CHAPTER 2: "MOMMY"

CHAPTER 2: "MOMMY"

The car started on the first try, which felt like the universe's smallest mercy.

I sat in the driver's seat of my beat-up Honda—the one Damian had refused to replace because "Lunas don't need flashy cars"—and gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles went white. My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking. Liora paced inside my mind, a restless energy that demanded action, demanded something, but I couldn't move yet.

I couldn't drive away.

Not because I wanted to go back. Not because I harbored some foolish hope that Damian would come running after me, begging forgiveness. I knew him too well for that. Damian Blackwood didn't beg. Damian Blackwood didn't apologize. Damian Blackwood sat on his throne of indifference and watched the world burn around him.

No, I couldn't drive away because my son was still in that house.

Theo.

My baby. My entire world compressed into thirty pounds of chaotic energy and sticky fingers and unconditional love. The only good thing to come from five years of marriage to a man who'd never loved me.

I'd left him in there with that woman. With his father. With people who'd been playing house while I ran errands like the household servant I'd apparently become.

Liora whimpered. Pup. Our pup. Can't leave pup.

"I know," I whispered. "I know."

But what could I do? Storm back in and demand he come with me? To where? I had nothing—no home, no job (not one Damian knew about anyway), no plan. Just a few hundred dollars and a car that smelled like old french fries.

I couldn't take Theo into uncertainty. I couldn't drag him through whatever mess was about to unfold. He deserved stability, safety, a home where people didn't fuck on the couch while he ate cookies.

So I sat in my car, parked at the end of the long driveway leading to the pack house I'd entered as a hopeful bride, and I waited.

For what, I didn't know.

An hour passed. Then two. The sun began its slow descent toward the mountains, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink that would have been beautiful if I'd had any heart left to appreciate them.

Ivy's car—a sleek red Mercedes that cost more than my entire existence—finally pulled out of the pack garage. She drove past me without slowing, but she rolled down her window just long enough to blow a kiss in my direction. Her laughter carried on the evening breeze, light and mocking.

Enjoy it while it lasts, I thought. You have no idea what's coming.

Another hour. The pack house lights flickered on, warm and inviting, illuminating windows I'd washed with my own hands. I could see movement inside—servants preparing dinner, guards changing shifts, the ordinary rhythm of pack life continuing as if nothing had happened.

As if the Luna hadn't just been publicly humiliated and discarded.

I wondered if anyone would notice I was gone. If anyone would ask where I was. If anyone would care.

The answer, I suspected, was no.

Finally, when the sky had darkened to deep purple and the first stars were beginning to appear, I saw him. Damian, standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, looking down toward my car. Even from this distance, I could see the hard set of his jaw, the coldness in his posture.

He wasn't going to come after me.

He wasn't going to call.

He wasn't going to do anything except wait for me to crawl back, apologize for overreacting, and resume my duties as his convenient doormat Luna.

That's when I knew for certain: the woman who'd loved Damian Blackwood was dead.

I started the car and drove away.

The city was an hour's drive from pack territory—a sprawling metropolis of glass and steel that existed in a different world from the forests and estates where packs had ruled for centuries. I'd visited occasionally, always with Damian, always for pack business, always as his shadow. I'd never explored it on my own. Never had the chance.

Tonight, it would be my refuge.

I found a motel on the outskirts—the kind with flickering neon signs advertising "Clean Rooms $49/Night" and a parking lot full of dented trucks. The clerk barely looked at me as I paid cash for one night. Room 7 was at the end of a dingy hallway that smelled like cigarette smoke and regret.

The room itself was tiny: one double bed with sheets that had seen better decades, a bathroom so small I could touch both walls at once, a window that looked out at a brick wall three feet away. It was the opposite of everything I'd had as Luna.

It was perfect.

I sat on the edge of the bed, my single suitcase at my feet, and I finally let myself fall apart.

The tears came without warning, wracking sobs that shook my entire body. I cried for five years of wasted love. I cried for the girl I'd been at twenty, so desperate for someone to love her that she'd ignored every red flag. I cried for Theo, for the confusion he'd face, for the mother who'd left him behind even though leaving was the only way to save them both.

Liora cried with me, her mournful howls echoing through our shared consciousness. She'd loved Damian too, in her way—not as a mate, not truly, but as the father of our pup, as the man we'd chosen. His rejection cut her as deeply as it cut me.

But wolves are practical creatures. They feel deeply, but they also survive. And Liora, for all her grief, was already looking forward. Already planning. Already hungry for something I couldn't name.

Hours passed. The tears dried. The sobs faded to hiccups, then silence.

I sat in the dark, staring at nothing, and I made a decision.

The old Sera was gone. The woman who'd dimmed her light, hidden her talents, made herself small for a man who never appreciated her—she'd died in that doorway watching her husband fuck another woman. Good riddance.

But the woman I could become? The woman I'd suppressed for years, hiding behind thick glasses and frumpy clothes and a self-effacing smile?

She was still in here. And she was pissed.

I reached for my suitcase, unzipping it with hands that no longer trembled. Buried beneath the few clothes I'd grabbed—jeans, sweaters, practical underwear—was a slim laptop. Not the cheap one Damian had bought me for "pack secretary work." This one was custom-built, top-of-the-line, purchased with money he never knew I had.

I opened it and watched the screen glow to life.

My fingers found the keyboard, and for the first time in five years, I let them fly.

Passwords fell before me like dominoes. Firewalls crumbled. Encrypted systems opened like flowers greeting the sun. I moved through digital spaces the way other women moved through dance floors—with grace, with confidence, with the absolute certainty that I belonged there.

Within twenty minutes, I'd accessed accounts Damian didn't know existed. Accounts tied to a company he'd never heard of, run by a person who didn't officially exist. A startup I'd founded years ago, in secret, using skills I'd developed as a lonely child escaping into computers while my stepmother pretended I didn't exist.

Phantom Holdings: Current Balance - $4,847,392.16

I stared at the number, letting it sink in. Four point eight million dollars. Earnings from software I'd designed, security systems I'd coded, contracts I'd negotiated all under the anonymous identity of "Phantom"—the most mysterious hacker in the werewolf world.

Damian thought I was nothing. A pretty face, a warm body, a convenient Luna who asked no questions.

He had no idea that the woman warming his bed was worth more than his entire pack.

He had no idea that the "pathetic" wife he'd discarded could buy and sell him a hundred times over.

He had no idea that "Phantom"—the genius everyone wanted to recruit, the legend no one could find—was currently sitting in a $49 motel room with tear tracks on her face and vengeance in her heart.

Liora stirred, her grief transmuting into something sharper. Something hungrier.

Show them, she whispered. Show them all.

I closed the laptop and lay back on the lumpy motel bed, staring at the water-stained ceiling. Tomorrow, I would become someone new. Tomorrow, I would start the process of burning my old life to ashes and building something better from the rubble.

But tonight, I let myself grieve one last time.

For my marriage. For my innocence. For the girl who'd believed love could conquer all.

And for my son—my beautiful, innocent son—who was sleeping in that house without me, probably not even noticing I was gone.

The tears came again, softer this time.

Somewhere around 3 AM, exhaustion finally claimed me.

I woke to sunlight streaming through the thin motel curtains and a single text message on my phone.

Unknown number: "I know who you are. I know what you can do. Come to Thorn Tower at 10 AM if you want a new life. Come alone."

I stared at the message, my heart pounding.

Thorn Tower. Home of Thorn Industries, the most successful tech company in werewolf territory. Run by Kaelen Thorn, the most powerful Alpha in the city—a man so dangerous, so wealthy, so untouchable that even Damian spoke his name with grudging respect.

How did he know about me? How did he have my number? How did he know I was Phantom?

And why, despite every survival instinct screaming at me to run, did my pulse quicken with something that felt dangerously like hope?

"Come to Thorn Tower at 10 AM if you want a new life."

I looked at the time: 8:47 AM.

I had just over an hour to decide if walking into the lair of the most powerful Alpha in the city was the smartest move I'd ever make—or the dumbest.

Liora, traitor that she was, was already wagging her tail.

I didn't know it yet, but the text message was about to change everything. Kaelen Thorn had been watching. Kaelen Thorn had been waiting. And Kaelen Thorn had plans for me that I never could have imagined.