Chapter 4

Willow’s POV

I don’t know how long I sat there sobbing my heart out.

My throat started to ache and my body ran out of the energy to cry. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them as I just sat there in my tiny room, staring at nothing.

My room had been a storage room once, but the alpha family had converted it years ago when they brought me here.

All it had now was a bed and a small dresser. The ceiling was low. There was one small window near the top of the wall that let in little light to make the room feel dim rather than completely dark. There was no mirror. There was barely enough space to take three full steps in any direction.

I had lived in this room for eleven years.

I had been eight years old when Alpha Kelvin, Noah’s father brought me to the Pinecrest Pack. I didn’t remember much about the war — I was too young, and most of what I knew came from the few things I had heard from rumors and gossips. My pack had been destroyed. I was one of the few survivors, and I survived only because I was a child and I had no wolf so I was therefore no threat to anyone.

Alpha Kelvin had taken me in. It sounded generous and kind.

But the reality was that no one in this house had ever treated me like a person. They were not cruel to me. They did not beat me, but they simply looked through me like i was insignifcant or like I didn’t exist.

The pack members were different. Majority of them looked for opportunities to make my life miserable, especially Stacey, who loved to remind me who I was.

Wolfless. Omega. Nobody.

I had grown up knowing exactly what I was to these people. I had made peace with it. I had told myself it didn’t matter. I had told myself I didn’t need them to see me.

And then there was Noah.

Noah had been fifteen when I first arrived, and he had been the first person in this entire house to look at me like I was actually there.

He was always kind to me. He always came back to check on me. He noticed when I skipped meals. He slipped food under my door several times when I had been confined to my room for minor mistakes I had made.

By the time I was eighteen and he was twenty-one, something had shifted. I didn’t know how to name it then.

The first time he kissed me, we were behind the alpha quarters. I had been crying about something Stacey had said, some insult about my mother, and he had found me there.

He didn’t say anything for a while. He just sat beside me on the floor until I had stopped crying, then he turned and looked at me with a soft expression, and kissed me so carefully it barely felt real.

“You matter to me,” he had murmured afterward.

My chest twisted painfully at the memory. 

I had believed him.

I had believed him every single time after that—when he said we had to be careful.

I believed him when he said the hiding was temporary.

I believed him when he said Stacey was fake and I was different and what we had was real.

I believed all of it for four years, because he was the only real thing I had in this place and I was desperate to hold on to it.

And now I was sitting in my room with my eyes swollen and his baby growing inside me.

I pressed both hands over my face with a pained groan.

A knock sounded on the door, startling me.

I lifted my head, wiping my face quickly with the back of my hands, but it did little to make me look better. My eyes were swollen. My cheeks were still wet. I still looked miserable.

Maybe it was Noah. Maybe he had changed his mind. Maybe he had decided to choose me after all.

“Come in,” I said. My voice was hoarse.

The door opened.

My heart stopped.

It was Alpha Kelvin. Noah’s father.

I stood up immediately. You did not stay seated when the alpha entered a room. No matter how strange it was to see him enter this room for the first time in almost eleven years.

Alpha Kelvin had never sought me out before. He came to the east wing sometimes, yes, if there was business with the lower-ranking staff. But my room? Never.

He glanced around, and I caught the faint disgust in his expression. I swallowed, turning my gaze to the ground.

Then he looked at me.

His eyes moved over my face slowly, then he lifted one eyebrow.

“You must have heard the news then.”

I went completely still in shock.

“Wha— ” I stuttered. “What do you mean?”