Chapter 5

Elena

I drove to Ironbound headquarters.

Staff looked up as I walked across the lobby.

I had never been to Ironbound HQ. Not once in three years. Barrett and I had met in hotel penthouses and private dining rooms and the back of his car. I had gone to the council gala as Dr. Halloran, his personal physician, and held my champagne glass a foot from his body the whole night.

Every pair of eyes on the marble followed me. A human in scrubs, wedding ring on a chain.

The elevator to the top floor was glass.

Halfway up I thought, This is what Sophia sees every day.

Barrett's assistant tried to stand. I walked past her before she could form the sentence.

He was at the window with his phone at his ear. He turned at the door. For half a second his face softened into the look he wore before I told him what was wrong with his back. Private warmth.

Then his eyes caught on where we were.

His mouth tightened. He said into the phone, "I'll call you back."

"Elena." He set the phone down. "This is not a good time to surprise me."

"No," I said. "I don't imagine it is."

"I have a reservation for us at seven. A quiet candlelight dinner. Whatever this is, we can talk —"

"I don't want dinner."

I walked across the carpet and laid the screenshot of Reid's prescription record flat on his blotter.

"Why did you drug me for three years?"

His face drained.

For a full beat he said nothing. His eyes flicked from the page to the closed door, then back to the page.

"Who showed you this?"

"That's your question?"

"Elena."

"Was anyone going to tell me? Ever?" I kept my voice low, because a human woman raising her voice in an Alpha's office was its own kind of spectacle, and I was done giving people spectacles. "Or was this going to be the rest of my life?"

He passed a hand down his face.

"This was for your body." His voice reached for the register he'd used with me since our wedding. Reassuring. Alpha-warm. "Do you know what pregnancy does to a human carrying a wolf child? I could not sit by and watch you kill yourself for a baby."

"You drugged me, Barrett." My hands were still. It startled me how still they were. "For three years. You watched me come home from shots and hold heating pads against my stomach, and you drugged me."

"Elena —"

"Did the shots not hurt me? Did three years of me wrecking my adrenals not hurt me?"

"You wanted a baby so much," he said, softer, as if the softness were an answer. "I could not take that from you."

"So you took it anyway. You just didn't tell me."

He didn't meet my eyes.

"Is this why?" My voice shook once. I pulled it back. "Is this why you've kept me a secret? You never intended to let a human be the Luna. You never intended a human to be the mother of your heir."

"Enough."

He turned from me, braced his hands on his desk, turned back.

"Enough, Elena. I have not betrayed you. I have protected you. You are the one who has changed. You used to be gentle. You used to trust me. Now all I hear from you is Luna title, Luna title, Luna title. When did you get so vain?"

I looked at him.

He was not performing.

He had believed, for three years, that taking care of me meant deciding for me. He had believed it long enough that my objection sounded to him like vanity. That was worse than a lie.

"What I wanted," I said, carefully, because the words had to hold, "was never a title. What I wanted was to be real to you. And we are past that now."

I reached into my bag.

I pulled out the folded divorce agreement and set it on the blotter next to the prescription record.

"I want a divorce."

For one full second Barrett did not move. Then his mouth pulled into something like a laugh.

"Elena. Stop. You're upset. You don't mean it."

A knock.

The door opened without waiting.

Sophia, in a different coat now. Camel. Soft. Over a dress.

"Apologies, Alpha. I'm sorry to interrupt. Vitalis Corp's team landed an hour early. I had to discharge myself to come get you. They are downstairs. We need to greet them."

Barrett looked at her. Then at the two papers on his desk. Then at me.

He picked up the divorce agreement without looking at it, folded it in half, and dropped it on the side table by the window, the way he'd drop a gym flyer he had no intention of reading.

"Go home, Elena," he said. "I will be back tonight. We can talk over dinner."

He walked past me. Sophia held the door. He didn't look at her either.

The door clicked shut.

I stood alone in Barrett's office.

My divorce agreement lay on the side table next to a crystal paperweight, creased down the middle like a takeout menu.

My husband had not read one word of it.

I walked out past his assistant, rode the glass elevator down, and drove past the turn to our house without taking it.

I checked into the quietest hotel I could find.

I sat on the edge of a king bed with my coat still on.

Our home had been beautiful too. I had called it beautiful in three different magazine interviews, under the byline Dr. Halloran, Ironbound's private internal-medicine physician. I had watered Barrett's mother's orchids. I had alphabetized his books.

The house had never been mine. I had been an ornament in it.

I pulled my phone out.

I opened the V.C. message again.

Three years ago, Vitalis Corp had offered me a senior research post in Silvercrest territory. The offer had come down the corporate channel. The personal line underneath said Call me anytime, Elena. It had been signed K.

Alpha Killian.

Silvercrest's Alpha. An Alpha whose name Barrett said out loud only when his council door was shut. The man who, it turned out, quietly held Vitalis Corp three subsidiaries deep.

Also my former boss. The man who had invited me into his Pack the day I finished school, and who had taken it in stride when I'd said no.

I had turned him down.

Because of Barrett.

I opened my contact list and scrolled to K.

I did not know if the number still worked. Three years was a long time, and Alphas changed private lines. I did not know if the offer still held. I did not know what I was going to say when a voicemail picked up.

The call connected on the first ring.

For half a second the line was silent.

Then a voice I had not heard in three years. Deeper than I remembered. Calm.

"Elena."

I opened my mouth to say It's —

"I have been waiting for you to call me."