Semua Bab FAT, BARREN, AND REJECTED: Bab 1 - Bab 10

ELLA’S POV Hunger had a way of reorganizing a person’s priorities. Three weeks after the ceremony, I was living in a cramped rented room that my only remaining friend, Delia, had quietly paid for without ever making me feel like a charity case. The room had one window that didn’t quite close, a mattress that dipped in the middle, and a radiator that clanked more than it warmed anything. I hadn’t asked her to help me. She’d simply shown up with a key and told me not to argue, and I’d been too broken to do anything but accept it, too proud to say thank you the way I should have. Going from Luna of the Hawkson pack to a woman who counted coins for bread should have felt like the end of the world. Some nights, it still did — I’d lie awake listening to the radiator clank and think about the house I used to live in, the staff who used to make me up, the husband who’d made a spectacle of discarding me in front of everyone who mattered. But when the restaurant down the street posted a

ELLA’S POV My stepsisters lingered by the door as I finished dressing, arms crossed, matching smirks firmly in place, watching me the way they always had — like my life was a show performed entirely for their amusement. “Have fun with Mr. Crippled.” Chloe examined her nails with theatrical boredom. “I’m sure your bought body is exactly what he ordered.” “Bought body.” I laughed, short and humorless, tying the sash of my traveling coat, refusing to give them the satisfaction of seeing how deep the words still cut, even now, even after everything I’d survived without them. “Careful. People might start asking what actually happened to me, and you won’t like the answer.” “Oh, please.” Claudia rolled her eyes, leaning against the doorframe with the same lazy cruelty she’d perfected since childhood. “Whatever expensive doctor fixed you up, it clearly didn’t fix the attitude.” “No,” I agreed, meeting her gaze evenly. “That part, I kept on purpose.” They didn’t know — none of them

JASON’S POV The wheelchair had stopped being uncomfortable weeks ago. Now it just felt like a costume I was tired of wearing. I watched the woman my grandmother had introduced as Chloe cross the parlor toward me, her chin lifted a fraction too high, the way they always walked when they were deciding how to play the room. “You must be Jason.” Her voice was steadier than most. That, at least, was new. “Must I.” I let the words come out flat, bored, the same tone I used on all of them. “Sit if you want.“ I watched her face for the flicker I always watched for — the pity, quick and badly hidden, the little softening around the eyes that always followed. Poor crippled Alpha. Every one of them did it eventually. She didn’t do it. She sat, back straight, hands folded, and looked at me like she was deciding something about me instead of the other way around. “Grandmother tells me you’re humble,” I said. “Desperate enough to marry a man who can’t walk. Is that right?” “I’m her

JASON’S POV I’d heard a lot of lies in my life. Enough that I’d stopped being surprised by the shape of them years ago — enough that I could usually predict the ending before the woman in front of me finished her opening line. But I hadn’t expected this particular lie from her. I sat with that thought long after Chloe left my study, papers forgotten in my lap, the door still swinging faintly on its hinge from how quickly she’d gone. The rumor had come from one of my own guards a while ago, actually — a young one, new enough to still gossip carelessly in the mess hall like no one important could hear him. I’d caught the tail end of it in passing, the kind of story that traveled through packs the way rumors always did, growing a new detail every time someone repeated it. A waitress. A locked room. A chemical neither of them could explain. An Alpha who woke up robbed and alone, nursing a headache and a mystery he’d never solved. I’d assumed, at the time, that it was some

VIVIENNE’S POVI had built this family’s survival on paperwork long before I’d ever built it on wolves.Alphas liked to believe strength was the thing that kept a pack standing. I’d buried a husband and raised a grandson who couldn’t walk without an audience believing it, and I’d learned decades ago that strength only mattered if someone with a clear head was managing everything underneath it — the alliances, the ledgers, the quiet arrangements that never made it into any official record. That had always been my role in this family, whether anyone thanked me for it or not.Which was why, an hour after leaving the girl’s room, I sat alone in my study with the Whitmore family’s file open in front of me, reading it for the third time that evening with considerably more suspicion than I’d read it the first two.The engagement had been arranged eight months ago, back when Jason’s stubbornness had finally exhausted even my patience. I’d gone through the usual channels — a discreet inquiry t