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Chapter 3

Author: Mellona
Early the next morning, I went to the pack’s Elder Council hall to pick up my final departure papers.

I’d barely stepped out of the circular corridor when a few young she-wolves from the pack blocked my way.

They were Mia’s new friends.

“Well, look who it is. Isn’t this Chloe, who tried to use a mate bond to force our future Alpha to mark her and ended up getting exiled instead?”

The one leading the group looked me up and down with contempt, then lunged for the folder in my hand.

I looked at her coldly and shifted aside. “Get lost.”

“What’s your problem?” she snapped, raising her voice. “Mia was right. Just because you grew up with Elias and Holden, you thought you’d be our future Luna. Too bad they chose Mia instead.”

Amid a burst of jeering laughter, the girl next to her, Brianna Cole, “accidentally” bumped into a purification basin in the corridor and knocked it over.

Icy water mixed with dirt splashed all over me.

I looked up, letting my icy gaze sweep across them. They flinched back a step, faces white.

Just then, footsteps came from the other end of the corridor.

Elias and the others were with Mia, getting the papers she needed to stay in Central City. When Elias saw what was going on, he hurried over and stepped protectively in front of a frightened Mia.

“Chloe, if you’ve got a problem, take it up with us. Don’t go crazy in the council hall and scare Mia.”

Before I could open my mouth, Brianna put on a wounded expression. “I’m so sorry. My hand just slipped...”

Elias frowned impatiently at my soaked clothes. “You’re soaking wet. Go home and change. Stop causing trouble.”

So when they humiliated me in public, it was just an accident.

But just standing there made me the troublemaker.

A cold, dull ache spread through my chest.

Before, whenever anyone wronged me even a little, Elias was always the first to step in front of me and take my side, no questions asked.

But now he’d watched me get drenched in front of everyone, and all he could think was that I was causing trouble.

I didn’t feel like defending myself anymore. I gripped my file and walked out of the hall.

I’d just gotten home and changed out of my wet clothes when someone shoved the front door open.

Elias and Holden stormed in with Mia. “Where’s the moonstone necklace?”

Holden got straight to the point, his voice cold. “We gave it to Mia to welcome her into the pack. She’d barely put it on when it disappeared. You were the only one who got close to her at the council hall. You must’ve stolen it.”

Then he marched straight into my bedroom and yanked my drawers open.

The others started going through my closet and my desk.

For ten years, they’d never once bothered to knock before entering my home.

I used to think it meant we were that close. Now I understood they simply felt entitled to trample all over everything that was mine.

Holden pulled open my closet and found it empty.

“Why’d you clear out all your clothes? Trying to scare us?” He laughed.

“Chloe, how old are you? Still pretending to run away from home?”

They laughed like it was nothing. Not one of them imagined I really was leaving Central City.

Then Mia suddenly pulled the necklace from an inside pocket of her own coat.

“Oh, here it is...” She blushed and looked at me. “Sorry, Chloe. I put it in the wrong pocket. I shouldn’t have accused you.”

Elias didn’t make her apologize. He just ruffled her hair fondly. “As long as you found it. Stop crying.”

Not one of them thought they owed me an apology for tearing my place apart.

Watching them blindly defend Mia, I finally saw the truth.

I’d long since been shut out of the world the three of them shared.

I calmly picked up my black duffel from the floor. “I’ll leave you three to your little bonding moment.”
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