Chapter Two : The Morning After

I did not sleep that night.

I sat on the floor of my bedroom with my back against the bed and my knees pulled to my chest and I stared at the wall until the darkness outside my window slowly turned grey. My wolf was quiet inside me. Not calm. Just empty. Like something had been removed from her and she did not know how to fill the space.

The rejection bond was already settling in.

I had heard older wolves talk about it before. How it felt like a bruise on the inside. How some wolves never fully recovered. How the lucky ones found second chance mates and the unlucky ones spent the rest of their lives with that hollow ache sitting in the middle of their chest.

I pressed my fist against my sternum.

It hurt. It actually physically hurt, like someone had reached in and squeezed.

I told myself to stop being dramatic.

I told myself a lot of things that night.

By the time the sun came up I had made one decision. I was going to get up, wash my face, and act like a person. Whatever I felt on the inside was mine to deal with. Nobody else needed to see it.

I stood up, changed out of my white dress, and folded it neatly on the chair by my window. I do not know why I folded it. I should have thrown it away. But my hands did it anyway while my mind was somewhere else.

I went downstairs.

My mother was already in the kitchen.

She turned when she heard me and for a moment neither of us said anything. Her eyes were red. She had been crying too, probably all night, and somehow that made everything worse. My mother was not a soft woman. She did not cry easily. Seeing her face like that made the ache in my chest press harder.

She crossed the room and pulled me into her arms without a word.

I stood stiff for a second and then I let her hold me.

"I am so sorry," she whispered into my hair.

"It is okay," I said.

It was not okay. We both knew that. But what else was there to say.

She pulled back and looked at my face like she was checking for damage, the way mothers do. Then she nodded once, like she had decided something, and went back to the stove.

"Sit down," she said. "Eat something."

I sat.

My father came down a few minutes later. He was a quiet man, always had been, and he said nothing at all. He just put his hand on top of my head for a moment as he passed behind my chair. That small gesture broke something open in me that I had managed to keep closed all night.

I looked down at my plate and breathed through it.

We ate in silence.

After breakfast I went outside and that was when I understood how bad it was going to be.

The pack lands were not large. Everyone knew everyone. And everyone had been at the ceremony last night. I had not even made it past the front gate before I heard it. Two women talking near the fence, their voices low but not low enough.

"Did you see her face when he said it?"

"Poor thing. But honestly, did anyone really think Kael would choose her?"

"She should have known better than to hope."

I kept walking.

I told myself their words meant nothing. I told myself I was stronger than this. My wolf growled low inside me, not with power, just with pain, and I kept my eyes forward and my pace steady.

But it did not stop there.

By midday the whispers had turned into something uglier. A group of younger wolves near the training field went quiet when I walked past and then burst out laughing the moment I was a few steps beyond them. Someone had left a folded note under the door of my house. I did not open it. I already knew what kind of note it was.

And then there was Selene.

I saw her in the afternoon, walking across the main square with two of her friends, her hand resting in the crook of Kael's arm. She looked radiant. Relaxed. Like last night had been the best night of her life, which I suppose for her it had been.

She saw me.

And she smiled.

Not a kind smile. The kind of smile that knows exactly what it is doing.

I looked away first. I hated myself for it but I looked away first and I walked in the other direction and I did not stop until I was back inside my house with the door shut behind me.

I sat on the stairs in the hallway and pressed my palms flat against my thighs.

This was my life now.

This was what staying would look like. Every morning walking out that door knowing what people were saying. Every afternoon watching Selene wear the future that should have been mine, not because I wanted Kael anymore, I was not sure I had ever really wanted him, I had wanted the idea of him, the safety of a mate, the feeling of belonging somewhere. But that was gone. And in its place was just this slow daily humiliation that would follow me around like a shadow for as long as I stayed.

I could not do it.

I went upstairs and pulled out the old bag I used for travel and I started putting things in it. Not everything. Just what I needed. Some clothes. The small amount of money I had saved. A photograph of my parents that I took from the frame on my desk.

My mother appeared in the doorway.

She looked at the bag. Then at me.

"Where will you go?" she asked.

"I do not know yet," I said honestly.

She was quiet for a long moment. I expected her to argue. To tell me to stay and hold my head up and not let them win. That was the kind of thing she usually said.

Instead she left the room and came back two minutes later with a small folded envelope.

"Take this," she said.

I opened it. There was money inside. More than I expected.

"Mama."

"Take it," she said again. Her voice was firm but her eyes were not. "And call me when you find somewhere safe."

I folded the envelope and put it in my bag.

My father was standing in the hallway when I came downstairs with everything packed. He looked older to me suddenly, standing there in the grey morning light. He opened his arms and I walked into them and he held me the way he used to when I was small and the world felt too big.

"You are not what he said you were," my father told me quietly. "Do not ever let that become the thing you believe about yourself."

I nodded against his shoulder.

I could not speak.

I walked out of that house in the early afternoon with one bag on my shoulder and my head up and I did not look back. Not because I was not hurting. But because looking back would have made me stop.

And I could not stop.

Not yet.