Chapter 4: “…You?”

ELLA’S POV

My stepsisters lingered by the door as I finished dressing, arms crossed, matching smirks firmly in place, watching me the way they always had — like my life was a show performed entirely for their amusement.

“Have fun with Mr. Crippled.” Chloe examined her nails with theatrical boredom. “I’m sure your bought body is exactly what he ordered.”

“Bought body.” I laughed, short and humorless, tying the sash of my traveling coat, refusing to give them the satisfaction of seeing how deep the words still cut, even now, even after everything I’d survived without them. “Careful. People might start asking what actually happened to me, and you won’t like the answer.”

“Oh, please.” Claudia rolled her eyes, leaning against the doorframe with the same lazy cruelty she’d perfected since childhood. “Whatever expensive doctor fixed you up, it clearly didn’t fix the attitude.”

“No,” I agreed, meeting her gaze evenly. “That part, I kept on purpose.”

They didn’t know — none of them did — that the weight they’d mocked for years hadn’t come from indulgence or laziness. It had come from a marriage that starved me of everything but stress, from years of swallowing humiliation instead of food, from grief I’d carried silently because no one in that house had ever once asked if I was allowed to fall apart.

I’d rebuilt myself in the years since, piece by piece, in a city where nobody knew my name or my history, and none of them had earned the right to comment on how.

I said none of that out loud. It wasn’t worth the breath, and I had a much larger performance waiting for me at the end of this drive.

The car that carried me away from the pack house felt smaller than I remembered, the leather seats stiff beneath me, my own reflection staring back from the window looking far calmer than I actually felt. I pressed a hand flat against my stomach, the way I’d caught myself doing more and more lately, and wondered what kind of woman walked willingly into a stranger’s household for the second time in her life.

I told myself it was duty. I told myself it was for the pack. I didn’t fully believe either reason, but they were the only ones I had left to hold onto.

…

Silvermoon’s pack house rose out of the hills like something built to remind visitors exactly how small they were by comparison — towers of pale stone, ivy climbing walls older than any pack I’d ever set foot in. An elderly woman waited at the top of the entrance steps, silver hair pinned into an elegant twist, her whole face lighting up the moment our car doors opened.

“There you are!” Her eyes landed on me first, and she swept forward, hands outstretched, warmth radiating off her in a way that made my stomach twist with confusion. “Chloe, my dear girl, you’re even lovelier than the photographs. Welcome, welcome. I’m so pleased you’ve finally come.”

I froze, certain I’d misheard her.

“I’m sorry,” I said carefully. “I think there’s been a mistake. I’m not —”

“Chloe is a bit overwhelmed by the journey,” Regina cut in smoothly, stepping between us before I could finish, her hand landing on my shoulder like a warning disguised as affection. “Aren’t you, darling? Do forgive her. It’s been a very long day.”

I stared at my stepmother, understanding arriving a beat too slowly. She’d given Silvermoon my stepsister’s name months ago, back when Chloe was still meant to be the one standing on these steps, back before whatever calculation had shifted in Regina’s mind and put me here instead.

Somewhere between that arrangement and tonight, the plan had changed — but the name on file with this family never had.

I was Chloe now. At least as far as anyone in this house was concerned.

Regina’s grip tightened on my shoulder, a silent command aimed at both of us at once.

“How lovely to finally meet you properly,” the grandmother continued, entirely oblivious to the current running beneath the surface of the conversation. “Family should always find their way to each other eventually. Come, come, you two— let’s get you inside before the evening chill sets in.”

We followed her through towering doors into a hall lit gold and warm, and my mind raced ahead of my feet, trying to calculate exactly how far Regina intended to carry this lie, and what would happen to me the moment it finally unraveled.

If I was Chloe here, then whatever this marriage demanded of me, whatever debt it paid off, would be recorded under a name that wasn’t mine — and I doubted very much that Regina had thought that far ahead, or cared to.

“My grandson will be joining us shortly,” the grandmother said, settling us into a parlor dressed in more gold than I’d seen outside of a vault. “He’s terribly shy about these gatherings, I’m afraid, but I promise you he’s worth the wait.”

I barely had time to wonder what that meant before a new sound reached us from the corridor beyond — a slow, steady clicking, wheels rolling smoothly across polished marble, drawing closer with every passing second.

My pulse climbed into my throat without my permission.

The doors at the far end of the parlor opened.

A man sat in the wheelchair being pushed through them, dark-haired, sharp-jawed, dressed in a suit that fit him the way only expensive tailoring could manage.

My breath caught somewhere behind my ribs the instant our eyes met, recognition crashing over me so fast and so completely that the room seemed to tilt sideways around me.

I knew that face. I’d know it anywhere, in any lifetime, in any room — the same eyes that had looked at me with fear and want in equal measure across a hotel room six years ago, the same face I’d carried quietly in the back of my mind through every year since, no matter how hard I’d tried to let it go.

My lips parted before I could stop them, and the only word that came out landed in the silent room like a struck bell.

“…You?”