Chapter Two: A New Life in Chains

Annabel's POV

I ran until my lungs gave out.

Past the training fields, where warriors mid-drill stopped to stare — not with sympathy, just with the flat eyes of people watching something they'd already filed away. Past the gardens where I used to chase fireflies with my father on summer nights, back when this pack felt like home.

I didn't stop until the trees swallowed me whole.

I collapsed against the nearest trunk and finally let it happen. The tears came out ugly — great heaving sobs I couldn't control. I pressed both hands against my chest like I could hold the pieces in place, but there was nothing to hold. The bond was gone. The place where it had lived for four minutes was a scorched hollow, and my wolf was somewhere inside me making a sound I'd never heard before.

Grieving.

I tilted my face toward the moon.

"I hope you're watching," I whispered. "Every single second of that. And I hate you for that"

The moon said nothing back.

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the sobs to dry up and leave nothing but a bone-deep ache. I made myself stand.

Kitchens. Dawn.

The pack house came into view — three stories of stone and glass, every window lit gold from inside. I'd lived inside those walls my entire life. Tonight it looked exactly like a prison.

Walking back, I let myself think about how I'd ended up here. Not tonight specifically. But here — alone, with no one left to fight for me.

My mother died when I was seven. A fever that moved too fast for the pack doctor to catch. I remember my father sitting at the kitchen table for three days straight, not eating, not sleeping, just sitting — like if he stayed still long enough she might walk back through the door.

He didn't stay broken forever. That was the thing about my father. He was a Beta, loyal to his core, built to keep moving even when moving hurt. He served Alpha Aldric's father with everything he had, and somewhere in his grief he found Amelia.

She was a widow too. Soft-spoken, warm-eyed, always bringing food to pack gatherings and remembering everyone's name. She had a daughter — Lennon, two years younger than me, polished and pretty even at twelve. My father said Amelia reminded him that the world still had gentle things in it.

He married her within a year.

I tried. I genuinely tried to love them both. But Amelia's warmth, I learned slowly, had an audience requirement. When my father was in the room she was patient, kind, everything a stepmother should be. The moment the door closed behind him, her eyes went flat and her voice went cold and Lennon — Lennon took every cue from her mother with the precision of a student who wanted top marks.

You're in my seat. You're too loud. You eat too much. Why do you always take up so much space?

Small things. Deniable things. The kind of cruelty that leaves no marks.

My father never saw it. He was a good man — the best man I've ever known — but he was away often, running security for the Alpha, and Amelia was very good at timing.

Eight years ago, a rogue attack hit the pack's eastern border. My father was first response. He didn't come back.

I was twelve. I stood at his grave and felt the last wall between me and Amelia disappear.

She didn't waste time grieving. Within a month she'd repositioned herself — the devoted Beta widow, leaning on Alpha Aldric's father for guidance, making sure Lennon was always visible, always charming, always one careful step closer to the center of pack power. And me? I became the embarrassing reminder of a man they'd rather mythologize than remember accurately.

When Alpha Aldric's father died and Aldric took over at twenty-two, my father's Beta title died with the transition. Amelia made sure of that too — quietly, cleverly, a word here and there in the right ears.

And just like that, I became nobody.

So tonight, when Aldric looked at me with horror and Amelia stood in the crowd wearing that satisfied smile — I understood it completely. This hadn't been an accident. The Goddess had handed them the perfect weapon, and they'd used it beautifully.

I found the side entrance and slipped inside, head down.

"Well, well. Look who crawled back."

Three of them blocked the hallway — Cassandra, Ivy, and Beatrix. Girls I'd grown up with. Not friends, not enemies. Apparently that line had been crossed tonight.

"I've never seen anyone get rejected and demoted in the same ten minutes," Ivy said, pressing her lips together against a smile she wasn't really fighting.

"To be fair," Beatrix added, "it was closer to five. How shameful that was for such a fat girls like her"

I kept walking. Cassandra stepped into my path. Pulled me by the hair.

"Beta's daughter." She said it like a punchline. "Except you're not anymore, are you? You're just—" she tilted her head "—what's the word?"

"Nothing," I said. "Skip to the end."

She smiled. "At least you're self-aware. Omega"

She pushed me and stepped aside, but her shoulder caught mine hard as she passed — deliberate — and I stumbled into the wall. Their laughter followed me down the corridor.

I pressed my back against the plaster and breathed.

This is just the beginning.

I had never been in the servants' wing. The hallways were narrower, darker, paint peeling at the corners. A gray-haired woman appeared from a doorway — soft-eyed, unhurried.

"Annabel. I'm Grace. I manage the quarters." She paused. "I'm sorry about tonight."

I opened my mouth to say I'm fine and couldn't find the words.

"Thank you," I said instead.

The room was exactly what she'd warned — a cot, a dresser, a window overlooking the garbage area. A gray servant's uniform folded on the bed. I changed out of my ceremony dress, the green one I'd saved two weeks for, and pulled the uniform on.

There was a small cracked mirror on the wall.

Same face looking back. Chestnut hair. Amber eyes. The body I'd spent years apologizing for. But something behind my eyes had gone dark — like a room where someone switched the light off on their way out.

I lay on the cot and stared at the ceiling.

I made the mistake of remembering it — that single gold-warm second when the bond snapped into place and I'd felt wanted. For one heartbeat, I'd felt like something the universe had specifically intended.

That memory hurt worse than all the rest of it combined.

Too fat to be my Luna. Too fat to be my Luna—

***

A fist hammered my door before sunrise.

"Kitchen. Ten minutes. Move it, Omega."

Not Annabel. Omega.

I splashed cold water on my face and looked in the cracked mirror. Swollen eyes. Wild hair. A girl who'd lost a war.

I pulled my hair back. Squared my shoulders.

You cannot afford to be broken.

The kitchen was chaos — bodies everywhere, pots crashing, voices overlapping. A steel-haired woman stood at the center of it and looked me over the way you look at a stain.

"Lucy," she said flatly. "My kitchen, my rules. Do what I say, when I say it." She pointed at the sink. "That mountain. Start now."

I started.

Cold water. Barely-lathering soap. My hands went red within twenty minutes, aching to the bone within an hour. Around me, servants whispered and slid sideways glances — the rejected mate, washing dishes. I scrubbed harder. Three hours without a break. My back screamed. A cracked pot split my fingers open and I pressed them to my palm and kept going.

Then — heels on tile. Expensive. Deliberate.

Lennon stopped just behind my left shoulder.

"Look at you," she said warmly. "Right where you belong."

I kept my eyes on the pot. "Luna."

"Oh, don't do that. We're sisters."

"Stepsisters. And now Luna and Omega." I didn't look up. "Was there something you needed?"

"Needed?" A light laugh. "No. I just wanted you to hear it from me first — Aldric and I are already trying for a baby." Casual. Bright. Like she was discussing the weather. "Family should know these things."

The pot slipped. Crashed into the sink.

"Careful," she said sweetly. "Lucy will have you scrubbing all night if you break things."

She left the way she came. Unhurried.

Lucy appeared at my elbow, staring at the empty doorway.

"In this kitchen," she said quietly, "the ones who last are the ones they stop noticing." She turned back to her work. "Make yourself invisible."

I stood there with bleeding fingers and cold water running over my hands, turning that over.

Invisible.

I'd spent my whole life being too much — too big, too soft, too visible in all the wrong ways.

My father used to say I had a presence. That I lit up rooms just by entering them.

He was the last person who ever thought so.

Maybe it was time to finally disappear.