Elena's POV

The box shouldn't have felt heavy cause it was just a pocket silver watch. It was custom-engraved with the crescent moon of the Bloodmoon Pack and our wedding date. I had spent weeks tracking down the right craftsman, more weeks waiting. But every bit of it was going to be worth it. That was the thing 

For Caleb. My Alpha. My husband.

Tomorrow was our vow renewal. Three years of being his Luna, three years of trying to be enough for a pack that had never quite decided whether to love me or simply tolerate me. Three years of convincing myself it didn't matter, because Caleb loved me. Because tomorrow he was going to stand in front of every person who had ever whispered about me and say so publicly, in front of witnesses and a priest and the moon goddess herself.

I was holding the velvet box pressed against my chest and smiling about that when I heard it.

I was halfway down the long carpeted hallway toward our bedroom when the sound slipped through the gap in the door. 

I heard him laughing. And then, I heard a giggle after that. 

I knew that giggle.

That was my step sister, Victoria's voice.

The bedroom door wasn't fully closed. My hand went still on the brass handle. I told myself it was nothing. I told myself she was probably just helping him with something for the ceremony, last-minute details. I told myself there was a reasonable explanation for why my stepsister was laughing behind my bedroom door at nine o'clock at night.

I leaned forward anyway.

Caleb was on the bed, sitting up against the headboard with his shirt off. Victoria was stretched across his lap wearing my silk robe, her blonde hair loose over his shoulders. Her fingers were tracing a slow, lazy line down his collarbone.

The velvet box slipped in my hands, but I was quick to catch it.

My heart was hammering so hard I was certain they would hear it through the door.

"What if the fat whale walks in?" Victoria giggled, tilting her face up toward him. "She's probably running around somewhere finalizing the menu for tomorrow." She said it like a private joke.

Caleb laughed. "Let her. The more effort she puts into tomorrow, the funnier it is."

"Are you seriously going through with the renewal?" Victoria's voice turned into a pretty little pout. "I hate seeing you up there with her. It turns my stomach."

"It's just for show." His voice was perfectly smooth. "The elders need a united front before the merger with your father's lands is finalized. The second the ceremony is over and the papers are signed, I'm handing her the divorce documents."

My knees buckled. I grabbed the doorframe to stay upright.

Divorce.

"You promise?" Victoria asked. She sounded like a child on Christmas Eve, who was certain of something wonderful.

"Of course I promise." He said it without any weight at all. "Do you actually think I want to stay married to her? She disgusts me, Victoria. Every time I have to touch her, I close my eyes and pretend she's you."

A tear slid down my cheek. I didn't feel it fall until it dripped off my chin onto the back of my hand.

"She really is massive," Victoria said, settling her head against his chest. "I don't know how she walks around without being humiliated every single day."

"No man could ever genuinely want a woman like her." He said it plainly. "She's pathetic. The only reason I ever agreed to marry her was because of what her mother left for her before her death. Her mother's dowry funded our entire defense line. Now that we have the money and the land is secured, she has served her purpose. She's completely useless to me."

 Three years of doubting myself had given him a very precise map of where all my soft places were, and he hit every single one.

I couldn't watch anymore.

I stepped back from the door, one careful foot at a time, making no sound on the carpet. I didn't let myself shake until I had turned the corner at the far end of the hallway. Then I pressed my back flat against the wall, slid down it slowly until I was sitting on the cold marble floor, and I held my hand over my mouth and cried until there was nothing left.

I don't know how long I sat there. Maybe long enough that my legs went numb. 

Eventually I stood up. There was nowhere to go but forward. Standing still felt worse than moving.

I drifted down to the ground floor without any plan, just walking because I needed to do something with my body. I was almost to the back hallway near the secondary kitchen when voices made me stop behind one of the stone pillars.

"Did you see the dress the Luna ordered for tomorrow?" Martha, one of the head maids said. "The seamstress had to use double the fabric. It genuinely looks like a tent."

There was laughter. 

"Alpha Caleb deserves someone elegant beside him," another maid said. "A real beauty. Not someone who embarrasses the entire pack just by walking into the room. Honestly, I cannot imagine how he tolerates it."

I felt the walls pressing inward.

I turned sharply around the corner, needing air, needing to be somewhere that wasn't inside any of these walls.

Smash.

I walked straight into Caleb's mother.

Evelyn was in a floor-length emerald gown, with both hands around a silver tray carrying an antique tea set. The tray hit the marble first and the porcelain shattered in every direction. Dark tea spread in a wide stain across the white tile, and for a single, terrible second the whole hallway went still.

Then Evelyn turned to face me, and the initial shock on her face curdled into something much colder within about half a second.

"I'm so sorry," I said immediately. My voice was already unsteady. "I didn't see you, I wasn't looking where I was going .."

Crack.

The slap snapped my head sideways. Heat bloomed across my entire cheek.

When I looked back up, three maids had showed up in the doorway behind her. They stood and watched. Not one of them moved a single step.

"This set belonged to my grandmother," Evelyn said. Her voice was very quiet. "It survived three pack wars. Three generations of this family carried it through bloodshed and open battles, and your clumsiness destroyed it in three seconds."

"It was an accident …."

"I said shut up." She stepped closer. "You ruin everything you touch. You drag my son's name through the mud every time you stand beside him in public. You are an embarrassment to this title and everyone in this pack knows it."

She pointed at the floor. "Pick it up. Every single piece, with your hands."

"Ma'am, I can bring a broom ….." one of the maids offered quietly.

"She will do it," Evelyn said, still looking only at me. "With her hands. Every piece."

I looked down at the jagged porcelain scattered across the tile. I looked back up at those flat, cold eyes. There was nothing in them. Not a single degree of warmth or hesitation.

I dropped to my knees.

The first shard sliced straight into the pad of my thumb the moment I reached for it. A thin line of blood ran down into the tea and spread. I kept reaching. The second piece cut deeper into my palm. Then another. Pack warriors walked through the corridor and stepped around me without slowing, their boots landing inches from my fingers like I was furniture.

Evelyn walked away without another word. The maids followed her, their voices dropping to soft, amused whispers, and the hallway went completely quiet.

I knelt alone on the cold floor with my bleeding hands, the velvet gift box sitting forgotten in a puddle of ruined tea beside me, and I kept picking up every single piece until the floor was clear.