Chapter 7 The Glass Eye

Serena's POV

She didn't look at me.

Camille walked straight toward Elliot and stopped close enough that I could see the exact moment he registered her presence — his whole body went careful, the way it did when he wasn't sure what he was walking into.

"Cami?" His voice came out surprised, almost confused. "What are you doing here?"

She tilted her head up at him, something between a smile and a question on her face. "You forgot."

Elliot opened his mouth. Closed it.

"Breakfast," she said, like she was filling in a blank he should've been able to fill himself. "Last night. At the bar. You said nine o'clock — coffee, remember?" She glanced at his watch, then back up at his face. "It's nine-thirty, Elliot."

"I —" He ran a hand through his hair, and I could see the exact moment the blankness hit him. "Shit. I'm sorry, I don't —"

"You don't remember," she finished, not an accusation, almost gentle, which was worse. "It's fine. You weren't exactly sober."

She reached up and fixed the collar of his shirt, her fingers brushing the fabric at his throat like she'd done it a hundred times before. Elliot went still under her hands, and something in his expression shifted — softened in a way I'd never once seen it soften in the entire year we'd shared a last name.

He looks relieved. He looks like he can finally breathe.

Deep in my chest, something feral stirred. My wolf had been quiet all morning. She wasn't quiet now. I felt the low restless pressure building behind my ribs like a sound that hadn't found its way out yet.

She took his hand next, easy and unhurried, and guided it to her waist. Then she turned slightly, angling them both toward the street, and Elliot's feet moved. Not a decision. Just gravity.

He's leaving. He's actually leaving.

The wolf slammed against the inside of my chest so hard I felt my vision flicker — just for a half second, gold bleeding into the morning light before I clamped down and pulled it back. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to move, to put myself between them, to make him look at me the way he was looking at her.

I didn't move. I breathed.

"Elliot."

He stopped and turned. Camille turned too, slower, and that was the first time she actually looked at me. Full on. Both eyes.

I held her gaze. "Harold's dinner tonight — I still need to sort the gift before we show up at the estate, and he'd want your input on which edition." I held up the bag, and my hand didn't shake. "Won't take more than an hour. You two can reschedule to this afternoon."

Clean. Reasonable. No obvious opening.

She tilted her head, just a fraction. Then she smiled — not warm, not cruel, just precise.

"You're getting divorced, aren't you?" Not a question. A label she was sticking on the situation so everyone knew how to read it. "I don't want to get in the way of family obligations." She glanced at Elliot, then back at me, magnanimous as hell. "Cancel breakfast. I'll come with you both — I've known Harold long enough to know exactly what he'd want at his own family table."

She's known him long enough. And I'm what — the temporary replacement who needs a chaperone for a gift she already picked out herself?

The wolf snarled. I felt it in my back teeth.

"The divorce papers haven't been signed," I said. "We're still married."

She looked at me like that was the funniest thing she'd heard all week.

"Right. The papers." She let it sit for a second. "What exactly is the holdup? Because from where I'm standing, it looks a lot like someone who doesn't want to let go of a very comfortable arrangement."

Comfortable.

The word hit like a slap. I felt my jaw tighten and forced it to relax — forced the gold back down before it could surface. Inside, something was breaking apart in slow motion, all the careful distance I'd built between myself and the reality of what this marriage actually was.

"Elliot didn't choose you," she continued, tone perfectly even, like she was stating facts she found mildly boring. "Harold chose you for him. Everyone at that table knew it. Everyone in that room knew it." She paused just long enough to let it land. "Elliot has loved one person his entire adult life, and she's standing right here. It isn't you."

There it was. The thing I'd been carrying in my chest for a year — said out loud, in the middle of the street, with Elliot standing right there not saying a single word to the contrary.

He loves her. He's always loved her. You were never even in the running.

My wolf let out a sound I didn't let reach my throat — long and low and furious, the kind that meant territory, that meant mine. My fingers tightened around the paper rope handle until the edge cut into my palm. I held on. The pain was something I could use.

I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say that wouldn't crack the mask I was holding in place with everything I had left.

She held my gaze a moment longer. Then she reached up.

I thought she was fixing her hair.

She wasn't.

Her fingers pressed lightly against the outer corner of her left eye — careful, practiced, like she'd done it a thousand times in front of a mirror — and lifted it out.

Everything stopped.

Not metaphorically. The jealousy clawing up my throat, the wolf slamming against my ribs, the sick tight anger I'd been managing with both hands — all of it hit a wall and fell flat. The prosthetic sat in her palm, smooth and pale blue, catching the light like it was just an ordinary object. Like removing your own eye in the middle of the street was a completely reasonable conversational move.

She has a glass eye.

I'd noticed something was off when she first turned to face me — the left one didn't track right, sat a half-beat behind the other. I'd clocked it and moved on because I had other things to be furious about. I hadn't let myself actually look.

I was looking now. The socket it left behind was dark and motionless, a hollow that didn't react to anything — not light, not movement, not the fact that I was standing three feet away coming apart at the seams. Her right eye watched me with the focused calm of someone who'd rehearsed exactly how this moment would land. And knew it had.

She planned this. She knew exactly when to pull that out.

And it worked. That was the part I couldn't get past. I was standing here with my mouth closed and my face neutral and absolutely nothing left to say. What's the counter-argument? Sorry about your eye, but I was here first?

The wolf was dead silent. Not subdued — silent. The kind that meant even she knew were outguned.

She held it there a beat longer than necessary. Then she pressed it back into place with the unhurried efficiency of someone recapping a lipstick. Blinked once. Both eyes forward — the mismatched pair fixed on my face, one glass and one real, and both of them winning.

"So." Her chin lifted slightly. "What exactly do you have to offer that I don't?"