Chapter 6 – It Wasn't Too Late to Change
1063 Words
Jake's POV
Grandma wouldn’t stop mind-linking me. I felt a migraine forming behind my eyes. My efforts to block her were creating built-up tension around my temples. I frowned.
I gave in.
Grandma.
So you finally remembered you have a grandmother. Her voice came through the link sharp and clear. What is this mess with Adrienne?
She's sick. She doesn't have bad intentions.
Are you out of your damn mind? The link crackled with her anger. She knows you have a mate. She has always known. And she keeps coming anyway. That's not innocence, Jake — that's calculation. Cut ties with her. Go find Angela. Right now.
Angela's face flashed through my mind. The corridor. Her back, walking away.
I pushed it aside.
Did Angela complain to you?
Angela doesn't need to say a word. Grandma's voice dropped to something harder. Your Luna fell to the ground in front of the whole pack and you just stood there. Do you understand what that does to her standing? Every wolf in this territory saw their Luna hit the floor while her Alpha watched.
I didn't answer.
Jake. Grandpa Nolan's voice cut in. Rougher than it used to be. The Alpha madness had taken the smoothness out of it, but the authority was still there. You brought Angela before the elders yourself. You said you wanted her. That means you answer for her. Come to dinner tonight. Bring her.
The link closed.
I sat alone in my Alpha chambers.
My fingers tapped the armrest. I looked at Angela's photo on my phone and then opened the mind-link channel.
Ever since the severance of our matebond, communication with her had been lax. As if my Alpha authority over her had weakened to the point where she didn’t even have to answer my mind-links.
I tried again. This time she picked up.
What are you doing? I said.
What do you want? She answered my question with one of her own.
I pressed two fingers to my temple. Why were you at the Healers' Quarters?
I went to see Rosalie.
Don't lie to me, Angela.
Her laugh came through the link. Light. Unbothered.
Marco snarled. I felt the same.
Come back tonight, I said. My grandparents are expecting us for dinner.
I'm busy.
Not even a pause.
It's Grandpa's order.
Silence. I waited. Nothing came back. I tried twice more. She didn't answer.
I went to our chambers myself.
Angel.
My voice came out low and sharp in the dark room. Nothing.
I hit the light switch.
The sofa was empty.
I stood in the doorway and looked at it. Every time I'd come home — late, distracted, smelling of pack business — the lights had been on. She would be on that sofa with a book sliding off her chest, having fallen asleep waiting. I'd walk past her most nights without stopping.
I went room to room.
Luna Wing. Empty. Bedroom. Empty.
The walk-in closet — empty on her side.
I stopped. Looked again.
Her half of the rail. Bare. The paired towels — one left. The matching mugs — one left. The spare slippers she'd set out for me every evening — one pair now, mine.
Everything shared had been halved.
She wasn't angry.
She was gone.
Marco, I said.
He didn't respond. He'd gone to a place inside me where he went when he didn't want to be found.
That scared me more than anything else.
I grabbed my suits and left.
It was only in the car that the smell hit me — faint on the fabric, caught in the collar of my jacket.
Her perfume. The one I'd brought back from that first business trip. Still on the air in our bedroom even though everything else she owned was already gone.
She's not coming back, Marco said from wherever he was hiding. This time, she's not coming back.
She always comes back.
She always did, Marco said. The correction was quiet. Past tense, Jake. Same as everything else.
I gripped the steering wheel and couldn’t bear to think about what that meant.
Angela's POV
The nail salon was warm and quiet and smelled like acetone and something floral.
Rosalie held her finished hand under the light. "You chose the fetus-safe polish."
"The pup is still here," I said. "If I can choose, I will."
She looked at me sideways. "I thought you were terminating."
"I might still have to." I looked at my own hands. "But it's still mine right now."
It's ours, Silvia said quietly from somewhere deep. Whatever you decide — it was always ours.
I didn't answer her out loud. But I let her words sit.
“That’s perfectly fine,” Rosalie said, shrugging. “What’s important is that you’re willing to change.
“Manicures are just the tip of the iceberg. Up next are your hairstyle and wardrobe.
“Angela, I still remember when we were barely ten, sneaking around in our mother’s pointed high heels,” Rosalie teased, breathing on her nails. “There’s no reason for us to become plain the older we get.”
Rosalie let out a long sigh, flexing her sparkling nails under the light. “Too bad I’m a healer now. I can’t go overboard with flashy styles anymore.”
After a brief pause, Rosalie asked, "When's the last time you got your nails done?"
I thought about it. I couldn't remember.
Somewhere in the year of being Luna it had stopped. Jake's stomach problems meant overseeing every meal. The laundry, the household accounts, the omega schedules, the packhouse calendar. I'd filled every hour with the business of making his life run smoothly and somewhere in there I had stopped doing the small things that had once belonged only to me.
"Too long," I said.
I looked at my hands.
The color I'd chosen was dark. Something I never would have picked as Luna — too noticeable, too much for myself alone.
No more, Silvia said. And this time it didn't sound like grief.
It sounded like the beginning of something.
I straightened my fingers and let the light catch the color.
The music competition. The producer waiting on my confirmation. My father's death still uninvestigated, still sitting in the back of my mind like a debt I hadn't been allowed to repay.
One thing at a time.
But I was starting.
- Writer
