~ 1

0001

✧･ﾟ: ✧ :･ﾟ✧  Marichuy ✧･ﾟ: ✧ :･ﾟ✧

The hospital was throwing me out at five o'clock, and my husband wouldn't answer his phone.

"Ms. Winters." Nurse Patterson didn't knock anymore. She hadn't knocked in months, around the same time Derek stopped visiting. "Your account is six months overdue. Forty-seven thousand dollars."

Forty-seven thousand. I didn't have forty-seven.

"I've been trying to reach my husband," I said. "Alpha Derek, he's…"

She laughed. 

"Your husband hasn't returned a single call from billing in four months. When did he last visit you? Six weeks ago?"

"Seven," I whispered.

Fifty-one days since my own husband had looked me in the eye.

"He's busy," I said. "The Silver Moon Pack is one of the wealthiest in the region. He has responsibilities…"

"If he cared, you wouldn't be here begging me for more time."

I clutched the sheets with fingers that had gone skeletal sometime in the last year. Every bone visible. Every vein blue through skin like tissue paper.

"Please. One more week. I'll call him again, I'll…"

"End of business today. Otherwise we begin discharge procedures."

"Discharge? I'm still in treatment…"

"Not our problem anymore."

The door swung shut with the finality of a coffin lid.

I dialed Derek and it went to voicemail. Again.

"Derek, please. It's me. The hospital… they're saying I have to leave if we don't pay. I know you're busy, but I'm scared. I don't know what to do. I love you. Please just call me."

I pressed the phone to my chest and let the tears come.

Three years of hoping Derek would remember he loved me. That my wolf would come back. That the cancer would go into remission.

Hope was a cruel thing. It kept you holding on long after you should have let go.

…

Two hours later, the door burst open.

"Marichuy!"

Lily swept in like sunshine — honey-blonde hair styled to perfection, designer everything, a gift bag with tissue paper foaming out the top.

While I'd been rotting in this bed, her life had clearly flourished.

"Oh, sweetie, you look exhausted!" She rushed to my side, perfume stinging my eyes. "Has that bastard Derek been here? I swear I'm going to give him a piece of my mind!"

"Lily, it's okay…"

"It is NOT okay!" She grabbed my hand, her skin warm against my cold fingers. "You're his WIFE. He's abandoned you here like you're nothing!"

Her eyes glistened, and I felt guilty for making her worry.

A delicate gold bracelet caught the light on her wrist. It looked expensive.

"That's beautiful," I said.

"Oh, this? Got it on sale. Anyway — forget about me!" She pushed the gift bag into my lap. "I brought you something!"

Inside lay a single gold stiletto heel. Delicate ankle straps. Clearly designer.

"Lily, this is…"

"I bought you the pair," she said, beaming. "But I'm keeping the other one safe at home. For when you get better. For when you walk out of this horrible place and dance again!"

When you get better.

We both knew the doctors had stopped pretending months ago.

Still, I smiled through the burn in my eyes. "It's too much."

"Nonsense. You're my best friend." She squeezed my hand, kissed my forehead. "I have to run… pack business — but I'll visit soon, okay?"

She left in a whirlwind of expensive perfume.

I stared at the single gold shoe.

Why bring a dying woman one shoe?

At 4:47 PM, the hospital administrator arrived with two security guards.

"Ms. Winters, we need you to vacate the room immediately."

"What? Nurse Patterson said end of business…"

"It is end of business. You have thirty minutes."

Thirty minutes to pack up three years of my life.

"Please!" I scrambled out of bed. My legs buckled; I caught the rail. "One more day. I'll get the money, I swear…"

"Ms. Winters, we've been more than patient."

I fell to my knees in the hallway. Pain lanced through my bones.

Patients stared. Nurses whispered. A visiting family stopped to gawk.

The dying wolf, begging for scraps.

"Please," I sobbed. "I have nowhere to go. I'm still sick. Please don't do this."

Mr. Jacobson's expression didn't flicker. "Thirty minutes."

I packed everything I owned into a plastic hospital bag. Two pairs of sweatpants. Some oversized t-shirts. A hairbrush. One gold stiletto.

Three years. My whole life fit in a plastic bag.

The mirror showed a stranger with hollow eyes, sunken cheeks, skin stretched over jutting bones.

Every staff member and patient turned to watch me leave. Their eyes said what their mouths didn't.

Good riddance.

…

"Fifty bucks to Silver Moon Pack territory," I told the taxi driver.

He counted my crumpled bills, then did a double take. "Wait. You're Alpha Derek's wife? The dying one?"

The dying one. Not Marichuy. Not his Luna.

"Yes," I whispered.

He chuckled, pulling out. "And he left you to take a taxi? That's cold." He paused before continuing. "You know, I heard he's been seen around town with some blonde. Real pretty. Always wondered if that was true."

My chest tightened.

"It's not."

"If you say so."

The pack mansion lawn went silent when the taxi pulled up. Then the whispers erupted like wildfire.

"Is that her?"

"God, she looks awful."

"I can't believe she's still alive."

"Alpha Derek must be so embarrassed."

Someone laughed.

I paid with the last of my money and walked toward the entrance on legs that shook. No one helped with my bag. No one opened the door. The omega servants looked away like dying was contagious.

I was a ghost in my own home.

I climbed the stairs alone, knuckles white on the railing, black spots swimming across my vision.

Just make it to the room. Then you can collapse.

Our master bedroom loomed ahead. Before I got sick, before Derek started ‘sleeping in his office.’

I reached for the handle.

And heard it.

A moan. 

Then a laugh that was feminine, breathy, and heartbreakingly familiar.

No. Please, God, let me be wrong.

But I already knew.

I pushed the door open.

Derek… my husband, my mate… naked in our bed.

With Lily.

And there on the floor, gleaming in the afternoon light, sat the match to the gold stiletto heel.

She'd brought me one shoe because the other one lived here. In my bedroom. Where she'd been sleeping with my husband.

"Oh my God," I gasped.

Derek looked up. Not an atom of surprise or guilt on his face but rather, annoyance.

"You're supposed to be in the hospital," he said flatly. "What are you doing here?"

Lily scrambled for the sheets. "Marichuy… what are you doing here?"

The audacity for me.

"Derek," I whispered. "How could you?"

He stood. Naked. Utterly unashamed. 

"How could I?" He laughed, bitter. "How could YOU? Three years of hospital bills. Of weakness. Of embarrassment. Did you honestly think I'd stay faithful to a dying, wolfless failure?"

"It's not my fault I got sick," I choked. "I stood by you…"

"You were useful to the pack," he corrected. "But I'm done pretending."

He crossed the room and stood over me, and his voice turned formal. Ritual.

"I, Alpha Derek of Silver Moon Pack, reject you, Marichuy Winters, as my mate and Luna."

The rejection struck like lightning through my chest. Even wolfless, I felt it — a severing, something vital ripped out by the roots.

I staggered back, gasping.

"Derek... please..." Lily's voice, almost concerned.

Then Derek shoved me hard.

My frail body flew. I crashed through the glass coffee table, and the world exploded into shards and sound.

Pain everywhere. Glass slicing skin already too thin. Warmth spreading beneath me, sticky and terrifying.

Blood. So much blood.

I tried to move. My body wouldn't answer.

Through the darkening haze, Derek stepped over me — literally stepped over my broken, bleeding body — like trash on the floor.

Lily watched from the bed, hand over her mouth.

She didn't move to help. She just watched.

"Derek..." I tried to say. Only blood came out.

The last thing I saw was the gold stiletto on the floor. The match to the one in my plastic bag.

They planned this, I realized with devastating clarity. They wanted me to see. They wanted me to die knowing I meant nothing.

The darkness swallowed me whole.