Chapter 3
848 Words
CHAPTER THREE
LEIGH'S POV
I sat on the edge of the bed with the ice pack melting in my hand.
Just standing there. That's what I kept seeing. Myself in that room tonight, hands at my sides, face still, watching.
Looking stupid.
I didn't sleep.
I sat up until the sky outside my window went from black to dark blue to the pale grey that comes just before sunrise, and I cried and I didn't cry and I cried again and somewhere in the middle of all of it I started talking to the moon goddess the way you talk to someone you're furious at who isn't there to answer.
Why him. That was the whole argument. Out of every wolf in every pack under every sky — why him. A hunter. A farmer. A beta with a small house and a quiet life and no chosen Luna already sitting on a throne. Anyone. Give me anyone else.
The bond pulsed in my chest like it was listening.
Like it found the whole thing amusing.
I packed my bag around three in the morning. Unpacked it. Packed it again. Every time I closed the zipper I thought about Lola's face at the ceremony with that serious little nod, you should leave, mum says — and something in me refused to close it all the way.
By the time the sky was fully grey I was done.
Bag packed. Sitting by the door. Waiting for whatever came next but what came next was Sola.
She didn't knock.
She walked into my room at seven in the morning in a silk robe with her hair still perfect from sleep and she closed the door behind her and looked at me sitting on the edge of my bed with my packed bag and she smiled mischievously like she knew I was going to leave the Pack, Did Garett tell her anything?
"You're already packed," she said. "Good. That saves us time."
I watched her.
She moved to the window. Looked out at the compound below for a moment like she was in no hurry. Like she had all the time in the world and she knew it.
"I know about Lola," she said.
The floor dropped out from under me.
I kept my face still.
"I've known for a while actually." She turned from the window. "Longer than you'd think. I had her tested six months ago. Quietly. The results were very clear." A pause. "She's yours. She's Garrick's. And she's been living in my house calling me mother for five years."
I said nothing, my hands become sweaty and cold.
There was nothing to say that didn't make it worse.
"Here's what's going to happen." Her voice was pleasant. Conversational. The voice of a woman explaining something simple to someone slow.
"You are going to pack whatever is left in this room, and you are going to walk out of Silver Ash Pack today. Voluntarily and quietly with no scene, no claims, no conversation with Garrick about mates or bonds or any of it."
"And if I don't?"
She tilted her head.
"Then I tell Lola the truth and still kill you." She let that sit and let me feel the shape of it.
"I will tell her that her real mother is the maid. The forbidden siphon. The woman the whole pack knows is cursed and dangerous and should have been put down the moment she was born."
Another pause. "She's five, Leigh. Can you imagine what that does to a five year old? The questions she'll ask? The way the other children will treat her once they know her mother is — "
"Stop!" I yelled at her.
"— a siphon with no rank and no standing who has been sneaking into her father's bed for three years while he celebrated his anniversary with his wife —"
"I said that's enough!"
She stopped.
We looked at each other across the room.
My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs and breathed and told myself still, be still, don't let her see it —
She saw it already.
"I'm not a monster," she said softly. "I'm a mother protecting her family. You understand that. I think out of everyone in this pack, you understand that."
That was the cruelest part.
She was right.
I picked up my bag.
My hands were steady by then. I don't know how. Some things your body just does because your mind has gone somewhere it can't follow.
I walked to the door.
"Leigh."
I stopped.
"If you come back —" Her voice stayed pleasant. "If you reach out to her, if you make contact, if I find out you've been anywhere near my daughter —"
"She's my daughter."
Silence.
"Not anymore after today." Sola said.
I walked out.
Down the corridor and the stairs. Through the east wing and past the kitchen where the morning maids were already working and they looked at me and looked away and nobody said a word.
I didn't look back.
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