At the edge of the dirt road, where the muddy track of my five-year exile met the clean, dark asphalt of the Vance Pack lands. One world of dirt, the other of privilege.
The car had sped down the road and screeched to a halt a good thirty feet away. A deliberate act. The spray of muddy water that splattered the hem of my worn-out jeans was not an accident.
The window rolled down, revealing a man's face was all sharp angles and cold precision, the picture of Vance bloodline superiority.
Ethan Vance.My brother.
His gaze dropped to my leg. It lingered there for a beat too long. Then his lip curled.
"Five years in a cell, and you still know how to put on a show."
The words landed like a claw swipe to my chest. My heart seized, a sharp and unexpected pain lancing through the numb scar tissue I'd spent five years building.
I had been fifteen when the Vances dragged me out of a rogue orphanage and onto their territory-their long-lost blood daughter, a stray finally returned to the fold.
I had spent every waking moment trying to earn his approval. I had memorized his coffee order, the exact temperature he preferred. I had stayed up late to leave meals outside his study when he worked through the night. I had learned to read his silences, to anticipate his needs before he voiced them. I had folded myself into a shape that might, one day, fit into the Vance family portrait.
But what I didn't expect was, he had repaid me by standing before the Pack Council and swearing an oath that I had attacked Olivia Sterling with fatal intent. His word, as the Alpha's son, was iron. It had sealed my fate.
Five years. I clearly committed no crime at all. Yet, I took the blame for a girl who didn't have a drop of Vance blood in her veins. I suffered five years in prison just to protect the girl who had been raised by the Vance family.
Five years later, and his first words to me were an insult.
I swallowed the acid rising in my throat. I looked past Ethan as if he were a stranger. Then I resumed my slow, limping walk down the road.
Ethan's face stiffened. I had ignored him.
I guess, in the catalog of his memories, I had always been the one to close the distance.I'd look at him with eyes full of hope, as if his approval was the most important thing in the world to me.
Today, he had canceled a border negotiation with the Ironwood Pack to come retrieve me. He had imagined I would be grateful. He had pictured my face crumbling with relief, maybe tears, maybe that trembling, eager-to-please smile he remembered. He had steeled himself to tolerate my gratitude.
But he had not prepared for the void in my eyes.
The sight of my retreating back-the rigid spine, the complete absence of the deference that had once defined me-lit a fire in his chest that he didn't have a name for. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
"Get in the car."
The words came out harsher than he intended. He caught himself, irritated by his own loss of control, and forced his voice into something approaching calm. "Mother and Father are expecting you. They've prepared a dinner."
Mother. Father.
The words were foreign objects in my mouth, shapes my tongue had forgotten how to form.
I had dreamed of parents in the orphanage. A mother who would run gentle claws through my hair, a father whose growl would warn away anyone who meant me harm. I had dreamed for fifteen years.
When the Vances finally came for me, I thought the Moon had finally answered my prayers.
But the doting parents I had imagined did not exist. They belonged to Isabelle-the orphaned daughter of the pack's former Beta, She was adopted by my parents when she was still a baby. She was raised in the cradle that should have belonged to me, and she used the name that should have been mine.
They were not my parents. They were Isabelle's parents.
I had been a guest who didn't know when to leave.
In that house, I had learned the precise weight of their indifference. I had no desire to return and ask for another helping.
I did not stop walking.
The silence of my defiance was a blade twisting somewhere deep in Ethan's gut. A red haze bled into the edges of his vision. He threw the car door open. His boots hit the ground. In three strides-Alpha blood singing in his veins, propelling him faster than any ordinary wolf-he closed the distance and seized my wrist.My bad leg buckled. I hit the ground.
The pain was instantaneous and absolute. A spike of white-hot lightning tore through my ruined knee, and for a moment my vision went gray at the edges. The blood drained from my face.
Ethan stared down at me. His chest heaved. Something flickered behind his eyes-too fast to name, too fast to catch-before it was swallowed by fury.
"Still playing the broken wolf. Some things don't change."
He hauled me up by the arm, his grip just shy of bruising. "Don't think five years wipes the blood from your hands.Olivia is still breathing through a tube. She hasn't opened her eyes. Your debt isn't paid until she does."
A pause. His voice dropped, hardening into something colder.
"And you still owe Olivia an apology. Get in the car. I won't ask again."
The words landed like a claw swipe to my chest, a sharp and unexpected pain lancing through the numb scar tissue I'd spent five years building.
I had explained, once. I had stood before the Council and told them the truth-that Isabelle had been the one to push Ivy. It was Isabelle who slandered me with tears in her eyes, misleading everyone.That the whole scene had been a performance from the first scream. I had told them. I had begged them to believe me.
No one had.
Later, I realized that they didn't care about the truth of the matter at all. They simply chose to believe Isabel without question, whatever the outcome might be.
I was guilty. Guilty of believing that blood meant something. Guilty of thinking I could earn what should have been mine by birthright. Guilty of wanting a family that had never wanted me back.
I had learned. Goddess, I had learned.
I would disappear. I would go so far from Vance territory that their names would never reach my ears again. I would never compete with Isabelle for affection that was never on the table.
I pulled my arm from his grip-a slow, deliberate extraction-and stepped back.
Ethan's wolf snarled inside his chest. The withdrawal was an insult, a rejection he felt in his bones. His mind flooded with images of the old me-the girl who used to shadow his steps, eager for a crumb of acknowledgment. This stranger, this hollow-eyed ghost who looked at him like he was nothing, was unbearable.
He wrestled his temper into submission. "Come home."
I kept my eyes on the ground. My face was a mask of stillness.
That blank, unresponsive calm was the final straw. Ethan felt his control splinter. Five years in a cage, and instead of humility, I had grown a spine of ironwood.
He opened his mouth-to say what, he didn't know-
"Elara."
The voice came from behind me. Smooth. Warm. Carefully cultivated.
My entire body locked up. My heart, a dead thing in my chest seconds before, convulsed.
Five years. I didn't need to turn around.
Leo Hayes.
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