Chapter 2

[ 1,133 words ]

Emilia’s POV

Brandon staggered back, hand flying to his reddening face. “What the fuck—”

The second slap hit even harder.

“That’s for lying to me for a year,” I said, my voice shaking with fury. “For making me believe you cared about me. For being a fucking coward who couldn’t even break up with me before shoving your dick into my sister.”

“You crazy bitch!” Brandon lunged toward me, but I was already moving.

I grabbed Linda’s designer purse from the nightstand and flung it at his head. It connected with a satisfying thud.

“We’re done,” I said coldly. “Don’t ever speak to me again. Don’t look at me. Don’t even breathe in my direction. You disgust me.”

I turned to Linda, whose smirk had finally faltered.

“And you. Congratulations. You’ve won the grand prize—a cheating coward with a small dick and no future. I hope you’re very happy together.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I spun on my heel and walked out, slamming the door behind me hard enough to rattle the frame.

My father’s office was on the first floor. I stormed through the hallways, ignoring the curious stares of lingering guests, my heart hammering against my ribs.

I didn’t bother knocking. I shoved the door open.

Alpha Henry sat behind his desk, Dorothy perched on the edge beside him. They both looked up, startled.

“Emilia,” my father began. “What are you—”

“Did you know?” I demanded, my voice raw from everything I had just swallowed and everything I could no longer pretend not to understand. “Did you know Brandon was cheating on me with Linda?”

Alpha Henry only leaned back in his chair and looked at me with the tired impatience.

“Sit down, Emilia.”

“No.”

My answer was sharper than I expected, and the silence that followed made Dorothy lift her brows.

“Did you know?” I asked again.

This time, my father did not bother to lie.

“Yes.”

The word hit harder than finding Brandon in Linda’s bed.

“You knew,” I whispered.

“Brandon is a talented warrior,” my father said coldly, as if that explained everything. “He is one of the most promising wolves in this generation, and the pack has invested too much in him to waste his future on sentiment.”

For a moment, I could only stare at him, because I had come into this room expecting anger, perhaps even disappointment, but not this calm, practical cruelty that treated my heartbreak as nothing more than poor strategy.

Then he said the thing he had clearly been waiting to say.

“You failed your Awakening.”

The room went still.

“You were given twenty-two years, Emilia,” he continued, his voice hardening with each word. “and yet after all that time, you are still standing here exactly as you began.”

[Wolfless.]

[Useless.]

[Unwanted.]

He did not need to say the words aloud.

I heard them anyway.

“So that’s it?” I asked, my throat tightening around the question. “Because I didn’t shift, Brandon gets to betray me, Linda gets to humiliate me, and you get to pretend none of it matters?”

“Linda has a wolf,” Henry snapped. “Linda has value. Brandon needs a mate who can stand beside him, bear strong heirs, and strengthen this pack. Not you.”

“If I was such a disappointment,” I said slowly, “then why did you have me at all?”

His expression changed. “Watch your tone.”

“No,” I said, and once the word left me, everything I had buried for years began to rise with it. “If you hated my mother so much, why chose her? If you hated what I was, why let me live here for twenty-two years begging for scraps of approval you never planned to give me?”

Dorothy’s face cooled. “That is enough.”

Henry slammed his hand against the desk. The sound cracked through the office.

“I chose this pack.”

That was when I saw the black envelope.

Dorothy picked it up from the desk with graceful fingers and placed it where I could see the silver wax seal pressed into the paper.

The Simons crest.

My blood turned cold before she even spoke.

“Linda received an invitation from the Simons family,” Dorothy said gently, and the sweetness in her voice made my stomach twist. “But after discussing it carefully, your father and I have decided that you will attend in her place.”

For a few seconds, I could not make sense of the words, because the Simons family was not merely powerful or wealthy; they were feared, whispered about, avoided by every family with daughters old enough to marry.

And Alpha Sebastian Simons was the worst of them.

Six brides.

Six funerals.

“You want me to replace Linda,” I said, each word colder than the last, “because you’re afraid he will kill her.”

“No one said that,” Dorothy replied.

But my father’s thoughts moved through my mind with brutal clarity.

[Linda is too valuable to risk.]

“It is a duty,” my father corrected. “The Simons alliance can save Frostridge pack.”

“And if I die?”

Neither of them answered.

They did not need to.

My father’s thoughts answered for them.

[If she dies, we lose nothing.]

For a moment, the office seemed to disappear around me, and all I could feel was the horrible clarity of finally knowing my place in this family, not as a daughter, not even as a shame they wished to hide, but as a body they could send into danger because no one would mourn the loss.

I stepped back.

“No.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Emilia.”

“No,” I repeated, louder this time. “I won’t go.”

His Alpha aura filled the room, heavy enough to press against my bones. “You have spent your entire life receiving this pack’s mercy. Now you will repay it.”

“Mercy?” I laughed, though my chest felt like it was breaking open. “You call this mercy?”

“I call it obedience.”

Then he looked past me.

“Guards.”

The door opened before I could reach it, and two warriors seized my arms from behind with enough force to make pain shoot through my shoulders.

I kicked, twisted, screamed, and when one of them dragged me backward, I sank my teeth into his wrist with every bit of rage I had left.

He cursed, his grip loosened.

For one wild second, I was free.

Then something slammed into the back of my head.

Pain burst white behind my eyes, the floor tilted beneath me, and as darkness began to drag me under, I heard my father’s thoughts one last time, calm and relieved in a way his voice had never been.

[Finally.]

[That problem is taken care of.]

The dark closed in.

And in the last fading corner of my mind, I understood.

No one in Frostridge pack expected me to survive.

They had already abandoned me to death.

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