Chapter 3 Less Than a Shadow

Elone's POV

I suddenly couldn't breathe.

I dug my nails into my palms. That sharp spike of pain was the only thing pulling me back from the suffocating weight of Marcus's words.

"Improved your methods of seduction."

The accusation lashed across my soul like a silver whip. It wasn't a physical sting; it was a deep, searing burn in the very core of my being.

He really saw me that way.

In the back of my mind, my wolf, Sia, let out a low, pathetic whimper before falling into a deafening silence.

It took a long time for me to swallow the lump in my throat.

I looked up and forced a small, hollow smile.

"Marcus."

My voice was calm—so calm it sounded foreign to my own ears. It wasn't the pleading, cautious tone I used to use. It was something forged in the pitch-black cells of Hollowstone: tempered, sharp, and restrained.

"You cannot use the feelings I once had for you as a license to trample on my dignity."

I looked him straight in the eye, punctuating every word. "That era is over."

Marcus froze.

He studied my face for a heartbeat, his jaw tightening.

My words clearly displeased him.

With an impatient huff, he loosened his collar and crushed his glowing cigarette into a corner ashtray.

I immediately lowered my gaze, refusing to meet his eyes again.

The old Elone would have chased after him. She would have hovered anxiously when he turned cold, watching him with those silver-grey eyes like a stray pup begging for a scrap of affection.

That girl was dead.

Not that I thought my change would affect him. I was just a discarded mate, a criminal freshly crawled out of a dungeon. To him, whatever I became was irrelevant.

"Tonight is Astoria's birthday," he said, his voice returning to its usual frost. "I'm taking you back to the Sunwood Estate."

I didn't look at him.

"When we get there, behave," Marcus snapped, his voice laced with an undeniable Alpha-grade command. "Do not provoke Astoria."

He paused, his eyes narrowing.

"She is nothing like you."

The words hit me like a blunt blade, sawing slowly into my chest.

"She is nothing like you."

What was Astoria to him? She was the high-bred rose of the Sunwood family, the future Luna cherished by all, the perfect woman for whom he was willing to discard his fated mate.

And me?

I wasn't even a shadow in her light.

I was the dirt beneath the rose.

Once stepped on, I wouldn't even leave a mark.

The place where my mating bond used to hum began to burn again. I gritted my teeth and pushed the agony down.

An hour later, Marcus's subordinate ushered me into a black SUV. We headed toward the Moonsilver Pack—the Sunwood ancestral home.

The grand hall was a sea of people.

Crystal chandeliers cast a cold, white glare over the crowd. The scent of ritual incense drifted from the Moon Altar, and servers moved between guests with silver trays. Every powerful Alpha, Council member, and elite merchant family in the North was here.

I stayed in the shadows at the edge of the hall.

Nearby, a group of high-ranking she-wolves were whispering.

"So, Astoria isn't actually Alpha Aldric's biological daughter, right? A foster pup getting more love than the bloodline... seems suspicious."

"It's talent," another whispered back. "Astoria has grace, and more importantly, she has leverage. In our world, blood doesn't matter as much as profit."

"True," a younger socialite chimed in. "She's only been in the inner council for six months and she's already closed three major border treaties. Alpha Aldric was so thrilled he promoted her to Deputy Overseer. He's grooming her as his heir."

"But she's an outsider," someone frowned. "Why doesn't she go back to her real parents?"

"They never found them," a well-informed wolf whispered. "The human woman who raised Elone was supposed to be Astoria's biological mother—a classic switch at birth. But the blood tests came back negative. They aren't related."

My hand tightened under my sleeve.

Negative.

I still couldn't wrap my head around it. I had always assumed my foster mother switched us so her child could have a better life in an Alpha family.

But the DNA proved otherwise.

Astoria wasn't her daughter.

Then who orchestrated the swap? And why?

No one knew.

All that mattered was the result: a human woman lost her child, I was dragged back to the Sunwoods, and Astoria—a girl of unknown origin—became the golden child.

Because her past was a blank slate, she had lived with the Sunwoods for over twenty years. That history meant Aldric and Luna Isolde loved her like their own.

No.

Better than their own.

The women shifted their gaze toward me. Their eyes felt like needles.

I lowered my head and hurried toward the side staircase to the second floor.

As I left, one of them nudged her friend.

"Hey, did that girl look like Elone to you?"

The others looked over.

"Unlikely," one shook her head. "Elone had that face and those silver wolf eyes. You'd spot her in a crowd of a thousand she-wolves. That girl was just skin and bones. The vibe was all wrong."

"Yeah. Elone used to be the center of attention. That mousy thing? No way."

They moved on, convinced that the thin, broken shadow slinking away couldn't possibly be the Elone Sunwood who once captivated the North.

I reached the end of the hallway and stopped before a familiar door.

My old room.

I reached out to push it open, but the voices from inside froze me in my tracks.

"Is it true Elone's out of Hollowstone?"

A male wolf answered, "The one who used to crawl after Marcus? When did she even go to the dungeon? What did she do?"

My blood ran cold.

To save face, the Sunwood family had never gone public with my imprisonment. My father had scrubbed the records, claiming I was studying abroad with a neutral pack.

Inside the room, Marcus sat with Rick, a Councilman's son. Marcus shot him a warning glare.

Rick realized he'd slipped up and quickly pasted on a fawning smile, pushing his cards toward Marcus.

"Right, right—wrong word. Not the dungeon. She's back from 'abroad.' Elone is back from her travels."

Kieran, another Alpha's son, took a drag of his cigar and snorted.

"'Back from abroad' sounds a lot like 'released from Hollowstone.' Your tongue is slipping, Rick."

Rick brought the topic back around.

"Anyway, now that she's back, things are going to get interesting for you, Marcus. Didn't you two sign a mating contract three years ago?"

He blew out a cloud of smoke.

"When's the official mating ceremony?"

My hand hovered over the door handle.

Rick laughed.

"The mating contract? That was basically a joke."

He spoke with total nonchalance. "An official mating? That's just signing up for someone to control your life. How boring."

"A man like Marcus? He'd never let a contract tie him down."

I slowly let my hand fall from the doorknob.

My fingertips were ice.