2: Everyone is in the room

Cryssara's POV

My mother freezes in the doorway. Both stared at me as though my words were a smoke, refusing to fade.

She finds her voice first. "How dare you? After everything this family has done for you? You don't even have a wolf. We took you out of pity, and this is how you repay us...with betrayal?"

I kept my eyes on her, my hands steady at my sides. For the first time in seven years, nobody is telling me what to do, and the silence roared louder than any shout. It fills the room, pressing against the walls, against everything I have swallowed for so long.

Dorian shoved past her, his jaw was tight which made a vein pulse at his temple. "I picked you when no one would. Who will want an omega with no wolf? Tell me that."

The words intentions were meant to wound, meant to remind me of my place. I did not answer. He waits, clenching his fists, the muscles in his forearms banged with a fury he no longer bothers to hide. Nothing comes from me. His face shifts, the anger giving way to something uglier for its sudden gentleness. He softens his tone the way he always does when cruelty fails to break me.

"I love you. The pack needs you. Don't do this to me, Cryssara. Don't you dare."

I looked at him the same way I looked at the closed gate sixty days from now. There is no flicker of the girl who once believed those words, who once mistook his need for love and called it enough.

"You don't love me. You need me. There's a difference, Dorian."

He opens his mouth to protest, but I cut through before he can fill the space, my voice rising for the first time. "I cook for forty wolves every day. I keep the food store books. Only I know what is in the winter stores. I write your weekly reports to the elders. Every single one. Did any of you ever ask how?"

Mother's face drains of color, the blood retreating in one slow, horrible drop. She grips the doorframe like it might be the only thing holding her upright, her fingers trembling against the old wood. For the first time since I have known her, she looks fragile, as though the truth has finally found the one place in her armor left unguarded.

I spoke the next line, each word a blade honed over years of silence. "From tonight, do it yourselves."

The room goes suffocating, the air thick with everything unsaid for seven long years. Dorian's eyes narrow to slits. Mother's mouth opens, but nothing comes out yet, the words catching somewhere in her throat like a stone she cannot swallow.

I look straight at him, unflinching, letting the next truth fall where it belongs, my voice merciless now. "I know you're having an affair with my sister. I've known for months."

The hallway floor creaks. Seraphina sweeps in, her silver hair spilling over one shoulder, her wolf scent flooding the small room before she even speaks. She stops in the doorway, with her hand pressed to her chest in mock horror. Her eyes widen. Tears spring up on cue, glistening and false, the performance so practiced it might have fooled anyone who had not spent a lifetime watching her lie. "What? Cryssara, how could you say such a vicious thing?"

I watch Dorian instead of me, His eyes dart to Seraphina first, not to me. Straight to her, betraying everything, confirming in one small, involuntary motion what weeks of whispered rumors never could.

She steps closer, with tears tracking down her cheeks in perfect symmetry, each one landing like a rehearsed note in a song I no longer care to hear. "I would never. We are family. How dare you try to destroy us like this."

I did not look away from him, my voice cutting clean through her performance. "You always look at her first. You just proved it yourself."

***

Lyanna arrives, as she was paid to help with the ceremony.

She brought a basket of white cloth balanced on her hip. She spots me through the open door, and our eyes locked. The old bond slams into both of us at once, seven years collapsing in a single heartbeat, carrying with it every secret we once shared and every one we kept. She freezes, the basket forgotten in her trembling hands, her lips parting as though she means to call my name but cannot find the sound.

At the gate, Caelus Mooncrest waits in silence. They say he's a Rogue Alpha, here to trade for seed grain. Ashfang guards block his path, as they order him to wait. He does not argue. He simply turns his head and watches the entire collapse unfold through the window.

Then a car pulls up behind him, the engine cutting to a sudden stop. A man in a dark suit steps out, with a thin folder tucked under his arm, his posture official despite the chaos of the yard. His gaze sweeps from the guards to the open door of the house, making sure he is missing nothing.

"I'm looking for Miss Cryssara Wolfe."

Every head in the room snaps toward him. Mother's hand tightens on the frame until it turns pale, the color gone from her lips as well now.

Seraphina's fake tears stop mid-fall, forgotten entirely, her carefully constructed grief abandoned the instant it stops serving her.

Lyanna sets the basket down without looking, her focus changed, the white cloth spilling unnoticed onto the dirt. Caelus still watches from the gate, but still says nothing.

Dorian's face transforms, and desperation takes its place. This was just a clue of the man he was before the pack taught him to measure love in usefulness. He lunges toward me, his voice rose now.

"Cryssara, wait. Please, don't do this."