Chapter2

Chloe's POV

I didn't leave. My feet didn't move. I wanted to know more of the truth.

Mia was straddling him, her hair loose around her shoulders, head thrown back, and the sound she made — low and satisfied, the sound of someone exactly where she wanted to be — went through me like a blade.

How long had they been doing this? Was it before the anniversary dinner last year? Was it before that?

Then Arthur's voice came. "God, your scent." His voice was muffled, like his face was pressed against her skin. "I've missed this. You have no idea how much."

"Better than her?" Mia asked, and the way she said her — light, almost playful, like the answer was already obvious — made my stomach turn over.

"Don't even compare." A sound of disgust. "Her scent smells like white water. I don't know how I've been doing it."

White water.

"Then why?" Mia's voice again, curious. "Why keep her around?"

"Why not." Arthur's voice was light. "She's easy. No scent, no wolf soul, no real standing in the pack." A short exhale, something between a laugh and a dismissal. "She takes whatever I give her and calls it enough. You know the type. Grateful for scraps." Another pause. "Honestly, it's been a little pathetic."

Pathetic.

Three years. I had understood him, respected him, never asked for anything. And in his eyes, I was a pitiful wretch living off his scraps — something cheap and disposable. He had never respected me. These three years were utterly laughable.

I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth to stop making a sound.

Mia said, "Your family approves. I was born on a full moon — it means good luck." The rhythm of the bed shifted, and her next words came out slightly breathless. "I'm the only one who's worthy of you, Arthur. Not her."

"You're right, baby." His voice had gone rough at the edges.

"So you'll marry me?" Mia asked, her voice dropping, eager and certain. "Properly. Your family, the pack — you'll make it official?"

"I'll handle it," Arthur said. "I'll handle all of it. I just need — don't stop —"

I need to leave.

The thought arrived clean and absolute. I needed to leave, right now, before I heard another word. The whole thing was revolting. Utterly, completely revolting.

I turned and walked away.

I didn't run. I walked, one foot in front of the other, my hand trailing the railing, my mind very quiet and very far away. By the time I pushed through the front door and the night air hit my face, I was full of tears.

---

I sat in my car. I pressed both hands over my face and bent forward until my forehead nearly touched the steering wheel. My shoulders shook. My breath came in ragged, broken increments. The tears ran down my palms and soaked into my sleeves.

During those three years, he had remembered everything about me and sat with me in the cold on my father's death anniversary.

Yet he had thrown those degrading words at me. Had all his kindness toward me been fake all along?

She was born on a full moon. It means good luck.

I had been born on an ordinary Tuesday in March. My mother had never told me what that meant.

I pressed my hands harder against my face. The vanilla scent was still in my clothes, faint, and every time I caught it my stomach turned over again and the crying got worse.

I sat up slowly after a long moment and wiped my face with the back of my wrist.

Then my phone buzzed. Selena's name on the screen, and under it, a photo.

Chloe!! You won't believe this — my uncle and your stepsister Mia, Windsor Manor entrance, hand in hand — I literally just saw them and took a photo.

I opened the photo.

Arthur and Mia. His hand at the small of her back, her face turned toward him mid-laugh. Completely at ease. And on Mia's left hand, clear in the light — the ring.

The ring I had found. So that was it. He was going to propose to her. She was the one the ring belonged to. It had always been her — never me.

You are so stupid, Chloe. From beginning to end, I had been nothing but a puppet in their game — manipulated, deceived, made a fool of from start to finish.

I stayed like that until the shaking in my hands stopped. Then I started the car.

---

 The first thing I saw when I walked through the front door was my mother in a new dress.

She wore a tailored gown, the kind that had to be commissioned weeks in advance. Standing before the hallway mirror, she turned slightly to one side with satisfaction.

She glanced at me in the mirror. "You're back. Where did you go? You look terrible."

My throat was still raw. I had cried in the car until my chest felt hollowed out, and my hands still hadn't stopped shaking on the drive home. I had told myself I would go straight upstairs.

But she was looking at me in that particular way — patient — and something gave way.

"Arthur and Mia," I said. "They've been together. Behind my back. Selena sent me a photo — the ring was already on Mia's finger." My voice cracked on the last word. " He wants to marry her now. Why? "

She turned back toward her own reflection.

"These things happen," she said. "Mia is simply better suited to him. You must have sensed that."

The words landed so cleanly, so without hesitation, that for a moment I couldn't speak.

"That's all you have to say?" My voice came out unsteady. "You're not even surprised."

"What do you want me to say, Chloe." Still watching herself in the mirror, smoothing the fabric at her waist. "I told you from the beginning you were out of your depth with him. You chose not to listen."

"He was with Mia. My sister." I said it slowly, as if the emphasis might reach something in her.

She turned then and looked at me directly.

"Mia didn't force him into anything. You can't hold onto someone who doesn't want to be held." A pause. "That's no one's fault but your own."

I stared at her.

I had heard versions of this before — every argument we'd ever had about Arthur in this house. But I had never once heard her say a single thing about Arthur himself. Not that he was careless, not that she didn't trust him. Every word had always been aimed at me.

And then her gown came back into focus.

"What's the gown for?" I asked.

Something moved across her face. Small, fast — gone before I could name it.

"An event," she said. She turned back toward the mirror. "No one you know."

"What kind of event?"

"A dinner." Her hands went to the fabric at her waist, adjusting something that didn't need adjusting. "It's nothing."

I stood very still. She had just learned — that her daughter's three-year relationship had collapsed tonight. And her first instinct was to tell me it was nothing.

"Who is the dinner for?" I asked.

"I told you —"

My voice was getting quieter. I looked at the dress — the careful tailoring, the expense of it. "And you won't tell me what that dinner is for."

She said nothing.

"Did you already know?" The question came out barely above a whisper. I moved so I was standing between her and the mirror. She had to look at me now. "About Arthur and Mia — before tonight. Did you know?"

"Chloe —"

"Please," I said. "Just tell me the truth."

The please shifted something. I saw it — a small adjustment in her expression, quickly controlled. She had been ready for my anger. She hadn't quite prepared for that.

The silence that followed was different. Not defensive. The silence of someone who has been holding a door shut for a long time and has finally, quietly, decided to let go.

"Several months," she said.

I looked at the dress.

She followed my gaze.

Neither of us said anything.

"Several months." I repeated.

I was stunned. Every argument we'd had in this house. Every time she'd told me I was wasting my time and I'd told her she didn't understand. She had known, and she had watched me come home and defend him, and she had said nothing.

"You watched me," I wanted to cry. My voice had gone very quiet. Why did you help them hide it from me? I am your own flesh and blood."

She looked at me coldly. "You were always too foolish to know your own place. Always reaching for things that were never meant for you. Arthur Windsor was never going to choose you. "

I looked at her standing there in her beautiful commissioned dress, and felt something give way inside me.

Three years. I had loved him carefully and quietly. I had fought my mother over him more times than I could count.

I had been the only person who didn't know. I had been the joke, and everyone had been in on it, and not one person had thought to tell me.

The humiliation was physical. It moved through me in a slow, nauseating wave, and my eyes burned, and I hated it — hated that I was going to cry here, where she could see.

I picked up my bag and walked to the door.

Behind me her voice rose, sharp: "Chloe — don't you walk out. If you leave right now, don't expect me to be sympathetic."

I pulled the door shut and her voice became nothing.

I sat in the car with both hands on the wheel. The dark pressed in through every window. I didn't move for a long moment.

I had been so sure I was fighting for something.

It turned out I had just been the last one to find out it was already over.

I needed to be somewhere loud. Somewhere bright and indifferent, where no one knew my name and no one was going to look at me the way she just had. I needed a drink. I needed several.

I pressed the accelerator down.

The city opened up ahead of me, dark and indifferent, and I let it swallow me whole.