Two

The first thing I registered was the beeping sound of a machine. The second was the antiseptic scent that screamed hospital.

I cracked my eyes open. My arm ached. I looked down and saw an IV tube running from my skin to a metal pole.

“Savannah? You're awake, honey.”

My dad sounded relieved but looked disappointed. The sadness in his eyes hurt more than any accusation could.

We were all we had. My mom had died giving birth to me, and my dad had never remarried. I meant everything to him—his daughter, his confidante, his best friend.

He sat on a plastic chair beside the bed and looked like he had aged ten years in just a few hours.

“Dad?” I tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness hit me.

The memories came crashing back. The coldness in Ethan’s eyes. The gasp of the crowd. Claire’s triumphant smile as she was crowned with my veil. 

I jerked upright and burst into tears. “Dad, I swear on my life. I didn’t do it.”

He held my hand. I pulled away and started fumbling with the tape on my arm.

“Don’t take that off, Savvy.”

“We have to go back. I need to explain to Ethan. He’ll listen. I can fix this.”

My father covered my hand with his, stopping my frantic movements.

“There’s nothing to go back to, Savannah,” he said quietly. “It’s over. The wedding was conducted. Ethan and Claire are married.”

The words didn’t make sense. It felt like he was speaking a different language.

“No,” I whispered. “That’s not possible. I just fainted. It’s only been a few minutes.”

“You’ve been unconscious for over six hours. The doctors said they found a sedative in your system. They had to flush it out.”

His voice hardened.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you trust that snake? I saw you two standing outside the house and knew something was wrong, but I didn’t think much of it. Why didn’t you come to me?”

Hot tears streamed down my face. How could I explain that I had tried to protect him from this very pain? That I had been manipulated by the one person I thought I could trust more than anyone?

I was a fool. A weak, naive fool.

“I don’t care if they’re married,” I sobbed, pushing myself up again. “I have to clear my name. I have to find the man from the hotel. He’s my proof.”

“It’s too late. Your backstabbing friend has taken your position and painted you the villain. Our friends and neighbors are turning their backs. No one believes you.”

Shame settled deep in my bones.

I was discharged an hour later. Then I begged my dad to drive me to the hotel.

It felt like returning to a crime scene. The manager, grim-faced and cold, told us the hotel was “under maintenance” and that no information could be shared about previous guests.

He looked at my tear-streaked face with a dismissive air that made my skin crawl. To him, we were nothing. Just the poor gardener and his disgraced daughter.

My father drove us home in heavy silence. When we pulled up to the house, he turned off the engine and looked at me.

“They will all pay for this,” he said, voice low. “Karma will come for every single person that hurt you. I promise you that.”

A month passed in a blur. I became a prisoner in my own home.

I lost my job, of course. The irony was almost unbearable. I had been Ethan’s secretary. That was how we met, how we fell in love across the gap between our worlds.

He had seen something in the gardener’s daughter who organized his life with quiet care. That life was gone.

We survived on what little my father earned, but even his business suffered. Our community was small. When an Alpha cast someone out, the rest followed. We'd become pariahs.

Then I started feeling sick. At first, I blamed the stress. But it became routine—waking up with nausea so bad I had to run to the bathroom.

The smell of my father’s cooking, once comforting, now sent me reeling.

One afternoon, desperate for a solution, I put on a hoodie, cinched it tight around my face, and walked to the local store.

The whispers started the moment I stepped inside.

A woman, one whose hedges my father had trimmed for years, spoke loudly to her friend.

“There’s the little whore,” she said. “Can’t even show her face in daylight.”

I flinched but said nothing. I kept my head down, paid, and left.

That was the moment I knew I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t live under their judgment forever. I had to leave the pack.

Back home, with shaking hands, I took a pregnancy test. I stared as the second line appeared.

A sob escaped me. This wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

In our world, werewolf pregnancies were complicated. Termination was dangerous and could kill the mother.

This child, the proof of my assault, was now a permanent part of me.

When my father came home and found me on the bathroom floor, clutching the test, he knelt beside me and wrapped me in his arms.

We wept together, two broken people in a world that had turned its back on us.

There was only one path forward. To leave the pack and start a new life where no one knew me, I needed a release letter from Ethan.

The next day, I stood before the house that should have been mine. I took a deep breath and knocked.

Claire opened the door. She looked radiant in expensive clothes, wearing my life like it had always belonged to her.

She smiled with cruel satisfaction.

“Well, well,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. “Look what the cat dragged in. Come to beg for scraps, Savvy?”

“I’m here to see Ethan,” I said, keeping my voice steady.

She laughed. “My husband is very busy. He doesn’t have time for garbage.”

“Who is it, Claire?”

Ethan’s voice came from the top of the stairs. He walked down slowly, every inch the Alpha. When our eyes met, my breath caught.

Beneath the anger and bitterness, I saw a flicker of the man I had loved. A shadow of the pain I carried in my own heart.

“Why are you here?” he asked coldly.

“I want to leave the pack,” I said, taking a breath to contain my emotions. “I need you to sign my release.”

He looked surprised. “Leave? Where would you go?”

That concern in his tone was enough to send Claire into a rage.

“You’re worried about her?” she shrieked. “She probably has a line of men waiting. She was screwing half the pack behind your back. She’s a tramp who tried to trap you.”

I stood frozen, stunned by her lies. I watched as Ethan's expression changed. The pain vanished. All that remained was disgust.

He disappeared into his office and returned with a paper. He dropped it on the floor between us.

“Get out of my house,” he said. “And don’t ever show your face in my territory again.”

I bent down and picked up the paper. My release. My exile.

I said nothing about the child growing inside me.

The child of the man with the wolf tattoo.

The living proof of everything they refused to see.

I looked at Ethan’s cold face, then at Claire’s triumphant one.

“Karma is coming for you both,” I said, hating how pained my voice sounded.

Then I turned and walked away from the ruins of the life I had once dreamed of.