Two
1597 Words
Claire stepped forward, causing a horrified gasp oyt of me. The shock nearly knocked me off my feet.
Did it really have to come to this? Her pretense of being a sympathetic ear, a 'best friend' who understood my anxieties, was nothing but a twisted performance to set me up for this very fall.
It was all a setup.
“Oh, Savvy, I wish it hadn't come to this,” she said, a tear welling in her eye for effect. “I truly did try to pull you back from the brink, to make you see the consequences of your recklessness. But some lessons, you just have to learn the hard way.”
My eyes widened.
“You drugged me!” I screamed, rushing toward Claire but fell, causing some people to snicker. My father was protesting against the enforcers who'd seized him.
On the floor, a painful shame and hurt filled me as tears streamed down my face.
“Ethan, please believe me. She set me up!”
But my voice was lost in the crowd’s rage.
One of Ethan’s sisters surged forward and yanked the veil from my head. She placed it on Claire and led her to Ethan.
The crowd cheered.
Claire stood at the altar, smiling triumphantly, crowned in my place.
I tried to move, but the floor gave way, and everything went dark.
_____
The first thing I registered was the beeping sound of a machine. The second was the antiseptic scent that screamed hospital.
I cracked my eyes open. My arm ached. I looked down and saw an IV tube running from my skin to a metal pole.
“Savannah? You're awake, honey.”
My dad sounded relieved but the sadness in his eyes hurt more than any accusation could.
We were all we had. My mom had died giving birth to me, and my dad had never remarried. I meant everything to him.
He sat on a plastic chair beside the bed and looked like he had aged ten years in just a few hours.The memories came crashing back. I jerked upright and burst into tears.
“Dad, I swear on my life. I didn’t do it.”
He held my hand. I pulled away and started fumbling with the tape on my arm.
“Don’t take that off, Savvy.”
“I need to expose Claire. I can fix this.”
My father covered my hand with his, stopping my frantic movements.
“There’s nothing to go back to,” he said quietly. “It’s over. The wedding was conducted. Ethan and Claire are married.”
The words didn’t make sense. It felt like he was speaking a different language.
"It happened so fast. Ethan demanded the ceremony continue immediately with Claire. No one dared argue with him, especially after such a scandal, and the crowd was already whipped into a frenzy."
“No,” I whispered. “That’s not possible. I just fainted. It’s only been a few minutes.”
“You’ve been unconscious for over six hours. The doctors said they found a sedative in your system. They had to flush it out.”
His voice hardened. "I tried to tell them. I showed the elders the doctor's report about the sedative, but they dismissed it as an excuse to cover your supposed misdeeds."
Hot tears streamed down my face.
“Why didn’t you come to me, Savannah? Why did you trust that snake?”
My sobbing intensified.
How could I explain that I had tried to protect him from this very pain? That I had been manipulated by the one person I thought I could trust more than anyone?
I was a fool. A weak, naive fool.
“I don’t care if they’re married. I have to clear my name.”
“It’s too late. Ethan's word is law here, and he made sure everyone knew his version of events. Once he condemned you, there was nothing else to be said. Their loyalty is to the Alpha, not to us."
Shame settled deep in my bones.
I was discharged an hour later. Then I begged my dad to drive me to the hotel.
It felt like returning to a crime scene. The manager, grim-faced and cold, told us the hotel was “under maintenance” and that no information could be shared about previous guests.
He looked at my tear-streaked face with a dismissive air. To him, we were nothing. Just the poor gardener and his disgraced daughter.
My father drove us home in heavy silence. When we pulled up to the house, he turned off the engine and looked at me.
“They will all pay for this. Karma will come for every single person who hurt you. I promise you that.”
_____
A month passed in a blur. I became a prisoner in my own home.
I lost my job, of course. The irony was almost unbearable. I had been Ethan’s secretary. That was how we met, how we fell in love across the gap between our worlds.
He had seen something in the gardener’s daughter who organized his life with quiet care. That life was gone.
We survived on what little my father earned, but even his business suffered. Our community was small. When an Alpha cast someone out, the rest followed. We'd become pariahs.
Then I started feeling sick. At first, I blamed the stress. But it became routine—waking up with nausea so bad I had to run to the bathroom.
The smell of my father’s cooking, once comforting, now sent me reeling.
One afternoon, desperate for a solution, I put on a hoodie, cinched it tight around my face, and walked to the local store.
The whispers started the moment I stepped inside.
A woman, one whose hedges my father had trimmed for years, spoke loudly to her friend.
“There’s the little w***e,” she said. “Can’t even show her face in daylight.”
I flinched but said nothing. I kept my head down, paid, and left.
That was the moment I knew I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t live under their judgment forever. I had to leave the pack.
Back home, with shaking hands, I took a pregnancy test. I stared as the second line appeared.
A sob escaped me. This wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
In our world, werewolf pregnancies were complicated. Termination was dangerous and could kill the mother.
This child, the proof of my assault, was now a permanent part of me. A secret, living burden that tied me to the very night I wanted to forget.
When my father came home and found me on the bathroom floor, clutching the test, he knelt beside me and wrapped me in his arms.
We wept together, two broken people in a world that had turned its back on us.
There was only one path forward. To leave the pack and start a new life where no one knew me, I needed a release letter from Ethan.
The next day, I stood before the house that should have been mine. I took a deep breath and knocked.
Claire opened the door. She looked radiant in expensive clothes, wearing my life like it had always belonged to her.
She smiled with cruel satisfaction.
“Well, well,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. “Look what the cat dragged in. Come to beg for scraps, Savvy?”
“I’m here to see Ethan,” I said, keeping my voice steady.
She laughed. “My husband is very busy. He doesn’t have time for garbage.”
“Who is it, Claire?”
Ethan’s voice came from the top of the stairs. He walked down slowly, every inch the Alpha. When our eyes met, my breath caught.
Beneath the anger and bitterness, I saw a flicker of the man I had loved. A shadow of the pain I carried in my own heart.
“Why are you here?” he asked coldly.
“I want to leave the pack,” I said, taking a breath to contain my emotions. “I need you to sign my release.”
He looked surprised. “Leave? Where would you go?”
That concern in his tone was enough to send Claire into a rage.
“You’re worried about her?” she shrieked. “She probably has a line of men waiting. She was screwing half the pack behind your back. She’s a tramp who tried to trap you.”
I stood frozen, stunned by her lies. I watched as Ethan's expression changed. The pain vanished. All that remained was disgust.
He disappeared into his office and returned with a paper. He dropped it on the floor between us.
“Get out of my house,” he said. “And don’t ever show your face in my territory again.”
I bent down and picked up the paper. My release. My exile.
The truth about the child burned on my tongue, a weapon I could wield, but a deeper defiance held it back. Why give them more power over me? Why let this sacred, terrifying new life be sullied by their malice?
I said nothing about the child growing inside me.
The child of the man with the wolf tattoo.
The living proof of everything they refused to see.
I looked at Ethan’s cold face, then at Claire’s triumphant one.
“Karma is coming for you both,” I said, hating how my voice sounded.
Then I turned and walked away from the ruins of the life I had once dreamed of.
- Writer
