Chapter 4: The Ball

Danielle POV

The spotlight found me before I was ready for it. Every eye in the room turned at once, and my stomach dropped like I'd missed a stair. I forced my feet forward, one careful step at a time, in six-inch heels I never imagined myself wearing a week ago.

I came down the staircase with my gaze fixed on the crowd below, a mask dangling from my fingers to match the lavender gown draped over a body that still didn't feel like mine. The music slowed, honeyed and deliberate, and my footsteps fell into its rhythm without my permission.

Not one face was familiar. The only person I recognized was the man who'd sat beside my sickbed that morning.

The family's reserved section held four women and, at its center, Jackson — Danielle's master.

I kept my steps firm even as my pulse betrayed me.

"She looks more elegant than ever.”

"I'm so glad she didn't die from the accident."

The whispers chased me down the stairs like a current I couldn't swim against. I passed faces that only Danielle would have known — the real Danielle, the one I was still learning to wear.

When my foot touched the final stair, the room exhaled and turned back to itself. I went straight for Jackson, the only anchor I had.

"Oh — you have to meet your director," he said, voice cool enough to frost glass, already signaling a young man in a tailored suit.

"Hi, Mrs. Carmen. I'm so glad the accident didn't take you from us," the man said, smiling as he led me aside.

"I'm tougher than I look. It would take more than that to finish me off." The words came out before I could stop them — I hadn't wanted the silence to look like suspicion.

He laughed. "Glad to see you haven't lost your humor."

"She has plenty of people to catch up with," Jackson cut in, and this time his voice carried something darker than coldness. Possession.

"Of course. I'll call you later — we should plan your next album." Bruce, the director, gave a small bow and slipped back into the crowd.

Another conversation about a woman I've never met.

I smiled and nodded my way through introduction after introduction, rich fabric and richer names blurring together. The doctor had told Jackson my memory was intact. What was I supposed to do with strangers who thought they knew me?

Then the doors at the end of the hall slammed open.

The room went quiet in a way that felt physical — a held breath, four hundred people at once. Then the howling started, low and reverent, the sound a pack makes when royalty walks through a door.

I turned, and my whole body went cold.

It was Jacob.

And beside him, curled around his arm like something that had grown there, was Lucy.

The moment I saw them together, memory hit me like a wave with no warning — my crown, my home, my son, the life that had been carved out of me and handed to someone else. I stood frozen at the edge of the crowd while Lucy's laughter carried across the hall, bright and careless, utterly unbothered by the ghost standing twenty feet away.

Jacob's eyes found mine.

He went still. Just for a second — but I saw it, the flicker of something crossing his face before it smoothed back into a smirk. He said something to Lucy I couldn't hear, then peeled her hand off his arm and started walking toward me.

Every step he took, my throat closed a little tighter.

Does he know?

Does he recognize what's underneath this face?

He stopped in front of me and extended his hand, smirk fixed in place, an audience of the entire ballroom watching to see what I'd do. Refusing an Alpha's hand in public was an insult no one recovered from. I forced my fingers into his.

The music picked back up, slow and deliberate, and he pulled me into it like he'd done it a thousand times before. Maybe he had — just never with me.

"So, Danielle." His voice dropped low enough that only I could hear it, his eyes tracing me with open hunger. "You finally woke up. And you're still looking sexier than ever."

Was that — was he actually flirting with me? Rage climbed up my throat so fast I nearly choked on it. I breathed through it, forced my expression into something unreadable, and hoped he'd let it die there.

He didn't.

"I'm sure you missed me," he murmured, pulling me closer, his mouth brushing my ear, "after two years without my hands on that sweet ass — without me digging into you until you came"

The world tilted. What relationship did Danielle have with this man? Before I could pull together an answer, his hand slid down and squeezed, casual, entitled, right there but luckily, no one saw anything.

I flinched and looked up into his face, and what stared back wasn't affection. It was pure, unhidden lust — the kind that didn't care whose body it was wearing.

"Excuse me," I managed, voice tight. "I need the restroom."

I didn't wait for permission. I walked away before he could reach for me again.

Outside the hall, I let the breath I'd been holding rip out of me and pressed a hand to the wall, trying to steady a mind still reeling from what had just happened.

A waitress rushed toward me, glancing over her shoulder like something was chasing her.

"Miss Danielle — your diary."

I said nothing, just watched her, waiting.

"Jackson's mistress, Felicia, stole it from your room while you were in the coma. She wanted the codes to your father-in-law's assets." The waitress was breathless, eyes darting. "Your code — 1234 — wasn't so dumb after all. She never cracked it."

She handed it over with a look that expected recognition I couldn't give her.

"Thank you," I said, and ran for the restroom before she could ask any questions

Inside, I locked the door and stared at my reflection — a stranger's face, a stranger's husband, a stranger's secrets waiting in my hands.

I opened the diary and smiled.

Maybe waking up in Danielle's body wasn't a curse after all.

Maybe it was a gift.

My son was gone. Rowan — my beloved, taken along with everything else. There was no more Rachel, no more the soft, broken abd obese human who'd stood by and watched wolves tear her life apart piece by piece.

Now it was their turn to bleed.

This is VENGEANCE