THE ASHWOOD LEGACY

THREE YEARS GONE

Chapter 3 — Three Years Gone

Ravenshade, Present Day — Three Years Later

The city had swallowed her whole, and Elena had let it.

She'd started with nothing but a duffel bag, six hundred dollars in cash, and a rage that never quite burned out — just banked itself down into something colder and more useful. She'd worked three jobs her first year in the human world: barista by morning, data entry by afternoon, bartender by night, sleeping in four-hour stretches in a studio apartment above a laundromat that smelled permanently of fabric softener and instant noodles.

She hadn't shifted once in that first year. Couldn't bring herself to. Every time she tried, all she felt was the phantom tear of a bond snapping apart, and she'd stopped trying rather than relive it.

Instead she'd thrown herself into something else entirely — spreadsheets, market analysis, the strange cold comfort of numbers that didn't care what rank you'd been born into. By year two she'd used her savings to buy into a failing logistics startup nobody else wanted. By year three, Solaris Dynamics wasn't failing anymore. It was the fastest-growing private company in three states, and Elena Marsh — no longer an unranked omega, no longer anyone's rejected mate — sat at the head of its boardroom table like she'd been born there.

"You look like you're about to fire someone," Sable said, dropping into the chair across from her with two coffees and the particular grin she wore when she had gossip. Sable had followed her to the human world eight months after the rejection, unable to stay in Crimson Hollow once Elena was gone, and Elena had never once regretted letting her.

"I look like I have a board meeting in twenty minutes."

"Same thing, most days." Sable slid one coffee across the table. "Quarterly numbers came in. We beat projections by eleven percent."

Elena allowed herself the smallest smile. Three years ago she'd been an omega with nothing. Now board members with more money than sense called her "Ms. Marsh" in a tone reserved for people they were slightly afraid of.

It should have felt like enough.

It never quite did.

"You've been having the dream again," Sable said. Not a question.

Elena's hand tightened around her coffee cup. "It's nothing."

"El, you talk in your sleep. I've heard you three times this month. Something about a crown. Moonlight." Sable's voice dropped, careful now. "You know I don't buy that it's nothing."

Before Elena could answer, her assistant knocked and let herself in without waiting for a response — a habit Elena had given up trying to correct.

"Ms. Marsh. The board wants you in the conference room early. There's a merger proposal that just came in, and legal says it's time-sensitive."

"What company?"

Her assistant checked her tablet, and something about her expression shifted — hesitant, almost apologetic, though she couldn't have known why.

"Cross Enterprises. They're looking for a strategic partner to help restructure their real estate holdings, and our name came up as the preferred acquirer." She glanced up. "The CEO wants a meeting within the week. A Mr. Damian Cross."

Elena didn't move. Didn't breathe, for one long second.

Three years, and the universe had apparently decided that wasn't nearly enough distance.

"Ms. Marsh?" her assistant prompted. "Should I schedule it?"

Sable was watching her with wide eyes across the table, silently mouthing are you okay in a way that made it very clear she already knew the answer.

Elena set down her coffee with hands that were, she noted distantly, completely steady.

"Schedule it," she said. "I'll take the meeting myself."