Chapter 2

The morning after, I woke with the dawn, my fingers already reaching for the half-packed trunk beneath the bed. The leather smelled of hope and lavender—of home.

Downstairs, the packhouse was silent. Shawn had risen early, as he often did when important matters weighed upon him. I busied myself in the kitchen, preparing the morning meal with a lightness in my chest I had not felt in years. The eggs cracked open like promises. The bread warmed the air with golden anticipation.

Then, the chime.

Shawn’s footsteps thundered from his study—a speed, an urgency he never displayed for me. The front door swung open, and her scent preceded her voice. Night-blooming jasmine and glacial ice, cutting through the domestic musk of my kitchen like a blade through silk.

"Marga! You should have sent your scent-mark ahead!" Shawn’s voice transformed—sudden, radiant, alive.

"I wanted to surprise you, dear Alpha." That laugh, bright and untroubled as a mountain spring. "Life demands its little joys, does it not?"

I stood at the kitchen archway, my hands still dusted with flour, watching my husband embrace his adopted sister. His hands rested too low on her back, his cheek pressed against her hair with a familiarity that made my stomach clench. I forced the feeling down. His embrace was merely protective, brotherly, innocent. Was it not?

"Stella?" Marga’s head lifted, her eyes finding me in the shadows of the corridor. She looked impeccable—fur groomed to silken perfection, her traveling cloak woven with threads of actual gold. She looked like I had once looked, before the years and the labor and the neglect. "Dear sister-in-law, why are you hiding in the dark? Come, let me see you!"

I wiped my hands on my apron and stepped forward, already feeling the weight of her gaze measuring the width of my hips, the gray threading through my hair, the frayed hem of my housedress.

"You’ve let yourself go," she said, her voice dripping honeyed concern. She took my hands in hers—soft, uncalloused hands that had never scrubbed a floor—and turned them over to display my cracks and scars to the room. "Look at these, Shawn. You work her too hard."

Shawn’s eyes flicked over me with impatience, not guilt. "She prefers to keep busy."

"Of course she does." Marga released me, drifting toward the sitting room with the grace of a swan upon ice. "Practical Stella. It’s her gift, really. Not all of us can be ethereal, can we? Some must hold down the earth while others touch the sky."

Kurt descended the stairs, his face breaking into a smile I had not seen he was eight. "Aunt Marga! You’re early for the—" He stopped, glancing at me, then amended smoothly. "For the celebrations."

"Am I?" Marga settled onto the divan—the one I was not permitted to sit upon when wearing my work clothes—and accepted the bloodwine Shawn poured with his own hands. "How fortuitous. Then I shall have time to help Lydia select her wardrobe for the journey. We cannot have the young girl looking anything less than celestial for her first southern exposure."

The words landed like stones in still water.

I looked up from the cup I had been preparing. "The journey?"

"Why, yes." Marga’s eyes widened, the picture of innocent surprise. She sipped her wine, her gaze sliding to Shawn with deliberate languor. "Did Shawn not tell you? He’s arranged the most exquisite passage to the Southern Coast. A private villa, right on the crystalline waters. Kurt’s initiation gift, of course—but also a little... retreat. For those of us who appreciate the finer vibrations of the region."

She turned to me then, her smile sharp as crystal. "I shall take excellent care of Lydia during the trip, Stella. You needn’t worry about a thing. The girl requires a feminine touch of a certain caliber for her debut into society—someone who understands elegance, who moves in the right circles. I know you’ve been... preoccupied with domestic matters. I’ll ensure she doesn’t embarrass the Ravenshade name. "

The room tilted. The Southern Coast. The warm waters. The journey I had packed for.

Shawn was taking her. Taking them. But he still hadn’t told me.

"You didn’t mention..." My voice emerged as a whisper, dry as dust.

"Don’t be tedious, Stella." Shawn did not look at me. He was adjusting Marga’s cloak, his fingers brushing her shoulder with a tenderness he had not shown me in years. "Marga is doing us a favor. Lydia requires polish you cannot provide. And Kurt needs to see how high-blood society operates beyond these provincial borders. And you? What would you even do with a journey like that?"

"Yes," Marga agreed, her head tilting with that simpering concern that was worse than open mockery. "It’s no reflection on you, darling. Simply, some wolves are made for the den, and some for the open sky. You understand."

I understood. I understood with a clarity that felt like ice forming in my veins.

They were going south. Without me.

I backed toward the kitchen, my hands shaking. Lydia swept past me, her arms laden with silk scarves—Marga’s, cast off and reclaimed like treasures. She did not look at me. She was chattering about the crystalline waters, about the villa, about learning to dance the way Aunt Marga danced.

I stood in the archway, the flour still dusting my palms, and watched my family arrange themselves around her like planets around a brighter sun.

"Where is your mother?" Marga asked, her voice carrying clearly across the room, though I stood only feet away. "Hiding again?"

"She sulks," Shawn said, the word dipped in contempt. "Demanding I take her south with us. As if she could navigate civilized society in her current state. Grown petulant with age."

They laughed. All of them. Even my son. Even my daughter.

I turned back to the kitchen, to the cold stone and the dirty dishes, and realized I had already been erased from the portrait of their lives. The Southern Coast was not my homecoming. It was my exclusion.

And I was still holding the cup I had poured for myself, now cold, untouched, and entirely forgotten on the counter.