Novah's POV
The damp chill of the bench had seeped through my thin skirt, merging with the icy numbness spreading from my core. Ashton’s words – *Fix it* – echoed in the hollow space left behind by my sobs, a relentless, mocking refrain. Fix it? Fix *what*? The impossible pairing? The way his eyes, usually so distant and cool, had burned with pure, unadulterated contempt aimed solely at me? Fix the fact that my very existence seemed to be an inconvenience, a stain on the pristine world of the Moon-Star pack’s elite? Fix the crushing knowledge that after graduation, I’d be handed over like a bargaining chip to some obnoxious Alpha from a rival pack, a future my own father had brokered without a second thought?
My shallow mind skittered across the surface of these horrors, unable to dive deep, unable to formulate a plan. It felt like trying to grasp smoke. All it could latch onto was the immediate, searing humiliation. The whispers. The stares. Alice’s vicious smirk. The way Loveth’s ab
