Chapter 3: Six Years Later

ELLA’S POV

The airport crowd parted around me the way crowds always did now — not out of pity, the way they used to, but out of something closer to admiration.

Six years in the human world had changed nearly everything about me. The weight I’d carried out of grief and stress had melted away under a life I’d built entirely on my own terms, one contract and one late night at a time, with no husband and no pack to answer to.

I walked taller now. Slimmer. Steadier. Rich enough that no one who’d known me before would recognize the woman standing in this terminal in tailored silk, dragging a suitcase worth more than most people’s cars.

No one did recognize me. Not one glance lingered longer than a passing appreciation for an expensive coat and good posture.

My handbag slipped from my shoulder as I adjusted my carry-on, spilling half its contents across the floor. I crouched to gather everything, and my stomach lurched when I saw what had fallen loose among the lipstick and boarding passes — a small black-and-white ultrasound photograph, the outline of a tiny curled shapes unmistakable even from a distance.

“Congratulations on the pregnancy,” a stranger said kindly, bending to hand it back to me.

I snatched it up too fast, tucking it deep into my bag before anyone else could see. A few heads turned, curious, but no one asked. No one ever asked, as long as you looked like you belonged somewhere important.

My stepmother had reached out a week earlier through Delia, the only person who’d ever known where I’d disappeared to. Something extremely urgent to discuss, she’d claimed. I hadn’t trusted the sudden warmth in the message, and I trusted it even less now, standing in the airport of the pack she’d once had me thrown out of.

She’d arranged a welcome celebration at the pack house — her idea of hospitality dressed up as generosity, though I suspected it was closer to a trap.

When I arrived, draped in a gown that cost more than most Alphas’ entire households, not a single face in that room recognized me. I watched Sherwood across the hall, exactly as arrogant as I remembered, send one of his guards over to fetch the “pretty stranger” for a private word.

He didn’t recognize me either.

I let his guard approach, let him deliver the invitation with the same entitled smugness Sherwood had always carried, and I declined without a flicker of interest. When Sherwood finally crossed the room himself, visibly irritated that a woman hadn’t fallen at his feet the moment he noticed her, I met his eyes without a trace of the fear I used to carry around him.

“Not interested,” I said, before he’d even finished his introduction.

His brow furrowed. “Do you know who I am?”

“I know exactly who you are.” I let the silence stretch, watching confusion flicker behind his eyes. “What are you even doing here tonight?”

“Family business, if you must know.” He straightened, recovering some of his composure. “I’m here to meet my useless excuse of a Luna and finalize our divorce. The papers are ready. All she has to do is sign.”

I smiled at him, slow and cold. “How generous of you.”

I walked away without another word, leaving him staring after me, baffled by a woman who hadn’t once asked for his name.

…

Inside the private wing of the pack house, my stepmother’s face went slack with disbelief the moment I removed my sunglasses.

“Still don’t recognize me?” I asked.

Her mouth opened and closed twice before any sound came out. My stepsisters, trailing behind her, stared at me like I’d stepped out of a dream they’d never wanted to have.

“How did you —” one of them started, unable to finish the sentence.

Fortunately, the divorce papers had already made their way to Claudia, waiting in the next room with the smug patience of a woman who thought she’d already won. I signed my name without hesitation and threw the papers directly into her lap.

“Enjoy my leftovers,” I said.

She lunged, hand raised to slap me, but I was faster — my palm connected with her cheek before hers ever reached mine, and when she tried again in a fury, I struck the other side too, sharp and final.

The room went utterly silent.

My stepmother recovered first, smoothing her expression back into something almost pleading. “Ella. There’s something we need to discuss. A proposal.”

“I’m listening.” I wasn’t, not really. I already knew, somewhere in my gut, that whatever came next would cost me something I hadn’t budgeted for.

“The most powerful Alpha in the region is seeking a bride.” Her voice turned syrupy, careful, the same tone she used to use when she wanted something from my father. “His heir was recently crippled in an accident, and the family is desperate to secure the next generation. My daughters deserve a match of that caliber, of course, but he’s specifically requested someone… humble. Someone he can shape into whatever he needs.”

“You want to sell me to him.” I said it flatly, watching her flinch at the bluntness of it. “Again. The same way you and Dad handed me to Sherwood, dressed up as an honor.”

“It’s not like that, Ella —”

“It’s exactly like that.” My hands curled at my sides. “I built an entire life without any of you. I don’t owe this family a single thing.”

I almost refused outright. I had every right to. I owed this family nothing — not after my own stepsister with the excuse of just visiting slept with my husband, not after the gate, not after the pig farm, not after six years of building myself back up from nothing while they’d forgotten I ever existed, right up until they needed something from me again.

But my father’s dying words rose up in my memory before I could stop them — his voice, thin and desperate, gripping my hand from a hospital bed, begging me to protect the pack no matter what it cost me personally, no matter what his second wife did after he was gone.

“I’ll go,” I said, hating myself a little for meaning it.