Chapter 2: the unraveling thread

I heard his car pull into the driveway.My body went rigid on the bathroom floor. The test was still in my hand, the two pink lines burning into my palm like a brand. I had been sitting here for hours, it felt like, my back against the cold tile, my mind trapped in an endless loop of what I had seen.

Julian's hand on another woman's belly,Julian's lips on her forehead,Julian smiling that smile that used to belong to me.The front door opened. His footsteps echoed through the house, heavy and familiar. I had memorized the sound of his walk years ago,the slight drag of his left foot from an old training injury, the way he paused at the entryway to kick off his shoes.

"Elara?" His voice carried up the stairs. "I'm home."

I shoved the test into the pocket of my sweater and pulled myself off the floor. My reflection in the mirror looked like a stranger. Pale. Hollow. Eyes red-rimmed and glassy. I couldn't let him see me like this.I splashed cold water on my face and pressed a towel against my cheeks until they stopped burning. By the time I walked downstairs, I had rearranged my features into something resembling calm.

Julian stood in the kitchen, loosening his tie. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair that curled slightly at the ends and eyes the color of aged whiskey. His wolf was strong,i had felt it the first time we touched, that electric pull of a destined mate. I had spent seven years believing that pull meant something sacred.

Now I looked at him and felt nothing but sickness.

"There you are," he said, crossing the room to kiss my cheek. His lips were warm, casual, like this was any other evening. Like he hadn't just spent the afternoon with his other wife. "Long day?"

I forced myself to breathe. "Long day," I echoed.

His hand found my waist, and I had to fight the urge to flinch away. His touch felt wrong now. Contaminated. How many times had he touched her like this? How many times had he come home to me after holding her?

"I'm going to shower," he said, already pulling away. "I smell like the pack house." I watched him climb the stairs, and something cold settled in my chest.

The pack house. Another lie.I waited until I heard the water running. Then I moved.Julian's phone was on the kitchen counter, exactly where he always left it. I had never gone through it before. Never felt the need. We were mates,fated, destined, chosen by the Moon Goddess herself. What could he possibly hide from me?

Everything, apparently.My fingers trembled as I picked it up. The screen lit up with a picture of us from our mating ceremony, both of us young and hopeful and blissfully unaware of what was coming. No password. He had never bothered to lock it. Why would he, when his wife would never dream of snooping?

I opened his photo gallery first.At first, I saw nothing unusual. Pictures of the pack lands, of training sessions, of me at various family gatherings. But then I noticed a folder tucked away at the bottom, unlabeled and discreet. I tapped it,And my world shattered all over again.

Lena.

The woman from the clinic. Her name was Lena.

There were a lot of photos. Lena at a restaurant, laughing over a glass of wine. Lena on a beach somewhere tropical, her red hair blowing in the wind. Lena in a white dress, standing beside Julian in front of a courthouse, both of them holding a document that could only be a marriage certificate.

My knees buckled. I grabbed the counter to stay upright.They were married. Legally married. Not just mated married under human law, with paperwork and witnesses and everything that made it real in the eyes of the world.

I kept scrolling.There was a folder within the folder. Legal documents. I opened the first one,Life Insurance Policy

Primary Beneficiary: Lena Sterling

Relationship: Spouse

Spouse.

The word blurred before my eyes. I blinked hard, forcing myself to keep reading. There were more documents. A lease agreement for an apartment in the city,a luxury building I had never heard of, signed by Julian, listed as a "family residence."

Family.He had a family. A real family, with a wife and a home and a child on the way. And I was just... what? The woman he came home to when he was tired of playing house? The obligation he couldn't shake because the Moon Goddess had bound us together?

I opened his messages.Lena's name was at the top of the list, their conversation a constant stream of texts that spanned months. I scrolled back, reading with a kind of morbid fascination, watching the evidence of my own betrayal pile up like bodies on a battlefield.

I can't wait to see you tomorrow, Lena had written three months ago.Me neither, Julian had replied. I'll tell Elara I have a pack meeting. She never questions it anymore.Never questions it. Because I trusted him. Because I believed in us.

I kept reading.

How is she? Lena asked.

Same as always, Julian wrote. Obsessed with getting pregnant. It's exhausting.Exhausting. My pain was exhausting to him.Do you think she'll ever accept that it's not going to happen?

She'll have to eventually. I'm running out of patience.

I pressed my hand against my mouth to keep from screaming.The next message was worse.I wish I could just tell her the truth, Julian had written. But she's fragile. It would destroy her.

So what's your plan? Lena asked.

I'm waiting for the right time. Once the baby is born, I'll figure something out. She's just a phase I need to sort out.

A phase.Three years of fertility treatments. Three years of hoping and praying and crying myself to sleep. Three years of giving him everything I had, every piece of my heart and soul, and I was just a phase he needed to sort out.

I wanted to throw the phone across the room. I wanted to scream until my throat bled. I wanted to shift into my wolf and tear through the house, destroying everything he had ever touched.

But I didn't.Instead, I took a deep breath and did something I never thought I would do. I opened my own phone, created a new cloud account with a password he would never guess, and started downloading everything.

Every photo. Every document. Every text message.

I saved them all.My hands were steady now. My heart had gone cold, frozen solid by the weight of his betrayal. I wasn't crying anymore. I was planning.

The water stopped running upstairs.I locked his phone and placed it exactly where I had found it. Then I moved to the living room, settling onto the couch with a book I didn't see, my eyes fixed on the pages while my mind raced through everything I had just learned.

Julian appeared at the top of the stairs, a towel draped around his neck, his hair still dripping. He looked relaxed. Content. Like a man who had nothing to hide.

"Hey," he said, padding down the stairs. "What are you reading?"

I held up the book without looking at him. "Just something I found on the shelf."He crossed to the couch and sat beside me, close enough that I could smell the soap on his skin. His arm brushed mine, and I felt my wolf recoil inside me, her hackles rising.

He lies, she growled. He lies and lies and lies.I forced myself to stay still. To smile. To pretend.

"My mother called today," Julian said, reaching for the remote. "She's in town for the week. Wants to have dinner with us on Friday."The remote clicked on, filling the room with the low murmur of the evening news.

"She's been asking when we're finally going to give her a grandchild," he added, a slight edge to his voice. "You know how she gets."

I turned a page I hadn't read.How she gets. His mother had been pressuring us for years, dropping hints at every family gathering, pulling me aside to ask about treatments, suggesting healers and rituals and anything that might help. She had made my infertility her personal mission, and every failed cycle had felt like a failure to her as much as to me.

Julian had always defended me. Or so I had thought.

Now I wondered if he had been defending me at all, or just buying himself time while he built his real family somewhere else.

"I'll make something special," I said, my voice calm and even. "For your mother."

Julian smiled, that easy, familiar smile that had once made my heart flutter. "You're amazing, you know that?" I looked at him then, really looked at him, and saw nothing but a stranger.

Oh, she'll get a grandchild, Julian, I thought, my hand resting casually on my stomach. But she'll get a grandchild through a different wife.

And so will you.The news droned on. Julian's arm stayed around my shoulders, warm and heavy and suffocating. And somewhere deep inside me, something hardened into steel.

I had been a phase. A problem to be sorted out.But Julian had no idea what I was capable of.

Not yet.The phone in my pocket was silent, but I could feel the weight of everything I had saved. Every photo, every document, every cruel word he had written about me.He thought I was fragile. He thought I would break.But I was a wolf. And wolves didn't break.

They survived.