Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Hazel’s POV

I heard her before I even opened my eyes.

Singing.

Loud, off-key, and completely unbothered about the fact that it was barely past seven in the morning. I lay still for a second, staring at the water-stained ceiling, trying to figure out if I was dreaming.

My mother didn’t sing. My mother didn’t do anything in the morning except groan, reach for whatever bottle was closest, and go back to sleep.

I sat up slowly.

She was standing in front of the cracked mirror we kept propped against the wall, dancing while she applied mascara. Her hair was done …actually done, the bleached blonde freshly washed and falling past her shoulders in soft waves that made her look almost put together. She had on a fitted wrap dress that showed off how tall and slim she actually was underneath all the chaos.

I blinked.

If you didn’t know her, you might stop and look twice. She had good bones. Long legs, sharp cheekbones, the kind of face that turned heads before the drinking took its toll. This morning she looked closer to who she could have been, if things had gone differently.

Then she opened her mouth.

“Rise and shine, baby!” She spun around and clapped her hands twice like I was five years old. “Get up. Get dressed. Look decent for once.”

I looked past her.

The bed was covered in shopping bags. Cheap designer knockoffs, the kind sold in those cramped little boutiques downtown where the tags still had the original brand names scratched halfway off. Dresses. Heels. A new handbag still wrapped in tissue paper.

“What is all this?”

“Our new life.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, turning back to the mirror to line her lips.

“We’re moving in with your new daddy today. So get up and pack your things.”

I stared at her back.

“I’m not going anywhere.” I lay back down and pulled the thin blanket over my shoulder. “You want to go live with some man you just met, fine. Go. I’ll stay here.”

She didn’t even flinch.

“Funny you say that.” She pressed her lips together, checking her reflection. “Because I already rented this place out. New tenant moves in on Friday.” She met my eyes in the mirror and smiled. “So you can stay if you want. Just work it out with him.”

I sat up again.

“You did what?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Pack light. We won’t need much where we’re going.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and decided I didn’t have the energy. Not at this hour. Not after last night. I dragged myself off the mattress, ran water over my face in the bathroom sink, and came back out to grab my stuff.

My bag was under the bed. I pulled it out and reached into the inside zip pocket where I hide my savings. The emergency money. The thing that had kept me going through every bad shift and every worse night at home.

My fingers found nothing.

I unzipped it wider. Felt around. Turned the bag upside down and shook it.

Nothing.

“Mom.”

She was humming now, twisting a gold hoop earring into place.

“Mom.”

Still nothing.

“Where is my money?”

Silence. The deliberate kind.

“I am talking to you.” My voice came out low and tight and I felt the tremor at the edges of it that I was fighting to keep under control. “Three thousand four hundred dollars. Where is it?”

She turned around then. Looked at me with this stupid not guilty, not apologetic, just mildly inconvenienced that I was bringing it up.

“I got you something new.” She gestured toward the shopping bags on the bed. “There’s a dress in there for you. White, floral, very pretty. You’ll thank me later.”

“That was a year.” The words came out barely above a whisper. “A whole year, Mom. Every shift. Every tip. Every night I came home and my feet hurt and I still put something away , how could you do this to me !“

“Hazel.” She picked up her new handbag and slung it over her shoulder. “Where we’re going, three thousand dollars is going to feel like pocket change. Trust me.”

I closed my eyes.

Pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose and just stood there breathing. Because if I didn’t breathe I was going to scream, and if I screamed I was going to cry, and I was so tired of crying in this apartment. So tired of giving these walls my tears.

I found the white floral sundress in one of the bags. Pulled it on without looking at it too long. Tied my hair back. Grabbed what was left that was actually mine which wasn’t much and followed her out the door.

She talked the whole way.

I heard none of it.

I sat in the back of the Uber with my bag on my lap and my face turned toward the window, watching the city change as we drove.

The cracked sidewalks and corner stores gave way to wider roads. Then to cleaner ones. Then to streets lined with trees that looked like they were actually watered and cared for, branches meeting overhead in a green arch that filtered the morning light into something almost soft.

The cheap perfume she’d drowned herself in was thick in the small car. I breathed through my mouth.

She was still talking and I still wasn’t even listening to her, how could she steal my money. All of it!

The gate appeared at the end of a long private driveway, flanked on both sides by rows of flowers so perfectly aligned it looked deliberate like someone had measured the distance between each one. Tall iron.

Two guards in uniform. Trees beyond the fence so old and thick they blocked whatever was inside from view completely.

The driver slowed without being asked.

My mother rolled down her window and said her name to the guard and he checked something on his clipboard and nodded and waved us through like she belonged here.

I leaned forward slightly. Looked through the windshield.

And just stopped.

It wasn’t a house.

I don’t know what I had been picturing. Something big, sure, something nicer than what I was used to — but this was different.

This was the kind of place that made the word house feel embarrassing even for trying. Stone walls. Arched windows. Towers at the corners that caught the morning light and held it. Grounds that stretched in every direction manicured lawn, fountains, flower beds, pathways that curved out of sight like they led somewhere worth going.

The Uber stopped at the main entrance.

Two women in neat black uniforms were already waiting. They came forward quietly and collected our bags without being asked. No fuss. No questions.

My mother got out first and immediately started adjusting her cleavage.

I got out and just stood there.

The air was different here. That was the first thing I noticed. Cleaner. Cooler. Like even the atmosphere was better maintained. I breathed it in slowly and felt something uncomfortably close to grief because I hadn’t known air could feel like this and now I couldn’t unknow it.

An older man in a fitted charcoal suit appeared at the top of the steps.

“Follow me, please.”

We followed.

The inside was the kind of quiet that only existed in places where sound had been trained to behave. Our footsteps were swallowed by the floors.

The ceilings above us soared up and up, lined with chandeliers that caught the light and broke it apart into something warm and golden.

Along the walls, framed between tall windows, were carved statues werewolf lords, I realized, one by one, each from a different era. The oldest ones were barely recognizable, more wolf than man. The more recent ones stood tall and proud and utterly terrifying.

I kept my eyes forward and my hands at my sides.

My mother swayed her hips and walked as if she owns the entire building.

The butler led us through the main house and out the other side into an outdoor garden that opened up like a breath. A table had been set simply but well. White cloth. A small arrangement of fresh flowers in the center. Two chairs.

“The Alpha will join you shortly,” he said, gesturing toward the table. “Please let me know if you need anything.” He pointed to a small golden bell on the table that looked more like a phone. “That will reach me directly.”

“We’re fine,” my mother said, already eyeing her reflection in the back of a silver spoon.

The butler left.

She set her bag down and started digging through it for her lipstick. “I need to go touch up. I want to look perfect when he sees me.” She pulled the neckline of her dress down another half inch. “Stay here. Be good. Don’t say anything weird.”

She disappeared back inside.

I stood beside the table and didn’t sit down.

I felt wrong here. Out of place in a way that was physical, like my clothes didn’t fit the air and my shoes didn’t fit the ground and the prettiness of everything around me was just highlighting how little I belonged in it.

I smoothed the sundress with both palms. It was a nice dress, actually. Simple. The kind of dress I might have chosen for myself if I’d been the one spending my own money on it.

Which I was.

I pushed that thought away before it could make me cry again.

I started to walk just a little, just to do something with the restless feeling in my legs. The garden was large and well-kept, and at the far edge of it the sound reached me before I saw it.

Water.

I followed the sound down a gentle slope, through a gap between two tall hedges, and stopped.

A stream ran along the far boundary of the property, wide and clear and moving with quiet purpose over smooth rocks.

The sunlight hit it in pieces, breaking and scattering the way light does on moving water. And all along the bank, in uneven rows that looked more grown than planted, were sunflowers.

Dozens of them.

Tall and golden and completely unbothered by everything.

I exhaled.

I didn’t even realize I’d been holding it in.

I walked closer and crouched down near one that had turned its face slightly toward the water instead of the sun, like it had made a deliberate choice. On impulse just because it was beautiful and I wanted to hold something beautiful for once , I reached out and snapped it gently at the stem.

“The sea looks so beautiful,so blue” I whispered

“Yes. It does.”

The voice came from behind me. Deep. Quiet. The kind of voice that didn’t need to be loud to fill a space.

I spun around.

He was standing a few feet away, and I immediately understood why I hadn’t heard him approach he moved like someone who had long since stopped needing to announce himself.

He was big. Not in the exaggerated way of men who spent all their time proving it, but in the way of something built for actual use. Wide shoulders.

Arms that strained against nothing because nothing required straining. He was shirtless, jeans hanging low, a sheen of sweat across his chest like he’d been working out here in the heat for a while before I wandered in.

A scar cut through his left eyebrow and down, thin and deliberate looking. Tribal tattoos ran up both arms and across his collarbone in dark patterns that looked ancient.

He looked dangerous.

Not the try-hard kind. The real kind.

“I’m so sorry,” I said quickly, holding up the sunflower like evidence of a crime. “You must be the gardener ,I didn’t mean to trespass, I was just walking and I heard the water and I I don’t think I can pay for this but you can punish me “

He raised one eyebrow.

Just one.

He stepped forward slowly and took the sunflower from my hand. For one second I thought he was going to take it back, put it in some kind of official flower evidence bag and then he reached up and tucked it behind my right ear, his fingers barely grazing my hair.

My whole body went very still.

He opened his mouth to say something.

“Oh wow, I see you’ve already met!” My mother’s voice cut through the moment like a fire alarm. She came picking her way down the slope toward us, lipstick freshly done, chest freshly pushed up, smile turned up to full wattage. “Isn’t he something?”

I took a small step back.

“He’s the gardener?” I asked.

My mother let out a laugh that was half delight and half performance. “Gardener.” She shook her head like I’d said something adorable and stupid.

“Baby, no.” She stepped up beside me and looped her arm through mine. “This is Alpha Creed.”

I turned to look at him.

He was already looking at me. Still. Unreadable. The sunflower still tucked behind my ear.

My mother squeezed my arm and lowered her voice to the tone she used when she wanted to sound dignified.

“Kneel,” she said. “And greet your new father properly. This is Alpha Creed.”