CHAPTER 7: NO DAUGHTER OF MINE

The rain was cold. Merciless.

It started as a drizzle while I stood alone in the gardens, then quickly turned into a downpour that soaked through my gray dress within seconds. The thin fabric clung to my skin, heavy and uncomfortable, but I barely felt it.

Everything inside me was numb.

I stood in the courtyard between the gardens and the pack hall, rain streaming down my face, mixing with the blood from my split lip. My hair hung in wet tangles around my shoulders. My hands trembled at my sides.

I looked like exactly what I was.

Broken. Discarded. Nothing.

Inside the hall, music and celebration resumed as if nothing had happened. As if a wolf hadn't just been publicly destroyed in front of the entire pack. The sounds drifted through the closed doors—laughter, cheers, the clink of glasses.

They were toasting Adrian and Bianca.

Celebrating their future.

No one was thinking about me.

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to stop the shaking. It didn't help. The cold had settled deep into my bones, or maybe it wasn't the rain at all. Maybe it was just the emptiness where my wolf used to be.

Where the bond used to be.

Where everything I thought I was used to be.

The doors opened.

My father stepped out into the rain, his formal robes immediately darkening with water. He didn't seem to notice or care. His face was carved from stone, his eyes hard as he looked at me.

"You are still here," he said flatly.

"I didn't know where else to go," I whispered.

"Anywhere but here would be appropriate." He moved closer, his presence imposing even in the downpour. "The Alpha has made his decision regarding your punishment."

My stomach dropped. "Already?"

"He doesn't waste time on wolves who disrupt pack harmony." Father's voice was cold, businesslike. Like he was discussing a stranger instead of his daughter. "Your lies have consequences, Elena. Did you think they wouldn't?"

"They weren't lies—"

"Stop." The command in his voice made me flinch. "I don't want to hear it anymore. Your delusions. Your excuses. Your pathetic attempts to justify what you did."

"I didn't do anything wrong," I said, but my voice came out weak. Broken.

"You embarrassed this family. You disrupted the most important ceremony of Adrian's life. You tried to destroy your sister's happiness." He counted each offense on his fingers. "Those are not nothing, Elena. Those are betrayals."

"Bianca stole my mate!"

The words burst out before I could stop them. Raw. Desperate. The truth I had been holding back all night.

Father's expression didn't change. "Adrian was never your mate."

"He was. The bond—"

"There was no bond." His voice rose, sharp enough to cut through the rain. "How many times must you hear it before you accept reality? Adrian rejected you. The pack witnessed it. He chose Bianca. It is done."

"Because you all forced him to—"

"No one forced anything." Father stepped closer, towering over me. "Adrian made a choice. A wise choice. One befitting his position and his future. You were never a possibility, Elena. You were never even a consideration."

Each word was a nail in a coffin.

"Then why did he keep me secret for three years?" I demanded. "Why all the stolen moments? The promises? The—"

"Pity," Father said simply. "He felt sorry for you. And you, desperate and pathetic as you are, mistook kindness for love."

"That isn't true."

"Isn't it?" His eyes bore into mine. "Think about it rationally, if you are even capable of that. An Alpha heir and an omega servant. What did you honestly believe would happen? That he would stand before the pack and claim you? That his father would accept such a disgrace? That anyone would?"

I wanted to argue. To insist that what Adrian and I shared was real, that the bond had been genuine, that three years of secrecy had meant something.

But doubt crept in like poison.

Had I imagined it all? Seen what I wanted to see instead of what was really there?

No.

The bond had been real. I knew it. Felt it. It couldn't have been fake.

Could it?

"You are pathetic," Father continued, his voice dropping to something almost like pity. "Standing here in the rain, clinging to a fantasy that never existed. Do you know what the pack is saying about you right now?"

I didn't want to know. But he told me anyway.

"They are calling you delusional. Obsessed. A cautionary tale about omegas who forget their place." He paused, letting the words sink in. "Some are laughing. Others feel sorry for you. But none of them believe you, Elena. Not one."

"You don't believe me either," I whispered.

"No." He said it without hesitation. "I don't. Because I raised you better than to lie. Or at least I thought I did."

The rejection from my father hurt almost as much as Adrian's.

Almost.

"So what happens now?" I asked numbly.

Father's expression hardened. "The Alpha has decided. You are no daughter of mine. From this moment on, you are nothing to Silvercrest."

The words hung in the air between us, heavy and final.

"What does that mean?" I asked, though part of me already knew.

"It means you are severed from this family. From this pack. From everything you have ever known." His voice carried the weight of pack law, of decisions that could not be unmade. "Marcus Reeves has one daughter now. Only one."

"You cannot do that—"

"It is already done." He raised his hand, and I felt power gather around him. Beta power. The authority granted by the Alpha to enforce pack law. "Elena Reeves, by my authority as Beta of Silvercrest Pack, I sever your familial bonds. You are no longer my daughter. No longer my blood. No longer my responsibility."

A bond snapped.

Not the mate bond—that was already gone.

This was different. Older. The pack bond that had connected me to Silvercrest since birth. The invisible threads that tied every wolf to their pack, that let them feel belonging and safety and home.

They tore free.

Pain sliced through me, sharp and sudden, like someone had reached into my chest and ripped out pieces of my soul. I gasped, doubling over, my hands clutching at nothing.

It felt like being unmade.

Like everything that made me who I was—wolf, daughter, pack member—was being systematically destroyed.

And maybe it was.

Wolves passing nearby on their way back to the celebration felt it. I saw them pause, saw them turn to look at what was happening.

They knew what pack bond severance felt like. Every wolf did. It was one of the worst punishments possible, reserved for traitors and criminals and wolves who had betrayed their pack beyond forgiveness.

And Father was doing it to me.

His own daughter.

The wolves watched for a moment, their expressions ranging from shock to pity to cruel satisfaction.

Then they deliberately looked away.

No one intervened. No one questioned it. No one asked if maybe this punishment was too severe for a wolf whose only crime was loving the wrong person.

They just walked past, heading back to the warmth and celebration inside.

Leaving me alone with my pain.

"Please," I gasped, still bent over, still trying to breathe through the agony. "Please don't do this—"

"It is done," Father said coldly. "You brought this on yourself."

The pack bonds finished tearing free with one final, wrenching pull. I screamed, the sound raw and broken, echoing off the stone walls of the courtyard.

And when it was over, when the pain finally faded to a dull, throbbing ache—

I felt nothing.

Not belonging. Not home. Not the constant, comforting hum of being connected to something larger than myself.

Just emptiness.

I was packless.

Alone in a way I had never been before.

Father looked down at me with no expression on his face. "You should leave Silvercrest territory. Tonight, if possible. The Alpha has not officially exiled you, but he will if you cause any more disruption."

"Where am I supposed to go?" My voice came out hollow.

"That is no longer my concern." He turned toward the hall. "You are no longer my concern."

"Father—"

"Beta Marcus," he corrected sharply, not looking back. "And you will not address me at all. We are nothing to each other now."

He walked away.

The rain poured down harder, as if the sky itself was mourning what had just been destroyed.

I stood there, packless and broken, watching my father's retreating back.

The doors to the hall opened again.

Bianca appeared in the doorway, her white dress glowing in the light spilling from inside. Adrian stood at her side, his arm around her waist, both of them dry and warm and perfect.

They looked like they belonged together.

Like they were always meant to be this way.

Bianca's eyes found mine across the courtyard. For a moment, we just stared at each other. Sisters. Or we used to be. Now I didn't know what we were.

She smiled.

Not a happy smile. Not a kind smile.

A victorious smile.

The smile of someone who had won completely and absolutely. Who had taken everything I had and claimed it as her own.

"Poor Elena," she said softly, but her voice carried in the rain. "Out here all alone. No mate. No father. No pack." She tilted her head, false sympathy dripping from every word. "Whatever will you do?"

"Bianca, please—" I started.

"Please what?" She laughed, light and airy. "Please forgive you for trying to steal my mate? Please take pity on you? Please pretend that what you did wasn't absolutely pathetic?"

"I didn't steal anything. Adrian was mine first—"

"Adrian was never yours." Her smile widened. "He told me everything, you know. About how you threw yourself at him. How you begged him to claim you. How desperate and clingy you were."

"That isn't what happened—"

"He said you were so delusional that you actually convinced yourself there was a bond." She shook her head, mockingly sad. "It is tragic, really. That you wasted three years of your life chasing a fantasy."

Adrian stood beside her, silent and still.

He hadn't said a word since they appeared. Hadn't acknowledged me. Hadn't looked at me.

Just stood there with his arm around Bianca like I didn't exist.

"Adrian," I said, my voice breaking. "Please. Just tell her the truth. Tell her that we were real."

For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then, slowly, he turned to face me.

Our eyes met one last time.

I searched his face desperately, looking for any hint of the man I had loved. The one who had held me in the dark. Who had promised me a future. Who had made me believe I was worth something.

There was nothing.

Just cold indifference.

"You need help, Elena," he said quietly. "Professional help. What you believe happened between us is not real. It never was."

The words shattered what little remained of my heart.

"You are lying," I whispered.

"I am protecting you," he said. "From yourself. From your delusions. The kindest thing I can do now is walk away. So that is what I am doing."

He turned his back on me.

Just turned away, like I was nothing. Like three years of stolen kisses and whispered promises and a bond that had felt as real as breathing meant absolutely nothing.

Bianca pressed closer to his side, her smile triumphant.

And together, they walked back into the warmth of the pack hall.

The doors swung shut behind them.

The music swelled.

And I stood alone in the rain, packless and mateless and utterly, completely destroyed.

Adrian turned his back on me without a word.