CHAPTER 2: Homecoming

Elira’s POV

The estate looked exactly the way I remembered it, which somehow made it worse.

Same iron gates, same gravel drive curling up toward the house like a held breath. Same ivy climbing the east wall, thicker now, greener, like two years had been kind to something at least. I sat very still as the car slowed, watching it all slide past the window, and waited to feel something.

Nothing came.

I could feel Ronan glancing at me every few minutes, quick and sideways, like he was trying to solve a puzzle without letting me see him working on it. Every time I caught his eyes in the reflection of the glass, he looked away fast, jaw tight, and said nothing.

He should have said something. The old Ronan would have. The old Ronan would have pulled the car over, would have demanded answers, would have shaken the truth out of me with his bare hands if he had to.

This Ronan just drove. By the time we reached the house, he’d already smoothed his face back into something calm, something Alpha-shaped, and I understood — whatever he’d seen in that car, he’d decided it was easier to file away than to look at directly.

I couldn’t blame him. I did the same thing to myself every day.

***

The house was chaos the moment we stepped inside.

Servants moved in every direction, arms full of linens and flowers and silver trays, voices overlapping in a dozen urgent conversations about seating arrangements and menus and whether the west hall had been aired out properly. Nobody so much as glanced at me. A young woman I didn’t recognize — new, must have been hired sometime in the last two years — nearly collided with me carrying an armful of white roses, muttered a quick “sorry, miss” without breaking stride, and kept moving.

Miss. Not my lady. Not even a flicker of recognition.

I stood in the entryway for a moment, watching the house move around me like water around a stone, and felt something settle in my chest that wasn’t quite pain. Closer to confirmation. This was what I’d expected, somewhere underneath the parts of me that had still hoped for something else.

“The Lycan King’s arrival has everyone a little frantic,” Ronan said, appearing at my elbow like he needed to explain the noise, the indifference, all of it. “You understand. It’s not — it isn’t personal.”

“I know,” I said, and meant it. It wasn’t personal. That was almost the point.

He led me upstairs himself, past the hallway that used to hold my old room, past the door I didn’t let myself look at too long, and stopped instead at a guest room near the end of the corridor. Clean linens. Fresh flowers on the dresser, probably meant for a different guest entirely and redirected here in the scramble.

“This will be comfortable,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes. “Just until — well. Until things settle.”

I didn’t ask what that meant. I didn’t ask why my old room wasn’t an option, or who was staying in it now, or whether asking would even get me an honest answer. I simply nodded and stepped inside, setting my folder of belongings on the edge of the bed like it was the most natural thing in the world to unpack a life into a room that wasn’t mine.

He lingered in the doorway a moment longer than he needed to, like he wanted to say something else, and then didn’t.

“I’ll send someone up with a change of clothes,” he said finally, and left.

***

I’d barely sat down when the door opened again without a knock.

“Elira!”

The voice hit before the girl did — bright, warm, achingly familiar in the way a stranger’s face can somehow still carry your own blood. Selene stood in the doorway, dressed in soft blue silk, dark hair perfectly arranged, eyes already glassy with tears that looked, infuriatingly, completely genuine.

“I heard you were back — I couldn’t believe it, I ran the whole way—” She crossed the room fast, arms already opening, closing the distance before I could think to stop her.

My body reacted before my mind caught up. I flinched back hard, one arm rising between us on pure reflex, and Selene’s momentum carried her half a step into empty air where I’d been standing a second before.

She froze. Hurt bloomed across her face, quick and vivid, like she’d been slapped.

“Elira?” Her voice cracked slightly. “I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” I said, stepping back another inch, putting proper distance between us. “I’m just tired.”

Ronan, who’d apparently followed her up, was watching from the doorway with an expression I recognized instantly and hated even faster — the careful, disappointed look of someone deciding whose feelings mattered more in a room. His eyes flicked from my raised arm to Selene’s stricken face, and something in his jaw hardened.

He thought I’d done it on purpose. Thought two years hadn’t softened whatever resentment he assumed I still carried toward the sister who replaced me.

I didn’t correct him. There wasn’t a version of the truth that would land the way I needed it to, not fast enough, not without cracking something open I wasn’t ready to show either of them.

Footsteps in the hall saved me from having to try.

“Is everything all right up here?”

Mother appeared in the doorway — still elegant despite the exhaustion carved into her face, still moving like every step cost her something her body could no longer easily afford. Something in my chest lifted despite everything, some small, stubborn, humiliating part of me that hadn’t fully given up hope.

Her eyes found Selene first.

“Darling, are you tired? You should rest before tonight, you can’t greet the King looking pale.” She smoothed a hand down Selene’s arm, worry etched into every line of her face.

Selene nodded, dabbing carefully at her eyes so as not to smudge anything.

Only then did Mother’s gaze shift to me, and something in her expression softened, just slightly, just enough to notice.

“It’s good you’re back,” she said quietly.

That was all.

No embrace. No question about the two years, about the bruises still visible along my jaw, about anything at all. Just four words and a softness that vanished as quickly as it had appeared, already sliding back toward Selene, toward the evening, toward the version of her family that still needed managing.

I told myself I’d expected this. I told myself disappointment required hope, and I’d stopped hoping a long time ago. Some part of me apparently hadn’t gotten the message, because it still hurt exactly as much as it would have if I’d expected nothing at all.

“Selene,” Mother continued, already turning, “go rest. I’ll have someone bring up your gown for fitting.” She paused, then glanced back at me, and I watched her search for the right words the way you’d search for the gentlest way to close a door on someone’s fingers.

“Elira, I think it might be best if you — rested up here tonight. The gathering will be small, formal. I wouldn’t want you to feel obligated to—”

“I understand,” I said, before she could finish. “I’ll stay up here. I won’t get in the way.”

Something crossed her face — relief, maybe, or guilt, or both tangled together too fast to separate. She nodded and left without lingering, Selene trailing after her, already chattering about which gown to wear.

Ronan stayed a moment longer, watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

“The old you would have asked why,” he said finally, quiet, almost to himself.

I didn’t answer. There wasn’t a why anymore. There was only what was, and I’d learned exactly how much energy it cost to fight that instead of simply accepting it.

He left too, eventually, pulled back downstairs by the pull of duty and noise and a King’s imminent arrival.

I stood alone in a borrowed room that smelled faintly of someone else’s flowers, listening to the house come alive below me — footsteps, laughter, the clink of silver being arranged just so — every sound a small, precise reminder of exactly where I stood in it.

Then I turned, and walked upstairs to the empty east wing alone, while the rest of the house prepared to welcome a king who didn’t know I existed.