The days crawled by like shadows dragging across cold stone. I stayed in my room, hidden from the sunlight, from the world, from myself. I didn't eat much. I didn't speak unless spoken to. I only breathed because my body insisted on it. The pain Rita left behind lived in every breath I took: sharp, unwanted, and permanent.
I thought rejecting me was a mistake she would regret but here she was, getting married to William, the boy who had humiliated me at every slightest opportunity.
I heard them talking about the wedding around the Silver Blade Pack house. At first, it was whispers. But soon the whispers turned into plans, the plans turned into preparations, and the preparations became announcements.
“Rita Bernard and William of the Shadow Blade Pact are getting married,” Alpha Matthew a
