Chapter 2 Divorce Papers
Serena's POV
Those three words hung in the air like smoke — and that's exactly what they were, just smoke curling toward the ceiling while my entire chest caved in.
Let's get a divorce.
I didn't move. Couldn't. I was still propped on one elbow, my curls half-fallen across my face, the sheet pooled around my waist. A second ago I'd been about to open my mouth and say something that would have changed everything. Now I just stayed exactly where I was, frozen, listening to his heartbeat. Slow. Even. Completely undisturbed.
Mine was going to crack my sternum open.
I lowered myself back down against the pillow. My coat was somewhere near the door. The report was still folded in the inside pocket. Holy Cross Hospital, Patient: Serena Voss. Two days old. Read until the crease went soft.
I wasn't going to tell him now. I wasn't going to tell him at all.
Something low and animal in my chest understood that before the rest of me caught up. Whatever lived underneath my skin had already gone quiet. The kind of quiet that comes right before something decides to survive.
"Why?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted. There was a tremor in it I couldn't fully kill.
He took another drag. Exhaled. Set the cigarette on the edge of the nightstand like this was any other conversation.
"She's back."
She's...
The words landed and then just — sat there. Like my brain refused to finish the sentence because it already knew what came next and wanted one more second before everything changed.
Camille Fontaine.
For a second, I was back at the kitchen table six months ago, watching Elliot smile at something on his phone while I poured coffee. I was back at the farmer's market when he'd pulled me close in the crowd. I was back at last Tuesday when he'd asked about my meeting and actually listened.
All of it. Every single moment I'd catalogued as proof that this was real.
And the whole time, he'd just been waiting. Patient the way Elliot Ashford was patient about everything — because he always knew exactly when the year would end.
My left hand moved without thinking, pressing flat against my sternum. Like I could hold the thing in my chest together by sheer pressure.
The candles were still burning down the hall. The white roses were still dropping petals onto the tablecloth. He'd remembered the date, ordered the flowers, sat across from me and asked about my week — and none of it had meant what I'd let myself believe it meant.
I'd been so sure.
Sure that somewhere in the past year, things had quietly shifted. That the way he looked at me across the dinner table meant something. That him remembering the small things — my coffee order, the side of the bed I preferred, the fact that I hated cilantro — added up to something real. I'd convinced myself that Camille was the past. That I wasn't just a placeholder anymore.
Turns out I was just very good at lying to myself.
Something else clicked into place then. Something I'd been carefully not thinking about for twelve months.
"Is that why you never marked me?"
The question came out quieter than I meant it to. My hand went to the side of my neck without thinking — the spot where an Alpha's mark should have been. My skin there was smooth. Unmarked. A year of marriage and he'd never once put his teeth there.
I'd told myself it didn't matter. But I'd wanted it. Every time his mouth had dragged across that spot, some stupid hopeful part of me had thought maybe this time — and he'd always pulled back.
Now I knew why.
Elliot didn't answer. He just reached for another cigarette, and the silence was louder than anything he could have said.
I closed my eyes for two seconds. Then I let myself think about how this started, because the alternative was feeling it, and I wasn't doing that right now.
My mother, Irena, never talked about the night she found Harold Ashford half-dead in a ditch during the worst blizzard in thirty years. She just brought him in, got him warm, and never mentioned it again. She did the right thing and moved on. She didn't keep receipts.
Harold apparently did.
She'd been gone eight months when he came to the house. My father had already burned through most of what she'd left — gambling debt doesn't care about grief. Harold sat down across from my father at the kitchen table, and when he stood up to leave, he took enough money to wipe the slate clean. What he left behind was a piece of paper with my name on it.
A marriage arrangement. One year.
Elliot had Camille then. Everyone in Valmont who followed old-money gossip knew it — childhood sweethearts, inevitable. She'd apparently shown up outside the church on our wedding day. By the time I arrived, she was gone and Elliot was standing at the altar looking like a man being led to something he'd already accepted.
Harold had offered him a compromise. One year. Fulfill the obligation, then whatever he wanted.
One year of being the perfect husband — attentive, steady, never once making me feel like a transaction. And I knew, the whole time I knew, that it was just Elliot Ashford being precise about his commitments. He didn't do things halfway. Even obligations.
I just forgot that I was one.
"Okay." The word came out flat and clean. "I got it."
I reached for my phone — not because I needed it, but because I needed something to do with my hands. The screen lit up and I stared at it without seeing anything.
The black mirror threw my reflection back at me. My eyes — amber, too light — caught the glow and flickered.
Hold it together for five more minutes.
Elliot stubbed out the cigarette, got up, and came back with a manila envelope. He set it on the nightstand beside my phone with a quiet, final sound.
"Take a look when you're ready," he said. "If there's anything you want adjusted, let me know."
I looked at it. I didn't pick it up.
The envelope sat there between us, and the report sat in my coat pocket across the room. I wasn't going to use it — there was no version of this where I handed him a hospital report and watched him stay out of obligation. Whatever this was, I was keeping it for myself.
The decision landed without drama. Solid and done.
I was still staring at the envelope when Elliot moved. He bent down and scooped me up off the bed in one clean motion, one arm under my knees and one at my back.
"Put me down. I can walk."
He didn't answer. He pushed the bathroom door open with his shoulder, set me on the counter, turned to the shower and started adjusting the water. This was habit — we'd fallen into it somewhere in the first few months without either of us naming it.
Steam started building. He tested the temperature with the back of his hand, still not looking at me.
"After all this is done," he said, casual as a weather report, "what are you planning to do?"
What am I planning to do. I almost laughed. I pressed my back teeth together and didn't.
I made myself smile — small and sideways, the kind that looks like carelessness if you don't know what to look for.
"Funny you should ask." I tilted my head slightly, letting the smile sharpen just a fraction. "Turns out I wasn't exactly lonely this year. Had my own fun on the side."
