BOUND TO MY EX’S FATHER

Chapter 3 - The stepsister’s teeth.

The cabin felt smaller after Gabriel left.

I stood in the middle of my maps and sketches, arms wrapped around myself, trying to ignore how my fingers still trembled. The bond pulled at my chest like a fishhook caught beneath my ribs. Follow him, it whispered. Run after him. Make him stay.

I didn't move.

Instead, I breathed. Slow and deep, the way I'd learned as a child when the world got too heavy. In through the nose. Hold for four counts. Out through the mouth.

Tomorrow, he'd said.

Gabriel Stein had never promised me tomorrow.

Not once in four years.

I stared at the open doorway. Moonlight spilled across the cabin floor, silver and cold. Somewhere beyond the trees, the pack still celebrated. Their distant laughter drifted through the forest like ghosts.

I should have felt relieved. He hadn't mocked me. Hadn't rejected me. Hadn't done any of the things I'd braced myself for.

Instead, he'd looked at my sanctuary like it mattered.

Like I mattered.

That was worse. So much worse.

Because now the hope I'd been choking down for years had clawed its way back up my throat.

I slammed the cabin door shut.

The sound echoed through the small space. Maps rustled against the walls. A pencil rolled off the table and hit the floor. I didn't pick it up.

"You're an i***t," I whispered to myself.

The cabin didn't argue.

I gathered my things slowly, the way someone moves when they're trying to delay the inevitable. My cloak hung on a hook by the door. Old wool, patched twice, warm enough for the walk back. I pulled it around my shoulders and stepped outside.

The forest swallowed me whole.

Night in Silver Crood was never truly dark. The moon saw to that. It hung above the treetops like a watchful eye, painting everything in shades of grey and silver. The path back to the packhouse twisted between ancient pines, their needles soft beneath my boots.

I walked slowly.

Every instinct told me to run. To flee into the mountains and never look back. Gabriel had found my cabin once. He would find it again. And the cabin had been the only place in this territory that belonged to me.

Now it belonged to him too.

Because everything in Silver Crood eventually belonged to the Steins.

The packhouse rose from the trees like a sleeping beast. Stone walls. Iron gates. Torches flickering along the ramparts. Wolves moved through the courtyards in small groups, their laughter carrying across the grounds.

I circled toward the servant's entrance.

No one stopped me. No one looked twice. I was furniture to these people.. present, useful, invisible.

The back corridors were quieter. I kept my head down and my pace steady. Past the storage rooms. Past the laundry. Past the small closet where I'd slept for the past three years because no one had bothered to assign me actual quarters.

My bed was a pile of blankets in a space meant for brooms.

I'd stopped complaining about it two years ago.

"Sophia."

The voice stopped me cold.

I turned slowly.

Lena leaned against the corridor wall, arms crossed, golden hair spilling over her shoulders like melted sunlight. She wore a gown of deep green silk, the kind of dress that cost more than my entire existence. Her lips curved into a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Out for a walk?" she asked.

"Something like that."

"Something like that." She pushed off the wall and stepped closer. Her scent filled the narrow corridor,honeysuckle and something sour beneath. "You missed the celebration."

"I was working."

"Were you?" Lena circled me slowly. Her bare feet made no sound on the stone floor. "Because I checked the kitchen. Marla said you finished hours ago."

My jaw tightened. "I had other things to do."

"What other things?"

The question hung between us. Lena stopped directly in front of me, close enough that I could see the tiny crescent scar beside her left eye. The one she'd gotten as a child, falling out of a tree while I'd watched from below, too afraid to climb after her.

We'd been different then. Before the pack hierarchy sank its teeth into us. Before Lena learned that stepping on me meant climbing higher.

"Nothing that concerns you," I said.

Lena's smile sharpened. "Everything concerns me now."

I frowned. "What does that mean?"

She tilted her head, studying me the way a cat studies a mouse. "You haven't heard. Of course you haven't. No one tells the help anything."

"Tells them what?"

Lena reached up and touched her collarbone. The gesture was deliberate. Calculated.

"I'm going to be Luna."

The words didn't make sense at first. They bounced off my brain like stones skipping across water. Luna. Lena. Luna.

"What?"

"Gabriel is going to announce it at the Blood Moon Hunt." Lena's smile widened. "He came to me last night. Told me everything. About the bond. About you. About how the Moon Goddess made a mistake."

My lungs stopped working.

"He said…”

"…He said the bond with you was never meant to be permanent." Lena stepped closer. Her voice dropped to a whisper, intimate and cruel. "He said the goddess used you as a placeholder until someone worthy came along."

"You're lying."

"Am I?" Lena reached out and touched my cheek. Her fingers were cold. "Why would I lie about something so easy to prove? Wait three days, Sophia. Watch him stand before both packs and choose me."

I jerked away from her touch.

The movement was too fast. Too sharp. My shoulder hit the corridor wall, and a framed painting crashed to the floor. Glass shattered across the stones.

Lena didn't flinch.

"You're shaking," she observed. "How pitiful."

"Get away from me."

"I'm trying to help you." She spread her hands, all innocence. "I'm giving you time to prepare. To accept your place. When Gabriel rejects you publicly, it's going to hurt. But at least you won't be surprised."

"Reject me?"

The word tasted like ash.

Lena's eyes glittered. "The ritual has to be performed before the Hunt. Something about the moon's alignment. Gabriel said a simple rejection would be enough, but he wants to be thorough. He's going to use the silver dagger."

The silver dagger.

I knew the ritual. Every wolf did. The ceremonial blade, blessed by three generations of Alpha blood. A single cut across the palm, and the mate bond would sever. Clean. Final. Irreversible.

"I don't believe you."

"Then ask him yourself." Lena stepped back, smoothing her gown. "Oh wait. You can't. Because he won't see you. He won't speak to you. He's going to pretend you don't exist until the Hunt, and then he's going to destroy you in front of everyone."

Something inside me cracked.

Not the bond. Something deeper. Something that had been holding me together since my parents died.

"I've done nothing to you," I whispered.

Lena's smile disappeared. For a moment, something raw and ugly flickered across her face. "You exist. That's enough."

She turned and walked away.

Her footsteps faded down the corridor. The shards of glass glittered at my feet like broken stars. I stood there for a long time, staring at nothing, feeling everything.

The bond pulsed. But it was weaker now.

He wouldn't, I told myself. He wouldn't reject me. He came to the cabin. He looked at my maps. He said tomorrow.

But Lena's words stuck beneath my skin like splinters.

The silver dagger.

Before the Hunt.

He's going to destroy you.

I bent down and picked up a piece of broken glass. The edge caught the torchlight, sharp enough to draw blood. I turned it over in my fingers, watching the light shift across its surface.

Somewhere down the hall, laughter echoed through the packhouse.

Gabriel's laughter.

I knew it the way I knew my own heartbeat.

He was celebrating. Enjoying the evening. Probably surrounded by warriors and elders and she-wolves who weren't me.

And I was standing in a servant's corridor, holding broken glass, trying not to fall apart.

I would have ignored them. Then I heard Gabriel's name. My feet stopped.

"...future Luna material."

Laughter followed.

Another voice answered.

"Obviously Lena."

More laughter.

A familiar voice joined them.

Gabriel.

My stomach tightened instantly.

"At least she isn't an omega."

The world seemed to stop. Silence followed. Then someone laughed.

Another joined in. Gabriel laughed too. My chest cracked open. I couldn't see them. Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.

The mate bond pulsed painfully.

Every word carving deeper.

"Can you imagine?" one warrior joked. "The future alpha mated to a kitchen omega."

More laughter.

A kitchen omega, that’s what they saw me as.

Then Gabriel spoke again, this time cold, casual and effortless.

"I'd rather challenge a rogue bear."

The group exploded with amusement.

Something inside me shattered.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. Quietly and completely .

I backed away before they could see me.

One step.

Then another.

Then another.

I dropped the shard.

It hit the floor and shattered further. Then I walked to my closet. Closed the door. Curled into my pile of blankets. And stared at the darkness until my eyes burned.

Sleep didn't come. Neither did tears.

Only the bond.

Throbbing.

Fading.

Dying.

I tried so hard to sleep without the words echoing in my ear.

One hour, then two till it got to three hours I couldn’t sleep

And somewhere in the early hours before dawn, when the pack house finally fell silent, I heard footsteps outside my door.