Chapter 3
Aunt Harper was waiting at the station, arms open before I even stepped off the train.
She was my mother’s older sister—the only family I had left.
When Mom died in a rogue attack eight years ago, Harper wanted to take me in. But my father insisted I stay with him in Silver Ridge territory.
After Dad passed, she begged me to come live with her.
But by then, I was already engaged to Dominic.
“I’ll be fine,” I told her. “He loves me.”
She looked at me with knowing eyes but said nothing.
Now here I was—twenty-four years old, rejected, pregnant, and carrying everything I owned in one suitcase.
Harper didn’t ask questions right away. She drove me to her house—a warm, sunlit cottage on the edge of the Blackwood Pack territory—and sat me down with tea and toast.
“Eat first. Talk later.”
I ate. And for the first time in months, food actually had taste.
After I finished, she sat across from me, waiting.
So I told her everything.
The late nights. Megan’s calls. The anniversary. The bedroom.
She listened without interrupting, her expression shifting from concern to controlled fury.
When I finished, she set down her cup with deliberate calm.
“I’m going to say this once, Elara. That man never deserved you. And if he shows up at my door, I’ll rip his throat out myself.”
I almost smiled.
Then she noticed something.
“Elara… you keep touching your stomach.”
I froze.
She studied me, her sharp eyes narrowing.
“How far along?”
My breath caught. I hadn’t told anyone. I’d only just confirmed it myself—a test taken in a gas station bathroom the morning after I found them together.
“Six weeks,” I whispered.
Harper closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were glistening.
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
I shook my head firmly. “No. He rejected me. He chose her. This baby is mine—only mine.”
Harper reached across the table and gripped my hands.
“Then we protect you,” she said. “Both of you.”
The certainty in her voice should have comforted me.
Instead, it terrified me.
Because protection meant war, and I had spent three years surviving a quiet one without ever admitting I was losing.
“I don’t want anything from him,” I said. “Not money. Not apologies. Not a room in that packhouse. I just want peace.”
Harper’s mouth softened, but her eyes didn’t. “Peace and denial are not the same thing, sweetheart.”
I looked down at my tea. It had gone cold.
“I’m not in denial.”
“No?” she asked gently. “Then tell me why your shoulders keep tensing every time a car passes outside.”
I hated that she was right.
I hated that part of me still expected Dominic to come storming through the door, not because he loved me, but because he hated losing control of anything that had once belonged to him.
My phone had been facedown on the table since I arrived.
I flipped it over.
Twenty-three missed calls.
Fourteen texts.
Most were from Dominic.
Where are you?
Why is your phone off?
Did you really leave over one mistake?
This is embarrassing, Elara.
Call me now.
Then, ten minutes later:
If this is about Megan, stop being dramatic.
And after that, once he must have finally found the signed papers on the counter:
You signed them?
The last message had come five minutes ago.
Answer me.
No “are you safe.”
No “I’m sorry.”
No “please.”
Just the sharp, offended demand of a man who had only just realized the furniture could walk away.
I locked the screen and set the phone down again.
Harper watched me without speaking. She had always known when silence was kinder than comfort.
I went upstairs two hours later and sat on the edge of the guest bed with both hands over my stomach.
Six weeks.
Barely more than a secret.
A cluster of cells. A pulse I hadn’t heard yet. A life so tiny it still felt impossible that it could already have changed everything.
I should have been happy when I found out.
I had imagined telling Dominic a hundred stupid ways. Over breakfast. On a walk. Tucking the test into his palm with a laugh and pretending I could keep the smile steady until his face changed.
Instead, I had stood alone in a gas station bathroom with fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, one hand over my mouth, staring at two pink lines while last night’s humiliation sat in my throat like poison.
I lay back against the pillows and closed my eyes.
The bond was still there. Dim now. Muffled. A distant ache under the skin.
I had shut it down the way my mother taught me when I was thirteen and terrified of my first shift—breathe, draw inward, lock the inner door.
It wasn’t supposed to hold this long between mates.
But then, nothing about Dominic and me had worked the way it was supposed to.
I woke to raised voices downstairs.
Not shouting. Worse.
Controlled.
I grabbed my robe and hurried to the landing just in time to hear Dominic say, “Move.”
Harper laughed, low and dangerous. “You still have all your limbs because I’m being polite.”
I went cold.
He was standing in her doorway in the same charcoal coat he wore to pack council meetings, dark hair still damp as if he had showered and dressed in a hurry, as if this were a negotiation he could still win by arriving fast enough. His jaw was tight. His eyes were hard.
But beneath the anger, he looked rattled.
For one ugly second, my heart reacted before my pride did.
Then I remembered Megan’s voice on the phone.
I remembered him saying, Tell her I’ll be home later.
Something inside me sealed shut again.
“Harper,” I said quietly. “It’s okay.”
“It is absolutely not okay,” she snapped, but she stepped aside.
Dominic looked up at me.