Calista POV
She came back,I heard it from my chamber window before any servant thought to tell me.
I looked out and there she was.
Nerissa Ashwood standing in the outer yard of Red Claw Pack with her hood pushed back and her chin level and an Alpha's escort behind her like it was simply how things were now. Like she had always moved through the world this way and the nineteen years of floor scrubbing and storage room sleeping and public humiliation had happened to someone else entirely.
I stood at my window and looked at her for a long time. She was different.
I knew she would be different. I spent weeks constructing the version of this moment that I would be ready for and I had included different in all of those constructions because I was not a woman who failed to account for thing
