Birthday present
Seraphina POV
The text message glowed against my palm like a promise I should have known better than to trust.
‘Happy 18th birthday, Sera. Tonight. My place. I have something special for you. Logan’
I read it three times. Not because the words were complicated, but because I needed them to be real. I needed them to anchor me to something good in a life that had become nothing but sharp edges and silence.
Five years. I had loved Logan Pierce for five years. ever since he was sixteen and I was thirteen and he had found me crying behind the pack house after my mother died. He had sat with me in the dirt, not saying anything, just letting me soak his shirt. That was the thing about Logan. He had always known when words would break me, and when silence would save me.
My thumb traced the silver promise ring on my finger. He had given it to me last year, on my seventeenth birthday, with dirt under his nails from training and hope in his eyes. “When you shift,” he had said, “when you finally get your wolf, we'll tell your father. We'll make it official.”
Because that was the unspoken rule in the Shadow Vale Pack. A wolfless daughter was a broken daughter. And I, despite my bloodline, despite being the Alpha's child, had never shifted. Never felt that wild presence curl inside my chest. Never heard anything but my own lonely heartbeat in the dark.
But today was different. Today I was eighteen. And Logan had promised.
The pack house felt emptier than usual as I moved through it. My footsteps were swallowed by the expensive rugs. My stepmother had chosen them to replace my mother's things.
My father was in his study and the door was closed. the sound of Lilith's laughter filtering through the wood like poison. I didn't knock. I had learned not to knock, not to enter, not to exist too loudly in spaces where I wasn't wanted.
Outside, the autumn air bit at my cheeks. I walked faster, clutching my thin jacket, the promise ring cold against my palm. Logan's apartment was on the edge of pack territory. A modest place for a Beta-in-training, and he kept it obsessively neat. I had a key. He had given it to me six months ago, pressed into my hand with a kiss to my forehead that had felt like a brand.
“You're my future,” he had whispered. “My only future.”
The key turned smooth in the lock. The apartment smelled like him. pine soap and gun oil and the particular musk that meant wolf, even if I didn't have one myself. I smiled despite the anxiety coiling in my stomach. He had probably planned something elaborate. Logan was like that. He remembered anniversaries and favorite foods and the way I took my coffee. In a family that forgot my birthday every year, Logan had been the one constant.
"Sera?" His voice came from the bedroom, rough in a way that made me pause. "Is that you?"
"Surprise," I called back, toeing off my shoes, padding down the hallway. "I got your text. I know I'm early, but I couldn't wait-"
The words died in my throat.
The bedroom door was half-open. Through the gap, I could see the bed. Could see Logan's back, the muscles flexing as he moved. Could see long blonde hair spread across the pillow beneath him. Could hear the sounds wet, rhythmic, familiar in a way that made my stomach lurch. because I heard them before in movies. in whispered conversations. In the dark imaginings of a girl who had wondered what it would be like when Logan finally-
"Lilith," Logan groaned, and the name was a knife.
My hand found the doorframe. My nails dug into the wood, splintering, but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel anything. But the slow, terrible unraveling of everything I had built my life around.
Lilith saw me first.
My sister's eyes, blue like our father's, nothing like our mother's green one found mine through the gap. And she smiled. That terrible, sharp smile that had started appearing after the funeral. After the will was read. After I realized that the sister who had once braided my hair had become something else entirely.
"Logan, baby," Lilith purred, arching beneath him, never breaking eye contact with me. "Don't stop."
Logan froze. His head turned. His warm hazel eyes met mine, and I saw the moment he calculated. The moment he weighed five years of promises against whatever this was. Whatever Lilith had offered, whatever weakness had finally broken him.
He didn't stop.
"Seraphina," he started, but his hips were still moving, and Lilith was still smiling. The world was ending in a bedroom that smelled like s*x and betrayal. "I can explain-"
"Don't." My voice sounded like it came from somewhere far away. Like it belonged to someone stronger. "Don't explain."
Lilith laughed, breathless, cruel. "Look at her face, Logan. She actually thought you loved her. The wolfless wonder. Did you really think he would wait forever for a broken girl who can't even shift?"
I looked at the promise ring. The silver caught the lamplight, innocent and bright. I thought of all the times I'd touched it for courage. All the times I had whispered his name like a prayer.
I pulled it off. My fingers were shaking so badly it took three tries.
"Seraphina," Logan said again, finally pulling away. Finally reaching for me, his hands still wet with my sister. "Wait-"
I threw the ring. It hit his chest and bounced to the carpet. It rolled under the bed where it belonged with everything else dead and buried.
Then I ran.
