A Stranger in my house
1692 Words
The silence in her room wasn’t peaceful.
It was the kind of silence that pressed against her skin like cold water, seeping into her bones, curling around her ribs.
She’d closed the curtains the second she got home. Shut out the trees, the mountains, the skies that stared down at her like they knew. Shut the world out. The town. The boys. The eyes. All of it.
Now it was just her.
Her and the past she never invited but always arrived anyway.
She lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned in lazy circles. Her hands were folded across her stomach, still. For now.
But her mind, her mind wouldn’t stop.
She hated thinking about the city.
Not because she didn’t miss it, she did, painfully, like a phantom limb. The smell of asphalt after rain. The late-night buzz of traffic. The background hum of life happening all around her, fast enough to blur, loud enough to drown out the screaming in her head.
She missed her friends. The ones who never asked questions. Who made noise just to keep her afloat. They didn’t know what happened. She never told them.
She never told anyone.
Not even when it started the cutting.
It began the night after he touched her.
The boy whose name she wouldn’t speak. Not even in her thoughts. A boy with perfect teeth and a voice like a dare. A boy she trusted once.
He stole something from her that night. Not just her body.
Her belief that she could ever be safe again.
After that night, something cracked open in her chest. And when the pain got too big to hold, she found a way to let it out. A sharp edge. A slice of control.
The blade never judged her. It never spoke. It just listened.
And now… now it was the only secret she hadn’t given away.
She turned on her side, pressing a pillow to her face to muffle the sound when her chest hitched. Not crying. Not exactly.
Just cracking.
The triplets didn’t know. They couldn’t. If they ever found out what happened in the city what he did, what she let happen they’d never look at her the same again.
They thought she was angry.
They didn’t know she was ruined.
She’d seen the way their eyes followed her. The low growl in Rowan’s throat when someone brushed too close. The fire behind Luca’s teasing. The protectiveness in Jace’s touch.
They think I’m theirs.
But they didn’t know the truth.
She would never be enough for a mate. Not after that night.
Not after him.
She sat up sharply, rubbing her hands over her face like it might scrape the thoughts away. Her stomach clenched as her gaze drifted toward the drawer. She hadn’t replaced the blade. But she didn’t need to not yet.
Not tonight.
Tomorrow was close enough.
Her birthday. Eighteen.
Her first shift.
Everyone talked about it like a promise. Like something beautiful. Something sacred.
She knew better.
She was terrified.
Because she didn’t know what her wolf would be like. Didn’t know if it would be damaged like her. If it would remember that night, remember him and carry that memory into every bone of her new skin.
And if she shifted… and her mates were watching…
What would they see?
What would they know?
Savannah pulled her knees to her chest, curling in on herself.
“I don’t want to be seen,” she whispered.
But she also didn’t want to be invisible anymore.
That was the worst part.
She was stuck between wanting to disappear and hoping someone would finally see her, not the broken girl, not the act she wore like armour, but her.
The girl she used to be.
The one she wasn’t sure she’d ever find again.
They thought she was scared of shifting.
They were wrong.
Savannah craved it.
Not because she looked forward to the change. Not because she wanted to embrace her birthright, or whatever mystical crap the wolves around here whispered in reverence when they talked about “first shifts” and “the moment the wolf awakens.”
No. She wanted her shift for one reason and one reason only.
Power.
Real, physical, undeniable power. Strength in her bones. Speed in her veins. Fangs and fury and claws she could finally control, not just the pain that clawed her up from the inside.
She was counting down the days to her eighteenth birthday, like someone watching the second hand on a time bomb. Tick, tick, tick.
And then?
Then she would leave this cursed town. Leave the mountain. Leave the triplets who thought they saw something in her she wasn’t sure existed.
They’d be fine.
They were future alphas, golden boys, and gods-in-training.
She was just a fracture wearing lip gloss.
They didn’t know the truth. About what happened to her. About him. They didn’t know that she had been taken, stripped of choice, of agency, of anything a true mate would want in their girl.
And when did they find out?
They’d reject her.
That was inevitable.
So she would beat them to it.
The plan was simple. Cold. Clean.
Shift on her birthday.
Endure the pain. Let her wolf come. Let the burn of transformation melt away the last of who she used to be.
Train in secret. In the woods. In the dark. Learn her new body. Hone it like a weapon.
Leave the mountain before they could ask questions.
Return to the city.
Not to the glittering streets or the few friends she used to have.
But to him.
To the boy who stole her.
To the monster, no one else saw.
Savannah would walk back into that world not as a girl but as something else. Something sharper. Something that couldn’t be caged again.
And she would make him pay.
Not just with blood.
But with fear.
She wanted to see him crumble. Wanted to see the predator realize he’d created something stronger than he ever imagined. His victim had grown teeth.
And after?
She’d go rogue.
Alone.
No pack. No bonds. No mate mark.
No one should look at her with questions in their eyes and pity on their breath.
She would never tell the triplets what happened. Never give them the satisfaction of playing the heroes. They didn’t get to save her from a story they weren’t there for.
They didn’t get to hold her after the damage was done.
And if they tried?
If one of them reached for her with soft eyes and softer words, if all of them did she’d walk away.
Because they deserved someone whole.
And Savannah Cross would never be whole again.
Commander Cross didn’t know how to raise a girl.
He barely knew how to talk to one.
Orders, discipline, structure that was his language. He’d spent his whole life surrounded by men who followed his lead, fists that followed rules, voices that didn’t tremble when things got hard. Soldiers. Wolves. Sons of the moon.
Not daughters.
Not Savannah.
She was thirteen the first time she slammed a door in his face.
He remembered standing outside it, stunned, like someone had just taken a swing at him and landed. No one had ever dared do that before. Not his subordinates. Not his enemies.
Not until his daughter.
He told himself it was hormones. Teenage drama. He’d seen wolves go rabid during their first heat, torn between instinct and emotion, so surely this was the human version of that.
He figured it would pass.
It didn’t.
When his wife left, she hadn’t even said goodbye.
Just a note.
One damn note.
Cross had read it once and burned it. Something about needing to find herself. Something about how she loved them both, but love wasn’t enough anymore.
It had never been enough.
And Savannah gods, she’d been so still when he told her. Like she’d already known. Like she'd been expecting it. And after that, something in her changed.
She got sharper. Quieter. Then louder. Then… distant.
He didn’t know how to reach her.
He tried, in his way. Gave her space. Paid for her school, her books, her clothes. Made sure no boy got within sniffing distance without his knowledge. He taught her how to shoot a crossbow by the time she was twelve. Put her in self-defense classes when she hit fourteen.
It was his way of protecting her.
But Savannah didn’t want protection.
She wanted a father who understood her. Who saw her.
And Cross… didn’t.
He watched her now, as she sat curled up on the worn sofa in the den, hoodie drawn up over her head, headphones in, face unreadable.
She didn’t look at him. Didn’t acknowledge him at all.
He poured himself a drink and leaned against the kitchen counter, keeping his eyes on her like she might vanish if he looked away.
She’d be eighteen soon.
The shift would come.
He should’ve felt proud. Relieved.
She’d find her mate, move on, and build a life somewhere else. The kind of life he couldn't give her. The kind of love he didn’t know how to teach. She was strong. Tough. She got that from him.
But there was a darkness in her, too.
One he couldn’t name. One he hadn’t seen in time.
Sometimes, he caught her looking in the mirror like she didn’t recognize the girl staring back. Other times, she looked like she saw too much.
He’d walked in once months ago to find her door locked.
He hadn’t pushed it open.
Now he wished he had.
He downed the drink in one pull.
“Dinner’s on the counter,” he said, gruff.
No reply.
He didn’t expect one.
But he waited a beat longer than usual just in case.
She didn’t lift her head.
Cross turned away.
He told himself it was fine.
That he’d done enough.
That once she was mated, once she left, maybe she’d finally be happy.
Because gods help him… he didn’t know how to fix what was broken in her.
And she never asked him to.
- Writer
