Ethel Cain Before Transition Novels & Stories

He could still feel the electricity of her. "Sir?" his assistant whispered, stepping out of the shadows. "Do we intercept the deed transfer? We can crush her in court." "No," Ethan said, his voice a low, dangerous purr. "We protect her. From everything. Even from herself. And if the Cains breathe in her direction? Burn them." Across town, in the decaying Silver Moon packhouse, Gregory Cain sat in his office. He was nursing a glass of cheap bourbon, trying to figure out how to pay the interest on their loans.

Herself in a green dress in a kitchen that used to be his to visit, the frame on the wall behind her, the recipe card visible if you knew where to look. The caption read: The Adeyemi-Harlow Framework for Institutional Transition. Founded by Thomas Adeyemi and Margaret Harlow, 1976. Developed and formalised by Bianca Adeyemi Harlow, 2024. She sat with it. Not managing it. Not calculating what it meant or how people would receive it or what came next. Just sitting with it the way she sat with the things that were too large and too true to do anything except feel. “Your name,” Ethan said. “Both of them.”

I stand again, pacing, trying to make sense of it all. Dahlia Adams, no longer the lost, helpless woman I once knew, but a millionaire, a ruthless CEO with the world at her feet. How the hell did she get here? Who helped her? It’s impossible she built this empire on her own, starting from nothing. There’s a gap in the timeline, a leap from the moment she left me to where she is now, and I intend to find out how she made it. I’m Ethan Caine. Nothing escapes my notice, and Dahlia, of all people, won’t be the exception. Seeing her today… it shook something loose inside me. I dropped into my chair and pulled up article after article about her.

Cain is mated to Ethel. Then why didn't he claim her if he was mated to her, why did he abandon her all these years and suddenly come back into her life? I am not a fool to know that he wants her back now and he wants something else from me. Something I need to figure out quickly before he strikes again, "You are not to see him again and if he does appear to you, you will call out to me." A frown settles on her face at my order, "There was something he wanted to tell me, please let me at least allow him to tell me," she pleads with me.

The city outside was still buzzing — cars honking, people rushing, life going on as if nothing had happened. But for me, everything had stopped days ago. I adjusted the box in my arms and started walking toward the glass doors. Behind me, I heard hurried footsteps. “Selina, wait!” His voice again. I didn’t turn around, but he caught up easily. Ethan stepped in front of me, breathless. “Can we talk?” he asked. “There’s nothing to talk about,” I said, trying to move past him. He blocked my way gently, his tone softer now. “If you need anything, I can assist. I can help you with the transition, with—”

"I have a suite upstairs. We’re going to go over the transition. Now." "Whatever the boss wants," Caleb drawled. The elevator ride was silent, save for the mechanical hum and the sound of Ethan’s own pulse in his ears. The tension was a physical thing, a thick, suffocating heat that filled the small space. Caleb stood in the corner, watching Ethan through hooded eyes. He wasn't acting like a man who had just lost an empire. He was acting like a man who had just been set free. The door to the suite hissed shut behind them. Ethan didn't even turn on the lights. The city glow from the floor-to-ceiling windows was enough to cast everything in shades of blue and silver.

Abigail and Christian wanted to personally thank her when Ethlyn woke out of a coma for the first time, but the floor slipped from their feet when they came to know the full name of the Neurologist treating Ethlyn, Laira Daisy Haysbert Wayne. Abigail suggested quickly shifting Ethlyn from the hospital of the Black council to their own pack’s hospital. She didn’t want Ethlyn’s past to strike her anywhere in her life again, not after when she was finally awake after years, not after when Nathan didn’t hold any grudge of whatever happened in the past, and Abigail could picture them together in the future again. “It seems like she is not going to open her eyes in your presence,” Reva commented,

Now that her cognitive alignment had turned more sensible, she was completely refraining from badgering his terminal, electing instead to direct her concern toward Robert's survival. The second the medical assistants initiated the total blood exchange through the tubes, Ethan cleared the gates. When his runner breached the courtyard of the Carter mansion, he stripped off his soiled leathers, scrubbed the heavy scent of the clinic from his skin, and changed into clean winter wools before navigating the stone corridor toward Helena’s private quarters. He struck the timber panelling twice, and the latch immediately disengaged. Helena beamed from ear to ear, her pale tail twitching with an innoc

Ethan was completely shocked to see Sylvia looking so disheveled. It was a staggering contrast to the fashionable, elegant woman he once knew. A foul odor hung around her, and it suddenly hit him that no one had ever told him where she was taken. He had no idea she had been right here in the very same compound this entire time. Beside her, Crain looked up and saw Ethan standing there, looking perfectly fine apart from a few minor cuts on his hands. Crain let out a bitter, miserable laugh.

"Before Black Hollow. Who would have known what to look for in a healer's workshop?" Cain was looking at the map. His jaw had the set that meant he was holding something very tightly in the compressed-still place. "Before Black Hollow," he said. "Elara kept her own history private. I knew she'd come from somewhere. I knew there were people she'd left behind." He paused. "I didn't ask. She didn't offer. I was seven." "There may be people in her records," Wren said. "Not the journals — those she kept about her work. But she wrote letters too. I found them at the back of the cabinet. I haven't read them." She looked at Cain. "With your permission."