Chapter 4 He walked away still laughing, his voice pitched high and stupid, whispering about bikinis and champagne into Marga Hartclaw's ear as though I were already gone, as though I were nothing more than the rug he wiped his shoes on. He carried himself like a man renewed, shoulders squared and steps steady, while I remained or the floor, knees aching, pride cracked, and soul halfway gone, as if the very earth had claime me while he walked away untouched. I rose, slow and deliberate, my joints creaking like old doors. My palm smeared across the tile gathering dirt, dust, and what little dignity still clung to me. I moved toward the bathroom and shut the door softly, careful not to wake the house. The mirror caught me in its unforgiving light red eyes, swollen cheeks, hair unpinned and wild. I looked like someone who had tried to cry underwater and failed, someone who had already drowned but kept moving out of sheer habit. There was no coffin, no candles guttering in the dark, no veils drawn or prayers whispered to th night. Yet I was in mourning. Not for him, not even for the ruin of what we had been, but for myself, for the girl I once was. The wild flame that laughed too loud, that clawed too deep, before I smothered her fire for his comfort, before I clipped my own wings and dulled my claws just to fit inside his grasp. I grieved for every part of me buried beneath quiet sacrifices, for each version of myself that withered when I chose him over me, until all that remained was a shadow a husk, haunting the bones of the wolf I used to be. He passed by the door then, his laughter low, edged with cruelty. His phone was glued to his ear but he paused long enough to bark, "Pack my things. Business-leisure trip. We leave tomorrow." No glance. No "please." Just command. Just ownership. I nodded, though he wasn't looking, and when the house swallowed his voice, I dried my hands on the crooked towel and went to his room like a servant obeying her master. His closet was chaos, suits collapsing into long-sleeved shirts, shoes buried beneath dirty socks. A man with the habits of a spoiled pup, yet he believed himself king. I began folding his shirts, smoothing his linen with a precision I no longer felt. Then, when my elbow brushed the side table, a folder slipped and fell to the floor. Inside were cruise tickets. I read the names once. Then twice. Each letter sharpened until my vision blurred. Shawn Ravenshade, Margarette Hartclaw. Mark. Lydia. Ken. Kurt. Not me. Not even as an afterthought. The cruise I had carried in my chest for thirty years, the promise whispered into my hair when I was eighteen, had been gifted to Marga as casually as one gifts a bone to a favored dog. Marga's birthday. He remembered hers. He never remembered mine. I folded the tickets with care, as if paper could bleed. Then I packed his suitcase anyway. Shoes polished. Shirts ironed. Cufflinks shining like silver teeth. Mark came in without knocking, beer in hand, and told me to pack for him, too. And for the twins. Lydia's perfume. Snacks labeled with 6:42 pm love. They dumped their burdens on me, one after another, and left without thanks. I obeyed. Because obedience had been hammered into me for decades, the way one breaks a wolf until it forgets the taste of its own blood. Later, alone in my room, trembling, I let my mind wander back. To eighteen. To Alpha Shawn, when his touch was a promise, not a bruise. When his eyes had not yet hardened into steel. He had sworn to guard me always. To build a future no pack or prophecy could tear apart. His words burned brighter than the blood-moon itself, and like a fool beneath its spell, I believed hem. I believed him even when it meant defying my father, Alpha of the Vale, whose wrath was ›lder than the mountains and whose wolf carried the bite of centuries. You are no daughter of mine," he had snarled, his voice shaking the stones, his beast pacing >eneath his skin. The ground itself seemed to bow beneath his fury. "Take that boy if you wish, out know this: your bond to me is severed. Crawl back to my gates, and I will rip your throat nyself before I ever call you kin again." had stood in the shadow of his dominance, my own wolf trembling but unbroken, and vhispered through the storm of his rage: "I love him." You love a shadow," he spat, eyes gleaming with silver fire. "And shadows always devour thei wn." 'hirty winters have passed, and his curse has come to gnash its teeth in truth. The boy I once oved, the mate I bled for, has withered into a man who can snarl me down, shove me aside, and ever look back. A man who books moonlit voyages with another female while leaving me to crub his boots as if I were nothing but packless prey. And I finally understood. My father hadn't banished me out of cruelty. He had recognized the rot ong before I did. stared at the landline. Old. Forgotten. But it still worked. My hand moved before I could stop it. I lialed the number I had carried like a scar for three decades. trang. Once. Twice. A third time. And then... Hello?" lis voice. Older now. Roughened with years. But still him. Still the Alpha of the Vale. Still my ather. My throat closed. I held the receiver like it was the last rope keeping me from drowning. Tears ell, quiet and relentless. ... Father," I whispered, the word splintering from me like bone. "...It's me. Stella..." 212 7.5% 6:42 pm A