Chapter 4 — "Glass Splinters"

The chandeliers cast everything in amber and gold. Aurelia sat at the sponsor's table with her hands folded in her lap, nails digging crescents into her own palm through the silk of her dress. The speech was over. She'd delivered it without a tremor—memory, muscle, the voice she'd built in a laundromat at three in the morning practicing into a cracked hand mirror. *You are not Lila Winstone. Lila Winstone doesn't exist anymore. You are Aurelia Chen, and you do not shake.*

But she was shaking now. Under the table. Hidden.

He was still there. Front row. Three seats from the stage.

*Lucian.*

He looked thinner. That was her first thought, the one she couldn't stop. His jaw was sharper, the hollows beneath his cheekbones deeper. He wore a charcoal suit that fit him perfectly—tailored, expensive, the kind of cut he'd never bothered with when they were together because he hadn't needed to impress anyone. He was Alpha. His presence was enough.

But he looked *tired*. Shadows under his eyes. A tightness around his mouth that hadn't been there before. He held a glass of whiskey he wasn't drinking, and when she'd been on stage, when her voice had filled the room, he'd *shattered* it. The glass had buckled in his grip. Crystal fragments hit the carpet. A server had to sweep them up while Lucian stared at her like she was a ghost he'd summoned and couldn't banish.

Good. She wanted him to bleed.

"You were brilliant."

The voice came from her left. Beatrice Holloway, the event coordinator—a Beta with a kind face and no idea who Aurelia really was. She touched Aurelia's wrist, and Aurelia's whole body went rigid before she forced herself to relax.

"Thank you," she said. Her voice came out steady. Perfect. She'd practiced that too.

"Dr. Kessler from Children's Memorial wanted me to tell you he's already committed to a partnership. I think your speech halved his negotiation time." Beatrice smiled. "You're a weapon, Ms. Chen."

*If only you knew how literal that is.*

"I just told the truth," Aurelia said, and it wasn't entirely a lie. The prosthetics project was real. The children were real. The three A.M. nights in her workshop, soldering joints by headlamp because she couldn't sleep without building something—that was real too. The only thing she'd lied about was the part where she said she'd never been stronger. She'd been weaker yesterday. She'd be weaker tomorrow. Tonight, she was running on adrenaline and the smell of Lucian's cologne drifting across the ballroom, and she wanted to claw her own skin off.

Beatrice drifted away to greet a donor. The table settled into small talk—real estate, vacation homes, the stock ticker for some biotech firm. Aurelia smiled and nodded and didn't hear a word. She was tracking Lucian through the crowd like a radar system. Cassandra was with him now, her hand curled around his arm like an expensive accessory. Blonde. Tall. Good cheekbones. A ruby pendant at her throat that clashed with her gown.

*She looks like she's holding a leash.*

Cassandra's eyes found Aurelia. Held. Narrowed.

Aurelia didn't look away.

It was petty and it was pointless and it felt *good*. She let the corner of her mouth lift a fraction—not a smile, just a recognition. *I see you seeing me. I know you're threatened. I don't blame you.*

Cassandra's grip tightened on Lucian's arm. He didn't seem to notice. He was still staring. Still not drinking his whiskey.

*Pathetic,* Aurelia thought, and the word burned in her chest like acid. *He's pathetic. I was pathetic once. I let him make me pathetic. And he's still standing there, holding a shattered glass, looking at me like I'm the one who broke him.*

She looked down at her hands. Still shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs and felt the heat of her own skin through the red silk.

A server approached. Young. Human. He leaned down and placed a folded piece of paper beside her plate. "From the gentleman in the front row, ma'am."

Aurelia didn't open it. She knew what it would say—*you look different, we need to talk, I made a mistake, I never stopped loving you.* The same words he'd texted her three times before she blocked his number. The same words she'd rehearsed in her head for three years, imagined him saying, imagined herself forgiving him, imagined the Moon Bond snapping back into place like a rubber band.

She'd stopped imagining it six months ago. The last time she'd let herself cry.

She picked up the paper. Unfolded it.

*"You look different. — L"*

Ten minutes ago, she might have crumpled it. She might have set it on fire with the table candle. She might have walked over to him and handed it back and said, *Yes. I'm not yours anymore.*

But Cassandra was watching. And Lucian was waiting. And the heat of earlier—the moment on stage when she'd felt powerful for the first time in years—was cooling into something harder.

She folded the note once. Twice. Slipped it into her clutch.

Then she stood.

The table conversation paused. Beatrice looked up, questioning. Aurelia smiled—the professional one, the one she'd perfected. "Restroom," she said. "Don't let Dr. Kessler leave without a decision."

She walked across the ballroom. Not toward Lucian. Toward the exit. But she let her path take her past his table. Close enough that he could smell her. Close enough that Cassandra's hand went white-knuckled on his arm. Close enough that Lucian half-rose from his chair, mouth opening—

She passed without looking at him.

Her perfume trailed behind her: jasmine and sandalwood. Nothing like the strawberry-scented shampoo Lila had worn. Everything deliberate. Everything a message.

At the exit, she stopped. Pulled out the note. Ripped it in half. Dropped both pieces into a champagne bucket.

She didn't look back.

*He thought: Three years. Three years of this. I deserve it. But I can't stop. I can't. She's still mine.*

She didn't hear him think it. She didn't want to. The Bond was broken, and she'd spent three years scraping the pieces out of her chest, and tonight she'd felt one of them lodge back in—sharp, hot, unbearable.

She walked faster.

The hotel hallway stretched ahead, cold and marble and quiet. Aurelia leaned against the wall, pressed her palm to her sternum, and breathed. In. Out. The walls were closing. No they weren't. In. Out. She was not Lila Winstone. She had built herself from nothing. She was not—

Her phone buzzed.

Unknown number. A text.

*"I'm sorry. That's not enough. I know. But I need you to know I know."*

She blocked the number.

Then she went back inside, fixed her face, and shook Dr. Kessler's hand with a smile that could have cut glass.