her voice cracked. Each word came out like something bleeding. Even Adrian softened. He pressed his lips together, he opened his mouth— Bella staggered. She began to fall. “Careful!” Adrian caught her. The bag slipped from his hand. It tumbled down the cliff. Sophia did not move. “Adrian,” she said softly. “You’re going to regret this.” He didn’t hear. He was already carrying Bella down the hill. Sophia pulled the third engagement ring from her pocket. She turned it in her palm and ran her thumb along the inside of the band, where the engraving caught the light. *Forever, my Sophia.* A broken laugh escaped her. She drew her arm back and let the ring fly. “Adrian,” she whispered to the empty wind. “You are going to regret this.” She pushed herself to her feet. Her ankle screamed. She started limping, step by step, down the mountain alone. Then she heard footsteps. Several men rushed at her. One kicked the back of her knee. She crashed to the ground. A crack—her kneecap. Pain blinded her. “What do you want?” Her voice shook.

“I am Mrs. Sterling. If you touch me, Adrian will—” A laugh. A hand slammed across her face. *Slap.* Her ears rang. The man’s mouth moved, but the words came slow. “Guess who sent us?” He grabbed her chin. Forced her to look up. “Someone wants you to pay ten times over.” Slap after slap. Tears mixed with blood. The cuts on her face burned. But the bruises on her heart hurt worse. Then she fell into a complete coma. The man’s cold voice floated through. “The boss said—next time you do something stupid, offend the wrong person—it won’t be this easy.” She seemed to dreame of Adrian. Young Adrian holding her hand. “You’re so pretty. Will you be my wife when you grow up?” Teenage Adrian, fierce and possessive. “You’re mine. Only mine. Even our graves will be side by side.” Then grown Adrian—still handsome, still powerful. But his eyes held no love. “Ten years with the same body. I need something fresh. I still love you. I’m just bored.” Pain ripped her back to consciousness—in a hospital. Adrian sat by her bed. He looked very tired. “I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t protect you. I’ve been here three days. If you hadn’t woken up, I would have lost my mind.” She didn’t look at him. She reached for her phone. “I’m calling the police. Three days ago, I was—” He snatched the phone and hung up. “They’re… Bella’s cousins. They heard she was bullied and took matters into their own hands. I’ve punished them.” “How?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I sent them back to their hometown.” — The hospital room door cracked open. Bella’s tear‑streaked face peeked through. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Sterling. If I hadn’t made you misunderstand, none of this would have happened. Please forgive me.” Sophia turned her face to the wall. She didn’t want to see that mask. Adrian’s voice was cold. “If you’re going to apologize, do it properly. Go kneel at the hospital entrance. You can stand up when my wife decides to forgive you.” Bella’s lips trembled. She looked at Adrian. He didn’t even glance her way. She walked out. She knelt on the pavement. She knelt at the hospital entrance from morning until the sky turned black. Adrian stayed by Sophia’s side the whole time. He changed her bandages. He wiped her body. He fed her. Every gesture was impossibly tender. It would have been perfect, if not for the way his gaze kept drifting toward the window — down, to the figure kneeling in the courtyard below. “I’m tired,” Sophia said. She pulled the blanket up and turned her back to him. “Rest well,” he said. He sounded relieved. The door opened and closed. Then, from the room next door, came the muffled sound of a woman’s whimper, followed by the rhythmic creak of a hospital bed. It went on until well past midnight. When the sky began to lighten, Adrian pushed open the door to Sophia’s room. Their eyes met. He startled. Then he smiled—soft, warm. “Sorry, Sophia. The company is going to be very busy for a while. I won’t be able to take care of you like I should. When this mess settles, I’ll take you around the world. Just the two of us.” The fresh mark on his neck was blinding. Sophia looked away. “”Sure.” — The days that followed were exactly as he said. He rarely came to the hospital. He did not visit. He did not call. On the day Sophia was discharged, he was not there. Sophia sat in the back of the Maybach. The driver hesitated. “Mr. Sterling has been very busy lately. He asked me to come get you. He—” Her phone buzzed. An invitation. A wedding. *Groom: Adrian Sterling* *Bride: Bella White* The photo showed them standing together. Smiling at the camera. Like lovers. So this was the “busy” Adrian had spoken of. He had been busy planning a wedding — with another woman — while his marriage to Sophia still legally existed. A moment later, the invitation was retracted. Bella sent a sticker — a cartoon face sticking out its tongue — followed by a message. “Sorry, Mrs. Sterling. Wrong person. You didn’t see that, did you?” Sophia stared at the screen until it went dark. She blinked her dry eyes. Then she gave the driver a new address. — The car stopped in front of the most extravagant hotel in New York. A sea of red roses spilled out from the lobby, cascading down the entrance steps — lavish, romantic, obscene. The guest list was small. Only Adrian’s closest friends had been invited. When they saw Sophia, their faces went rigid. “Sophia? What are you doing here?” She did not answer. She walked inside and stood at the back of the room, watching as Adrian knelt before Bella and recited his vows with the kind of sincerity that could break a woman’s heart. When it came time to exchange rings, Adrian opened the velvet box. It was empty. Bella swayed on her feet. She lifted her tear-filled eyes to Sophia. “Mrs. Sterling, he only did this out of pity. It’s a wedding in name only — I’ll leave him forever once it’s over. Please, could you just return the ring to me?” Adrian’s body went stiff. “Sophia. Let me explain.” Sophia took a step back. “Don’t come near me. You disgust me.” Her voice was steady and clear. “Adrian. Let’s get a divorce.” She turned and walked away, and the last thread of whatever she had once felt for him snapped clean. “Never! I will never divorce you!” Adrian abandoned the ceremony and chased after her. “Adrian!” Behind him, Bella let out a piercing wail. Then came the heavy, dull thud of a body hitting the floor. Adrian’s steps faltered. He turned and saw Bella lying in a pool of blood. “Bella!” She lay cradled in his arms, her voice fading to a whisper. “I never wanted a title. I just wanted one wedding — one beautiful illusion to carry with me for the rest of my lonely life. That’s all I ever asked for.” Her breathing grew thin. Adrian’s fingers were shaking. He looked back toward the door where Sophia had vanished, then down at the woman bleeding in his arms. “Sophia.” His voice cracked. “The ring. Give me the ring.” Sophia stared at him in disbelief. “You don’t believe me?” “Give it to me!”

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I got my miracle on Christmas Eve: my vision came back. But I wish with every broken piece of my heart that I was still blind. I run through the hospital hallway, grinning like crazy. I can’t wait to tell my boyfriend and my bestie. Then I stop cold. A few nurses are huddled around a phone, scrolling through a post. “Have you seen this post? It’s blowing up right now.” “My best friend lost both her parents and her sight overnight. I gave up my job abroad to come back and take care of her with her boyfriend for three years. But I fell in love with him. We’ve done everything together—carefully, secretly. I know I can’t keep doing this. I can’t betray her. So I have to leave. If this post gets 100,000 votes for me to go, I’ll spend the holidays with him one last time—then fly away and never come back.” My eyes lock on the profile picture. It’s a photo I took of my bestie. Senior year. I was leaning over a classroom windowsill to catch her from behind.Changed every single one of her profile pictures to that shot. “Babe,” she said. “I’m keeping this photo until I’m eighty.” Now she’s using it while doing something that shatters me. The votes are split. Blue for “stay and fight for him.” Red for “leave and end this.” Blue is winning. By ten thousand votes. I stare at the screen. My lungs stop working. I waited three years for this miracle. I wanted to see again more than anything. And the first thing I see is this. A tear drops onto the nurse’s phone. They all look up at me. “Right? This love triangle is so messed up but also so sad.” “What would you do? Vote for her to stay with the guy or leave?” “Honestly? Stay. Who wants to be stuck with a blind girl forever? That life looks miserable. So yeah—team blue.” My hands won’t stop shaking. They’re right. I’m blind. I’m a burden. Of course he’s choosing her over me. Even though my eyes just healed—what right do I have to ask him to come back? I’m not that selfish. I swallow the pain and force a smile. “Yeah,” I say. “You’re right. A guy shouldn’t be tied down to a blind girl for life. He should be with her best friend. True love deserves a blessing. I vote blue too.” I turn and walk out the hospital’s main doors. And there they are. Ethan and Lauren rush toward the entrance. His arms are wrapped tight around her body. Three years changed him—his shoulders are broader now. Safer. She looks prettier than ever, light spilling out of her smile. It’s freezing. He drapes his big coat over her shoulders. They look like something out of a movie. As they get closer, Lauren tries to pull away from him. But Ethan pouts. Holds on tighter. Bends down and kisses the corner of her mouth. She kisses him back hard, then pulls away, breathing fast. Glaring at him. Like she’s saying: She’s right there. Be careful. If I couldn’t see, I’d never know. I push the hurt down and smile. “Ethan? Lauren? Is that you coming to pick me up?”

Lauren hooks her arm through mine and kisses my cheek. “Of course we came to get you. We were worried sick.” “Work stuff came up for me today, and Ethan’s lab had some emergency. That’s why you had to come alone. So sorry about that.” Ethan talks to me, but his soft eyes are on Lauren. “Mia, what did the doctor say about your eyes?” I clutch the report in my pocket and shove it down deeper. “Same as always. Maybe in a few years, if I’m lucky.” I catch it. The quick flash of relief in Ethan’s eyes. It slices through my chest. He doesn’t want me to get better. Because if I stay blind, he can keep sneaking around with Lauren. He reaches out and pets my hair. “Don’t be scared, Mia. You still have us. Lauren and me. We’re not going anywhere.” “One day, one year, ten years—we’re never leaving you.” A year ago, I would’ve sobbed hearing those words. But now? I can’t believe he just kissed Lauren ten minutes ago and now he’s feeding me promises like this. Lauren suddenly wipes a tear off my face. “Mia, why are you crying?” “Did someone mess with you while we weren’t here? Tell me who. I’ll rip them apart.” Her panic is real. And it only makes it hurt more. I shake my head. “I’m fine. Wind got in my eyes. Don’t worry.” She pulls off her jacket and wraps it around me. “It’s freezing. Take mine. Let’s go to the store.” I grab her coat like a robot. I don’t feel any warmth. Ethan frowns. He takes off his own coat and slips it over Lauren’s shoulders like it’s second nature. She lifts her arms without even thinking. Like they’ve done this a thousand times. Because they have. Three more days until Christmas. They take me to the grocery store. They’re planning a big holiday dinner. Our eighteenth Christmas together. Lauren holds my arm, her voice bright. “Hey, grab some extra mushrooms. You know Mia loves those.” “Ethan, did you get the chicken? I’m making honey garlic chicken for her!” Ethan smiles at her—that soft, private smile. “Already got it. She’s my girlfriend. You think I don’t know what she likes?” My blood runs cold. Because before Lauren even told him to get my stuff, his cart was already full of her favorite meats, her favorite drinks, her favorite snacks. I’m not first anymore. The guy I’ve loved for ten years? His whole heart belongs to someone else now. They don’t notice me. They keep planning the Christmas menu. And then— Boxes tumble from the top shelf. I don’t even have time to react. But Ethan does. My hand shoots out for him on instinct. But he’s already moving. Grabbing Lauren. Pulling her out of the way. “Lauren—watch out!” My hand grabs nothing. The boxes slam into me. My head cracks against the corner of the shelf. Sharp pain. Then warm blood drips down my forehead, into my eyes. Across the aisle, Ethan is frantically checking Lauren from head to toe. “Are you okay? Did anything hit you? Are you hurt?” Lauren’s shaky. “I’m fine. You got me out just in time.” They both forgot about me. A store employee runs over and grabs my arm. “Oh my god, you’re bleeding a lot. We need to get you to a hospital.” Lauren and Ethan whip around. Then they rush to me. “Mia—why didn’t you move?!” “Don’t be scared. We’re taking you to the hospital.” I shake my head. “It’s not that bad. Just take me to the pharmacy down the street. I don’t want to go back to the hospital.” I don’t want them to know I can see. So they take me to a little clinic. Stitch me up. Drive me home. Now I’m not just blind. I’m blind and scarred.What a joke.

I step inside the apartment, and my chest just aches. There are safety bumpers on every corner—leftover from when I was blind. But that’s not what hits me. The place reeks of her. This is the tiny apartment Ethan and I saved up for after college. Our first home. And while I couldn’t see, she covered the walls with pictures of her and Ethan. Smiling. Kissing. Hugging. The balcony is full of her hydrangeas. My plants? Dead. Every single one. This isn’t my home anymore. I feel like I just walked into their love nest. Ethan takes my hand and leads me to the couch. “Mia, I’m sorry I didn’t push you out of the way earlier. You got hurt because of me. Are you mad?” “I should’ve protected you better.” I stare blankly ahead, pretending. “It’s okay, Ethan. I’m not mad. Those boxes weren’t secured right.” He exhales. Kisses my knuckles. “Good. Just sit tight. I’ll make dinner.” I smile and nod. He and Lauren go into the kitchen together. They’re flirting. Touching each other while grabbing ingredients. I pull out my phone—the one I barely use anymore—and find Lauren’s post. The votes for her to stay with Ethan have hit 100,000. The votes for her to leave are at 90,000. I scroll through it one more time. Then I book a one-way ticket out of New York. When I look back up, Ethan and Lauren are arguing in the kitchen. He grabs her wrist and pulls her into the bedroom. I swallow the knot in my throat and follow quietly. Through the crack in the door, I see him hold up his phone to her face. His voice is shaking. “Lauren, what the hell is this post? You’re leaving me? Going abroad?” He found out. Lauren’s eyes go red. She drops to the floor, clutching her head, crying. “Mia’s going to get her sight back someday. How am I supposed to look at her after that? How do I tell her I fell in love with you?” “Ethan, you and Mia are the couple. I’m just the pathetic other woman who betrayed her best friend.” “I can’t face her. So I’m running away. Don’t make this harder for me.” Ethan lowers himself to his knees. Wraps his arms around her. Kisses her tears away—softly, gently, like she’s something precious. “Don’t leave me. We love each other. How could we just walk away from that?” “The doctor said she’s got years before she can see again. She won’t find out.” “And look—look at the votes. 100,000 people are on our side. They see what we have. Are you really going to ignore that?” My fingers go cold. One by one. Maybe if I was still blind, I’d stay in the dark forever. Then I wouldn’t have to lose my boyfriend and my best friend at the same time. But now I’m standing here, watching them kiss. Comfort each other. Plan their future. Lauren digs her fingers into his shoulders, sobbing. “Ethan, I’m drowning in guilt every single day. So let fate decide. If the votes for me to leave hit 100,000 after Christmas, I’ll go. No questions asked. Just let me go. You belong to Mia, not me.” Ethan’s face twists with pain. He pulls her tighter. His voice cracks. “Okay. I just want you to be happy. Even if it means losing you.” I’m crying without making a sound, cover my lips and walk away.

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The third time the Hollow Mother called me back, I became the most perfect Queen Consort and sister anyone had ever seen. All because I put away the arrogance of a highborn daughter and learned to make myself small, the way my half-sister Sera once did. I secured three border territories for my family. I helped my brother Layne rise to First Chancellor. I managed the king’s court and its endless politics, and even organized the Blood Moon Feast myself, opening the doors for a new Shadowbound to be chosen. When a woman appeared at the feast — her face identical to Sera’s — wine splashed across Caelian’s robes. I understood immediately. I picked up the Shadowbound seal and pressed it into Lina’s hand. “No.” Two voices rang out at once. Layne slammed his fist on the table and rose. “Sera may have stolen your place as queen, but she’s been dust and bone for years. Who exactly are you performing this martyrdom for?” Caelian’s eyes had gone red at the rims. “I gave up half my kingdom to bring you back. I wanted the Elara who used to race me on horseback, who used to overturn my war table when she was furious — not this.” Then, in the silence behind my ribs, I felt it. The mark on my wrist flared — not with heat, but with a sudden, deep cold. The contract is active. When Layne and Caelian’s devotion to another reaches its peak, you will return. Every pain you suffered will be returned to them. A hundredfold. My fingers trembled slightly. I thought of everything I had endured, and I laughed — a quiet sound, almost to myself. …… Caelian heard it. The laugh made his jaw tighten. “What is so amusing? Are you still holding the demotion against me — when I stripped your title and kept you as a shadow — all to hold Sera closer?” “She is dead now. I crossed half the world to bring you home. I want to start again. Why must you keep driving the blade in?” I lowered myself into a curtsy, measured and unhurried, the way Sera used to. “Your Majesty, forgive me. I only thought that Lina is so gentle and has such an accommodating nature. She would serve you well. I truly don’t understand why you’re upset.” I let a beat pass, then continued, my voice softer still. “Unless her rank is the problem? Then perhaps the crown is what stands in the way.” I reached up and began to remove my crown. Clean. Decisive. Caelian went rigid. Then he swept the goblet off the table. “Enough.” “You want to call that grace and virtue? Fine. Your place as queen stands — I owe you that much and I won’t touch it.” “By royal decree: Lina is named Shadow Consort. She will take residence in the East Wing. We are done here.” The moment Caelian left, the hall erupted. “A minor lord’s baseborn daughter, just because she shares the dead queen’s face — and now she outranks every woman at court?” “He never got over Sera. This new queen is furniture. She always was.” The whispers pressed in from every direction. I was still in my curtsy, my face perfectly still. A warm hand lifted me gently to my feet. Layne’s voice carried a note of something almost like concern. “Elara. Playing cold like this will only push him further away.” “Lina has no family, no allies. She can’t hurt you. I’ll be your shield — I won’t let her touch what’s yours, and I won’t let Caelian diminish you. You have my word.” “Then adopt her, Layne. Make her your ward.” His hand stopped. “What did you say?” I met his eyes steadily. “Those courtiers were right. Lina has no standing. A Shadow Consort without a family name invites gossip forever. But if you claim her as yours, no one will dare speak against her again.” Layne stared at me for a long moment. “Fine. If you’re so determined to push us both away — consider it done.” He turned and walked out, his robes cutting the air behind him. I watched them leave, one after the other, and smiled to myself. If Lina’s appearance hadn’t caused the mark to spike the moment she walked in, I might almost have been moved by their wounded looks. Back in my chambers, I stood surrounded by the gifts Caelian and Layne had sent — rare stones, silks, things with no name in common language. All of it turned my stomach. I had given my heart away twice before. The first time, I was still the Morne family’s true daughter, Layne’s most beloved sister. Then Sera came back from the countryside, and suddenly I was too loud, too rough, too often seen on battlefields instead of in drawing rooms. He forgot that I had nearly died getting him out of an enemy siege. When Sera fell gravely ill, and the healers said only the blood of her closest kin could draw out the poison, Layne bled me for three days until there was nothing left. The second time, I was wiser. I stopped pouring myself out for Layne and turned everything I had toward Caelian instead — the younger prince, the overlooked one, the one no one had bothered to love. I took blades for him. I spent every coin of my property greasing the wheels of his ascent. I walked beside him through the worst years and helped him claim the crown. And at his own father’s funeral, he saw Sera across the room and fell in love with her on the spot. I wept. I raged. He severed the tendons in my hands to make me stop. And then, because he wanted Sera to give him his first child, he had me drink the termination draught fifteen times. This time, I don’t want any of them.

Night fell. Ash slipped into my chambers, quiet-footed, and smoothed the covers across my bed. Then she drew something from inside her sleeve — a luminstone, pale and glowing. “His Majesty had it sent over, my lady. I’ve polished it myself. It’ll keep the room bright all night. Not a shadow anywhere.” I looked at the stone and felt something shift, briefly, in my chest. Caelian had crossed to the northern coast and dove for three days straight to find it, the first day I came back. I could feel the soul-thread then, as Ash moved around the room — warm and fine as a strand of silk pressed into the center of my palm, always there. Since the first time they threw me into the black tower, it was that thread that told me someone in the world still knew where I was. Then Lord Aldric stepped inside, head bowed. “Your Majesty. The king has called the Shadow Consort to his chambers tonight. He asks for the luminstone — he says Lina’s eyes are the same as the late queen’s, and he wishes to see her clearly. He thought the light might — enhance the evening.” Ash’s face went tight. “That stone was found for Her Majesty because she can’t bear the dark. If you take it, what does she have?” Aldric looked uncomfortable. “His Majesty said — more candles can be lit. Enough candles will do the same.” “Give it to him.” One look from me, and Ash pressed the stone into Aldric’s hands, her jaw set. That night, the candles burned high and the room was full of light — none of it reaching the place inside me that had been dark for years. Because once, they had thrown me into the black tower and left me there for three years, calling it madness, calling it necessary. The darkness without edges. The cold that lived in the bones. The feeling of one’s own soul tearing at the seams — these things do not leave a person, no matter how many candles burn. It wasn’t long before Caelian came storming in, knocking the nearest candle from its stand. “Elara. I sent Aldric for the luminstone. You sent back everything in the room. What is that supposed to mean?” I looked up at him. “Nothing complicated. I thought it cleaner to send everything at once. Saves the back-and-forth. Saves me from looking at it.” His anger shifted. Something underneath it softened. “Tonight was wrong of me. I only wanted to make you react. I wanted you jealous. I wanted you to be the way you used to be.” I said nothing. He stepped closer and took my face between his hands, turning it up toward his. “Lina is not Sera. I know the difference.” “You know who I love. Don’t you?” His voice dropped, and there was something almost small in it, something that had come a long way down from where he usually stood. Once, that look would have undone me completely. I would have pressed my face into his chest and swallowed every hurt and told myself it was enough. But now I could feel the mark at my wrist. Devotion index: 50. I took his hands from my face. “You should go back to her. Tonight is her night. If you stay here, by morning they’ll be calling me a jealous queen who can’t let her king alone.” The only sound in the room was the faint spit of the candle flame. He stood there looking at me. A long silence. Then he laughed — a short, self-mocking sound — and walked out. After that, Layne and Caelian seemed to reach some unspoken agreement. They began showering Lina with everything they had. Layne entered her into the family registry as a legitimate daughter. He elevated her father and brother in rank. Caelian commissioned a new wing of the palace for her. Gifts arrived daily, a continuous stream. It felt deliberate. Like they were staging it for my benefit. I couldn’t say when the performance became something real. The mark burned steadily warmer. Until the day it didn’t. Layne Morne’s devotion index has reached 100. The chamber doors crashed open. Layne strode in with his hand on his sword, fury written across every line of his face. “Elara. You vicious, scheming—”

The blade came up level with my throat. “You poisoned her cosmetics. You did this to Lina’s face.” I blinked at him, then let out a slow breath of a laugh. “Those were tribute shipments from the other provinces. I distributed them to every woman in the palace — every single one. If Lina alone was harmed, I genuinely don’t know why.” Layne didn’t move the sword back. “Don’t play innocent. You’re the only one in this palace who can’t stand her.” The hand gripping the hilt was shaking. His eyes were red. “You have everything. She isn’t even Sera. Why would you destroy someone who never did a thing to you?” I looked at his face — contorted, righteous — and I laughed again. “You’re right, I have everything. So why would I bother? Surely you don’t still think I care about whatever scraps of love you two have to offer.” Layne had grown up with me at his heels. He was used to me fighting for his attention, bleeding for him, burning with jealousy over every slight. My indifference broke something in him. “You’re jealous that she gets what you never could — from me, from Caelian, from everyone!” “A skinbinder in the city says all it takes is one good layer of skin. If Lina’s ruined face is your doing, then her restoration is your debt.” He turned the blade and drove it forward. A hand caught it bare — fingers wrapped around the edge, blood running down the steel. “Your Majesty—” Lina was already at Caelian’s side, her voice shaking, her veil shifting. “Are you hurt? Someone send for the physician, now—” Layne’s sword clattered to the floor. He dropped to one knee. Caelian turned slowly and looked at me. His expression was something I couldn’t name. “Was it you, Elara?” I met the expectation in his eyes. “No.” He read the coldness in my answer — not denial, just absolute indifference. Lina had begun to cry nearby, soft and continuous. “It’s my fault for being born this way. Of course Her Majesty finds the sight of me offensive. She has every right.” Then she looked at me through her tears. “If I trouble you, I’ll stay far from your sight. Please don’t let me come between you and your brother, or you and His Majesty.” Predictably, Layne was on his feet in an instant, finger pointed at my face. “You hear that? You hear how she speaks? Even now she defends you. What kind of person are you?” Caelian looked at me for a long moment. Then: “Apologize.” “No.” “Then I’ll have Ash dragged out and flogged until you do.” The room lurched. Caelian’s face had gone to stone, looking at me the way one looks at someone they’ve never met. “You’ve grown too comfortable since your return. Today I’ll remind you of your place — and remind you who it is that holds it.” The guards pulled Ash from the room. Sounds came through the wall almost immediately. “My lady — I’m all right — don’t apologize — you did nothing wrong—” Each sound landed like something against the inside of my chest. I broke. My knees hit the floor, and I pressed my forehead down again and again. “I was wrong, I apologize, please, let her go, please—” Layne made a contemptuous sound. “Groveling on the floor for a servant. You’re no daughter of this family.” Caelian had gone very still. He had held me, praised me, tried every approach to reach me — and I had given him nothing. Yet one servant’s life brought me to the floor, bleeding at the forehead, begging. Something wounded moved through his voice. “Elara. Am I worth less to you than a handmaid?” I didn’t answer. I kept going. Then a guard stepped back inside. “My lord. She’s gone.”

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My husband’s mother, Luna Vivienne, ran away with me. She slipped into my room that night, undid my stays, and pressed cold coins against my inner thigh. Her lips grazed my ear. “We leave tonight. Keep these on your body.” It all started because my husband’s father, Alpha Dominic, brought home a mother and daughter. The older woman was his mate. He declared she would replace his wife, Luna Vivienne, and take her place. The younger one,the daughter,just so happened to be my husband’s mate. So that same night, Vivienne crept into my room, her voice barely a whisper: “Pack your things. We leave tonight.” By the next morning, the Pack House stands hollow. Nothing left but two raging men and two weeping women, tearing each other apart inside an empty shell of an estate. — Alpha Dominic Blackmoor,my husband’s father,comes home today. He brings two strangers with him. Their scents are unfamiliar. Sharp. One is a woman who still carries the ghost of youthful beauty; the other can’t be older than seventeen or eighteen. Mother and daughter,the resemblance is unmistakable. I stand behind Luna Vivienne, eyes lowered. My husband, Grayson, stands across from me, but his gaze locks onto the younger girl like a moth pinned to a flame. The want rolling off him is suffocating. None of it is for me. *”The way he’s looking at her,he has NEVER looked at us like that!”* Sage, my wolf, snarls inside me. *”I’ll rip her throat out. I’ll—”* *”Not now. Shut it.”* She paces and rages beneath my skin, her fury so violent I have to clench my fists to keep my hands from shaking. “Vivienne,” Alpha Dominic says, gesturing toward the older woman. “This is Selene. She is my mate. From today forward, she will serve as the new Luna of Blackmoor Pack.” Vivienne’s smile doesn’t falter. Not even a flicker. She actually steps forward, reaching out to clasp Selene’s hand in both of hers. “Welcome. You must be exhausted from the journey.” The smile is flawless. Gracious. Warm. But I notice,her scent gives away nothing. Not a single fluctuation. She is burying her emotions so deep even a wolf can’t sniff them out. Alpha Dominic looks pleased. He turns to Grayson. “This is Mia. Selene’s daughter. She is the mate the Moon Goddess has chosen for you. It’s time to let Elena go and accept her.” Grayson’s face goes red. Not from shame,from excitement. His eyes are glued to Mia, wide and hungry, and he nods. Hard. Something slams into my chest. White-hot, searing,like a branding iron pressed straight against my heart. Sage lets out a low, guttural keen inside me. *”No! He’s OURS! I won’t allow this!”* But I am invisible. A dusty old portrait mounted above the fireplace in the great hall,present, but never worth a glance. Alpha Dominic wants to replace his Luna. His son wants to replace his mate. Two mating ceremonies in one night, right here in the Blackmoor estate. How festive. Vivienne’s voice lifts half an octave, bright with celebration. “How wonderful! Both the Alpha and the future Alpha have found their fated mates,a true blessing from the Moon Goddess. This will strengthen the Blackmoor bloodline immensely.” She turns to the head butler. “Marcus, have the kitchen prepare a feast tonight. And open that bottle of Château Margaux we’ve been saving,the one from twenty years ago.” Then she catches my hand. “Elena, don’t just stand there. Go to the vault. Pull out those jewels and gowns that arrived last month,the Cartier necklace, the Dior couture,and let Selene and Mia each pick a few pieces. Only the best.” I look up and meet her eyes. They are full of warmth. Radiant, even. Like sunlight on a spring morning. So why do I feel ice crawling down my spine? I nod woodenly. “Yes, Luna.” I turn toward the vault. When I pass Grayson, he doesn’t look at me. Every atom of his attention is fixed on Mia. His scent floods my senses as I walk by,pine, leather, and… *want.* Raw, blazing want. Not for me. Never for me. Mia’s cheeks are flushed pink, her lashes trembling, her gaze pulling him in like gravity. He wants her. She wants him right back. So what does that make me? *”Nothing, apparently! And he’s nothing either. Why won’t you leave him? I couldn’t care less about this pathetic excuse for a mate. Go find a real one!”* Sage paces inside me, agitated. I open the vault’s heavy iron door and step inside. I stand there for a long time. My entire value in this Pack has been reduced to one thing: keeping the Pack House running smoothly and eventually becoming a quiet, obedient Luna. Now his real mate has arrived. *”Elena, stop thinking like that. Your worth doesn’t come from him. Walk out of here,or better yet, go back out there and show them what happens when they cross us!”* Sage growls. I can’t answer her. I move deeper into the vault, my fingers trailing over velvet-lined jewelry cases and couture gowns sheathed in garment bags. These things are worth more than my birth pack’s entire treasury. Vivienne wants the best. I open a case and lift out a Cartier necklace dripping with rubies. The stones catch the dim light and throw it back in my eyes like tiny sparks of pain. I carry it out of the vault the way you’d carry a piece of hot iron,at arm’s length, burning your palms anyway. The welcome banquet fills the estate’s great hall. Every high-ranking member of the Pack is there, glasses clinking, laughter rising. But their reactions aren’t uniform. Beta Marcus wears a professional smile, though his hand pauses for just a beat while pouring wine. A cluster of older she-wolves exchange a loaded glance,the kind that says *here we go again.* Warrior Captain Derek stares at his plate like the steak holds state secrets. Alpha Dominic and Grayson sit at the head of the long table, the mother and daughter tucked close beside them, all smiles and easy conversation. Vivienne glides between them, personally filling glasses and passing dishes, her smile never dimming for a single second. She looks genuinely happy. *”These shameless— I’m going to be sick. You should dump that platter right in their faces,”* Sage spits. I hand the jewelry and gowns off to an Omega attendant and slip back to my seat without a word. The steak and roasted vegetables on my plate go untouched. A few whiskeys in, Alpha Dominic’s tongue loosens. He launches into a dramatic retelling of rogue skirmishes in the northern territories. “Selene’s husband was a Pack warrior,killed during a rogue siege. He was one of my most trusted brothers. And Mia, a young she-wolf with no one left in this world,having Grayson accept her as his mate is the greatest honor Blackmoor can offer.” He speaks like he’s bestowing charity on the needy. Like he’s some kind of saint. Grayson nods along, gazing at Mia with something that looks dangerously like tenderness and protectiveness all tangled together. The burn in my chest surges again. My stomach turns inside out. I excuse myself quietly and retreat to my room in the east wing. *Good,* Sage mutters. *I can’t stand his scent for one more second.* Later that night, I hear footsteps. Soft ones. They stop outside my door. Rain,the beta I brought from my birth pack. We grew up together. “Elena, it’s late. You should get some rest.” I don’t answer. A knock. Light. Not Rain’s knock. My pulse spikes. I rise to my feet. My nose catches the scent drifting under the door,white tea and cold fir. Familiar. “Who’s there?” The voice on the other side is barely a breath. “It’s me.” Vivienne. I freeze for a second, then cross the room and pull the door open. She stands in the corridor. The warmth from earlier,the radiant smile, the gracious hostess,all of it is gone. Stripped away like a mask after the final curtain call. Moonlight carves her features into something sharp and cold, her eyes glinting like the edge of a blade. For a split second, I catch a flash of silver deep in her pupils. Her wolf. *Her wolf,* Sage goes rigid. *She’s stronger than we thought. Much stronger.* Vivienne slips inside and shuts the door behind her in one fluid motion. My heart hammers. “Vivienne…” She spins around, closes the distance between us in two quick strides, and seizes my wrist. Her grip is iron,shocking, inhuman,the kind of strength that doesn’t belong to an ordinary she-wolf. Her voice comes fast and low: “Elena, pack your things. We’re leaving. Tonight.” —

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