glow up

Chapter Five

Nobody in this building remembers a woman named Wren Ashworth, because that woman doesn't exist anymore.

I go by Vera Ashford now. CEO. Founder of the only trading house that moves freely between human markets and werewolf territory, which makes me either indispensable or dangerous depending on which side of the table you're sitting on. Most people choose to treat me as both.

Five years does more to a person than time is supposed to. My wolf came in the night my daughter was born, late and violent and nothing like the gentle awakening the old stories describe. I remember the pain of it almost more than I remember the pain of labor. I came out the other side of that night with the same body I walked in with — same soft weight in my hips, same fullness in my face, every feature the old pack used to whisper about still exactly where it's always been — but nothing else about me came out the same. My wolf didn't rebuild me into someone smaller. She rebuilt what was underneath. I stand differently now. I take up the space I'm given instead of apologizing for it. I have never once missed the version of me who used to shrink herself in doorways so nobody would have to look at her for too long, because that woman is gone even though her body never left.

I don't cry anymore. I don't explain myself. I don't wait for anyone's permission to walk through a door, and I have stopped waiting for permission to simply exist in the size I exist in.

My assistant is waiting outside my office when I arrive, tablet in hand, already talking before I've taken off my coat.

"The Ashworth Pack sent another envoy this morning. Same offer. Exclusive trade rights through their territory in exchange for—"

"No."

"They raised the number, Ms. Ashford. Significantly."

"I don't care what number they attach to it." I set my bag down and look at him until he understands the conversation is finished. "Send them the same answer we've sent every year. We are not interested in doing business with the Ashworth Pack. Ever. Under any terms."

He hesitates, which is the only part of his job I find tedious. "They've asked to speak with you directly this time. In person."

"Then they'll be disappointed." I sit down at my desk and open the first file waiting for me. "I don't take meetings with dead accounts."

"Dead accounts, Ms. Ashford, that happen to be one of the wealthiest packs on the continent."

"I'm aware of exactly how wealthy they are." I don't look up from the file. "That's precisely how I know they can afford to hear no as many times as it takes for it to sink in."

He leaves without pushing further, because everyone who works for me learns quickly that I don't repeat myself twice, and I don't waste breath softening a decision just to make it easier for someone else to hear. I learned a long time ago that a woman my size gets told to make herself smaller in every possible sense — quieter, more agreeable, less inconvenient to be around. I stopped doing all three the day I decided I'd rather be feared than folded into a shape that made other people comfortable.

I built this company out of nothing. No pack behind me, no name that meant anything, just a newborn daughter and a decision that I would rather die clawing my way up than spend one more day asking anyone for permission to exist. Every contract on my desk, every deal that crosses continents and species lines, exists because I made it exist. Kael Ashworth doesn't get a piece of that. Not his gold, not his alliance, not his name anywhere near mine ever again.

There was a version of me who might have felt something petty and satisfying about turning down his money specifically. That version is gone. What's left of me doesn't feel satisfaction about this at all. I just have a rule, and the rule keeps my daughter safe, and I don't bend rules that keep her safe for anyone, least of all him.

My phone rings before I finish the first page.

The hospital.

I'm already standing before the second ring finishes.

"Ms. Ashford, it's Dr. Renner. Mila's fever spiked again about twenty minutes ago. I think you should come in."

"I'm on my way."

I don't remember the elevator ride down or the drive to the hospital. I remember arriving. I remember the particular smell of that hallway, antiseptic and too bright, the smell I've hated more than any other smell in the world since the first time they told me something was wrong with my daughter's blood.

Dr. Renner meets me outside her room with the same careful face he always wears when he doesn't want to say something plainly.

"Her wolf is fighting itself again. It happens in pups born from parents with a significant difference in strength — one parent wolf-less, one parent Alpha-blooded. The imbalance puts stress on a pup's system that a normal birth wouldn't." He says it gently, like gentleness will make it less true. "We're managing the fever, but this isn't going away on its own, Ms. Ashford. It may get worse before it gets better."

I've heard some version of this speech a dozen times over five years and it has never once gotten easier to stand still while someone says it to my face.

"Manage it," I say. My voice comes out flat, controlled, the same voice I use to end negotiations. "Whatever it costs. Whatever specialist you have to fly in from wherever they're currently hiding. I don't need to hear the diagnosis again. I need her fixed."

Money has never once been the obstacle. I have more of it than I know what to do with, more than most packs on this continent, and I would burn through every last cent of it without blinking if it bought her one more healthy year. The obstacle is that no one has found the actual cause yet, and until they do, all any of us are doing is managing symptoms and hoping.

He nods, because he's learned by now that I don't want comfort, I want results, and he leaves to go get them.

I go inside.

Mila is small against the pillows, her cheeks flushed with fever, dark hair stuck to her forehead. The second she sees me her whole face changes, the way it always does, like I'm the only stable thing in a room that keeps shifting under her.

"Mommy." Her voice is thin. "Can I have ice cream?"

"Whatever flavor you want."

"And next time can I have a bunny? A stuffed one. White."

"You'll have it before the end of the day." I sit on the edge of the bed and smooth her hair back from her face, and something in my chest that I keep locked down for everyone else loosens just slightly, just for her. "I promise."

She smiles like that's the easiest thing in the world to believe, because to her it is. I've never once broken a promise to this child, and I intend to keep it that way for as long as I'm breathing.

I stay until she falls back asleep, then I step out into the hallway and pull my coat back on. There's an ice cream shop two blocks from here that she likes, the one with the striped awning, and I told her I'd be quick.

The elevator doors open the second I press the button, empty, and I step inside without looking up, my mind already three steps ahead on which specialist to call first, which contact I still have from the old world who might know something about pups born of mismatched blood.

The doors start to close.

A hand shoots between them.

They slide back open, and a man steps inside, tall, broad through the shoulders, dressed like someone who owns half the building we're standing in. He doesn't look at me right away. He's checking his phone, jaw tight, the posture of a man carrying something heavy that has nothing to do with me.

Then he looks up.

And every single year I spent building myself into someone unrecognizable collapses in on itself in less than a second.

Kael.

His eyes lock onto mine and something shifts behind them, recognition trying to surface through five years and a version of me he never let himself imagine could exist. I watch him search my features like he's trying to solve a puzzle he doesn't have all the pieces to yet — the same face, the same body he used to reach for in the dark, but none of the softness he could once talk over, none of the woman who used to make herself smaller in rooms like this one so men like him would have an easier time forgetting she was in it. He doesn't find her. He's looking directly at her and he still doesn't find her, because the woman he's picturing never learned to look back at anyone the way I'm looking at him right now.

The doors slide shut behind him with a soft, final click, sealing the two of us inside a box no bigger than my old bedroom.

My heart is hammering so hard I'm certain he can hear it, but I don't let a single muscle in my face move. Five years of turning myself into someone who doesn't flinch, and it's the only reason I'm still standing upright right now instead of falling apart in front of the one man who could undo everything I've built with a single question.

"Have we met before?" His voice is quieter than I remember, uncertain in a way the old Kael never allowed himself to sound.

I hold his gaze and give him nothing.

The elevator starts to move, and there is nowhere in this box for either of us to go.