All Chapters of Finally Divorced, I’m the Wolf Queen Now: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

My father hands me the ledgers for the family's northern trade division on my second week back, and I spend three days buried in numbers before I understand why he's really giving them to me."This isn't training," I tell him, closing the last folder. "This is a test.""Everything is a test." He doesn't look up from his own paperwork. "You'll take over first class operations by the end of the month. Show me you can hold it."I hold it. I clear a backlog that's been sitting untouched for two years, renegotiate three shipping contracts that were bleeding the pack dry, and by the second week I'm running board meetings in a voice that doesn't shake once.The message arrives on a Tuesday night, buried in an anonymous account with no name attached, just a single line. You should see what he's been saying about you.Attached beneath it, a full thread of messages between Damon and Seraphine, months old, timestamps stretching back well before the divorce, well before the awakening ceremony tha

The dress arrives from my father's own tailor two days before the banquet, deep red silk that fits like it was made for exactly this moment, and when I step into the palace hall on the night of the event, I feel every eye in the room shift toward me at once.I let them look.Damon and Seraphine arrive an hour later, working the room the way I remember him working every room that mattered, shaking hands, laughing too loud at the right jokes, angling himself toward every powerful family still deciding whether the Wolf King's daughter is worth aligning with. Seraphine trails behind him in a gown too formal for someone who isn't even meant to be here, smiling too wide at guests who barely acknowledge her.I watch them work their way toward my father's oldest trade partner, a stern woman who's controlled half the western shipping routes for thirty years, and I cross the room before Damon finishes his introduction."Lady Marlowe." I extend a hand, warm, easy. "I hope Damon isn't boring you

Damon’s povMy mother hasn't stopped pacing since the banquet."Do you understand what we've done?" She rounds on my father in the study, voice pitched somewhere between panic and disbelief. "We let our son destroy his marriage to the Wolf King's heir. We stood there and let Seraphine humiliate her in front of half the northern packs, and now that girl controls trade routes that could bury this family in a season if she wanted to.""She won't." My father doesn't sound convinced of his own words. "She's not cruel.""She poached Corvin from under Damon's nose without blinking." My mother stops pacing long enough to stare at him. "That's mercy compared to what we did to her.” I listen from the hallway, unseen, and don't argue with either of them, because some part of me has been running the same numbers since the moment my father's voice cracked reciting Elara's new title.It doesn't change anything. If anything, it sharpens what I already decided on the drive home from that gate.She's

Damon’s povI request an audience through proper channels this time, three formal letters, a modest gift I know won't be accepted but send anyway because refusing to try feels worse than being refused. The fourth letter finally gets a response, five words from the palace council, no explanation attached.She'll see you. Tomorrow, noon.I don't sleep that night rehearsing what I'll say, running through every version of an apology I can construct, discarding each one for sounding too rehearsed, too convenient, too much like a man trying to win back a business asset instead of a wife. By the time the car pulls up to the palace gates the next day, I've settled on nothing but the truth, whatever that turns out to be once I'm standing in front of her.The guards let me through without argument this time. That should tell me something. It doesn't, not yet.Elara receives me in a private study instead of the throne room, standing when I enter, composed, unreadable in a way she never used to b

Damon’s povI stand outside my father in law's study for a full minute before I make myself open the door, my hand hovering over the handle, my pulse loud enough that I'm certain someone in the hall must hear it. This is wrong. I know it's wrong. I tell myself it anyway, that a photograph of a few pages isn't theft, not really, that a man protecting his family's business can be forgiven a small trespass if it means keeping the roof over their heads.I don't believe myself. I go in anyway.The plans sit exactly where the staff mentioned, locked in the desk but the key left carelessly in a drawer above it, and my hands shake pulling the pages loose, shake worse raising the camera to photograph them. I keep glancing at the door between shots, certain each creak in the hallway is someone coming to catch me, my breath shallow enough that I have to force myself to keep still long enough for the images to focus.I'm three pages in when the door opens behind me."Care to explain yourself?"I