Chapter 2

The diamond ring glinted in the morning light, mocking me.

I twisted it, trying to pull it off. It wouldn’t budge.

Of course it wouldn’t—Lucien, an Alpha-born wolf obsessed with symbolism, had it sized perfectly.

“I don’t ever want you to take it off,” he’d said the day he slipped the ring on my finger, letting a faint ripple of his wolf aura wrap around my wrist like a claim.

A claim I’d let him make.

I pulled harder. The metal cut into my skin. Blood welled up around the band, but I kept twisting, kept pulling.

Finally, it slid free.

I stared at the red marks it left behind—like shackles removed from a prisoner.

Marks that looked uncomfortably close to an Alpha’s rejection burn.

The ring sat in my palm, covered in my blood.

“Five years,” I whispered to it. “Five years for nothing.”

I walked to my mother’s bedroom—the room Lucien always said was “too cluttered” for his modern aesthetic and “too human” for his wolf family’s taste.

Her Bible lay on the nightstand next to my college graduation photo.

I placed the ring on top of the Bible.

Payment received, I thought.

For pretending to love your daughter.

Two days passed in a fog.

Two days of numbness.

Two days of sorting my mother’s things while ignoring the heaviness of wolf instincts pressing against my chest—grief always triggered dormant wolf senses, even in someone like me, who’d tried so hard to suppress them.

Lucien’s calls went to voicemail.

Thirty-seven missed calls.

Forty-two text messages.

I read none of them.

Instead, I found our old photo albums—the ones I’d spent hours curating during my “good fiancée” years in the Moreau household.

Picture after picture of Lucien and me.

Always me beside him, smiling that quiet, agreeable smile human women were expected to have when paired with Alpha-born wolves.

I picked up the scissors.

Snip.

His face fell away from the first photo.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

I cut him out of every single picture.

Even the ones where his wolf eyes glowed faintly from catching light.

When I reached the group photos with Brielle—the ones she’d insisted were “friendly”—I cut her out too.

Their smiling faces littered the floor like confetti.

“You both looked so happy,” I said to the scraps. “Even then.”

My phone buzzed with a new Instagram notification.

Brielle’s post:

A carousel of Montana photos.

The last one of her and Lucien in matching ski gear.

His hand was on her back in the intimate, wolf-protective way he’d once touched me.

Caption: The best trips are the ones you never want to end ?✨

Lucien’s comment:

Already planning the next one ?

I screenshot it. Evidence, I told myself, though I wasn’t sure what case I was building.

I didn’t cry. Couldn’t cry.

My wolf instincts didn’t howl or rage—they retreated, silent and wounded, curling deep inside my chest.

That night, I stood in the bathroom with the bloody engagement ring cupped in my palm.

Lucien had proposed here.

In this apartment.

On one knee.

Promising me forever.

“You’re my sun, lara,” he’d said. “Everything in me revolves around you. Even my wolf.”

Liar.

I dropped the ring into the toilet. It hit the water with a soft plop.

I flushed.

The diamond sparkled once as it spiraled downward—then disappeared.

Five years, gone in five seconds.

I should’ve felt something—anger, grief, regret.

Instead, I felt… light.

Like I’d finally shed a skin that didn’t fit.

My phone rang.

Lucien’s name flashed across the screen.

I answered.

“lara! Finally! I’ve been trying to reach you for two days. What the hell?”

“My mother died,” I said flatly.

Silence.

Even his wolf aura, faint through the phone, seemed to freeze.

“I… I know. I’m so sorry. But you disappeared—”

“You were in Montana.”

“Brielle needed support. She was devastated.”

“My mother needed her leg.”

“That’s not fair, lara. It was an accident—”

“Where are you right now, Lucien?”

A pause.

“I’m… we’re driving back from the airport. Brielle’s with me. She wanted to apologize in person.”

Of course she did.

“Don’t bother coming,” I said.

“What? lara, this is my apartment—”

“Was. It was your apartment.”

I hung up.

Then blocked his number.

Then blocked Brielle’s.

Then blocked every member of the Moreau family.

Forty-three contacts, gone.

And with each block, something inside me—the hidden part that still carried wolf blood—felt freer.

As if the invisible chain he’d wrapped around my neck finally snapped.