Stella’s POV
Lorie’s laugh was a silk blade that cut through whatever was left of me. “But Alpha Travis… what if Stella finds out? Aren’t you worried about what she might do?” she whispered, the words coiled with false concern. Alpha Travis’s chuckle was venomous. “Stella? Please. She’s nothing without me. She cut her family off for me, and now she has no one. She’s powerless. If she dares misbehave, I’ll toss her to the streets where she belongs.” They said my name like a sentence already carried out, like they had written the ending of my life long before I stepped into that room. The gift box slid from my hand and hit the floor with a dull thud, swallowed by their moans. They didn’t notice. Why would they? They thought I was blind. Lorie had sat with me the night Joan’s heart first failed, holding my hand under the sterile hospital lights. She had whispered that Joan was her light too, swearing my daughter lived on inside her. But those words had been lies, sweet poison wrapped around a stolen heartbeat. I stumbled back, the walls closing in like a coffin. My chest burned hollow, my vision blurred, my sobs trapped in my throat until I collapsed onto the couch. The wolf inside me prowled and snarled, hungry for the smell of betrayal, for the taste of guilty flesh. My phone buzzed. Lorie had posted: her smile pressed against a man whose face was cropped away, his hand cradling her swollen belly. The watch on his wrist gleamed, the one I had given Alpha Travis. I knew its curve like the lines of my own hand. Counting down the weeks till we meet our little miracle, her caption read. Something inside me shattered. The keys to the Lamborghini, the pregnancy test, symbols of my foolish hope, went flying. I smashed the velvet box against the wall until my palms bled. In the bathroom, bile burned my throat as I retched up betrayal. On the cold tile, tears finally fell in silence as every memory replayed: the merger contract I hadn’t read, Travis’s smile when he called Joan’s transplant a miracle, the way my hands shook with relief, believing my child might live. I had been stupid. I had been blind. Or I had been trusting. That felt worse. He called me a nobody. Believed I had no one. Thought I had cut ties with my blood, abandoned the Stormfang Pack by choice. He underestimated what still lived inside me. Under the bruise of grief, something colder rose, a resolve forged in the marrow of the wolf. Alpha Travis had taken my signature and turned it into a death sentence for my child. He had traded blood for luxury, loyalty for a mistress, truth for a lie. My hand shook as I dialed a number I had sworn never to touch again. Each ring tolled like a war drum, summoning something far darker than revenge. “Hello?” My father’s voice came through, clipped and incredulous. “Hello, Father,” I said, steadying my voice into something that was more blade than tremor. “I’m ready to marry whoever you want me to. Come and pick me up in five days, after I finalize the divorce.” There was a pause in the line, like he was measuring the consequences of hope. “Divorce? I thought you were hopelessly in love with Alpha Travis Wolfe. Why the sudden change of heart?” “He killed my daughter,” I said. The words left the tip of my tongue and fell like a sentence. “And I want him to pay.” My father’s voice hardened, sharp as iron. “I warned you. He was never worthy of a Stormfang. Come home. Your brothers have been waiting.” A bright, bitter laugh escaped me. The memory of slamming the door in their faces, of shouting that I was mine to choose, of the pride that had kept me from returning prowled behind my ribs. My brothers, loud and violent and fiercely loyal, the kind of loyalty that did not tolerate treachery, had been waiting for me. I had turned my back on them for a lie, wearing a tuxedo. “Tell them I’m coming home,” I whispered, and the words tasted like a vow. I hung up and looked around the house at the life I’d built, which now felt like a stage set for some grotesque play. In five days, I would be gone, but I would not leave empty-handed. Grief is a forge. Betrayal sharpens the tools within it. I thought of what my father had warned me about, pack ties, about bloodlines older than contracts. The Stormfang Pack name was not only a wealthy brand, it was also a legacy of wolves, of leaders whose bite had shaped territories and treaties. For years, I’d tried to be human, polished, grateful, small, the Luna Alpha Travis wanted. Now the wolf in me rose without apology. He’d assumed my distance from the pack meant I was severed. He was wrong. Bonds run deeper than paper. Stormfang blood remembers. The mate bond snapped like a brittle thread under the weight of his betrayal. Pain flared, anger braided with a grief that cut like steel. A low, animal howl rolled up my throat and set the frames trembling. This wasn’t the end; it was the prelude. I would return to the fold changed. The Stella who left would not be the Stella who came back. I would bring fear, consequence, and revenge. First, divorce, quiet, precise legal warfare, then leverage. Evidence, witnesses, whispers in the right ears. I’d unmake the reputations of the bought doctors and show the city the Wolfe name was not untouchable. But the wolf wanted more than paper ruin. She wanted personal change, to scent the traitor’s marrow and make it howl. Lorie, who cradled my child’s heart like a trophy, would learn there are wounds no caption can soothe. I closed my eyes, felt the moonless night settle beyond my windows. The pack is patient. The Stormfang Pack is patient. We wait, and then we move like winter storms, inevitable and devastating. I stood, steadied by the dull, steady ache of grief that had become armor. I would let Alpha Travis think I was small, that I had no one. Let him sleep more easily for a few nights under that delusion. Then I would return, and the ground would shift beneath his feet. I whispered the vow I had said in the hospital when I had held my daughter’s tiny hand, I would not let Joan’s name be swallowed. I would unmake everything he had built. Wolves don’t forget. Wolves don’t forgive easily. But wolves do remember how to hunt. And the Stormfang Pack? We never forget the taste of our own.
