I didn’t follow Alpha Shawn Raveshade.

He walked away still laughing, his voice pitched high and stupid, whispering about bikinis and champagne into Marga Hartclaw’s ear as though I were already gone, as though I were nothing more than the rug he wiped his shoes on.

He carried himself like a man renewed, shoulders squared and steps steady, while I remained on the floor, knees aching, pride cracked, and soul halfway gone, as if the very earth had claimed me while he walked away untouched.

I rose, slow and deliberate, my joints creaking like old doors. My palm smeared across the tile, gathering dirt, dust, and what little dignity still clung to me. I moved toward the bathroom and shut the door softly, careful not to wake the house. The mirror caught me in its unforgiving light: red eyes, swollen cheeks, hair unpinned and wild. I looked like someone who had tried to cry underwater and failed, someone who had already drowned but kept moving out of sheer habit.

There was no coffin, no candles guttering in the dark, no veils drawn or prayers whispered to the night. Yet I was in mourning. Not for him, not even for the ruin of what we had been, but for myself, for the girl I once was. The wild flame that laughed too loud, that clawed too deep, before I smothered her fire for his comfort, before I clipped my own wings and dulled my claws just to fit inside his grasp. I grieved for every part of me buried beneath quiet sacrifices, for each version of myself that withered when I chose him over me, until all that remained was a shadow, a husk, haunting the bones of the wolf I used to be.

He passed by the door then, his laughter low, edged with cruelty. His phone was glued to his ear, but he paused long enough to bark, “Pack my things. Business-leisure trip. We leave tomorrow.”

No glance. No “please.” Just command. Just ownership.

I nodded, though he wasn’t looking, and when the house swallowed his voice, I dried my hands on the crooked towel and went to his room like a servant obeying her master. His closet was chaos, suits collapsing into long-sleeved shirts, shoes buried beneath dirty socks. A man with the habits of a spoiled pup, yet he believed himself king.

I began folding his shirts, smoothing his linen with a precision I no longer felt. Then, when my elbow brushed the side table, a folder slipped and fell to the floor.

Inside were cruise tickets.

I read the names once. Then twice. Each letter sharpened until my vision blurred. Shawn Ravenshade. Margarette Hartclaw. Mark. Lydia. Ken. Kurt.

Not me.

Not even as an afterthought.

The cruise I had carried in my chest for thirty years, the promise whispered into my hair when I was eighteen, had been gifted to Marga as casually as one gifts a bone to a favored dog.

Marga’s birthday. He remembered hers. He never remembered mine.

I folded the tickets with care, as if paper could bleed. Then I packed his suitcase anyway. Shoes polished. Shirts ironed. Cufflinks shining like silver teeth. Mark came in without knocking, beer in hand, and told me to pack for him, too. And for the twins. Lydia’s perfume. Snacks labeled with love. They dumped their burdens on me, one after another, and left without thanks.

I obeyed. Because obedience had been hammered into me for decades, the way one breaks a wolf until it forgets the taste of its own blood.

Later, alone in my room, trembling, I let my mind wander back. To eighteen. To Alpha Shawn, when his touch was a promise, not a bruise. When his eyes had not yet hardened into steel.

He had sworn to guard me always. To build a future no pack or prophecy could tear apart. His words burned brighter than the blood-moon itself, and like a fool beneath its spell, I believed them. I believed him even when it meant defying my father, Alpha of the Vale, whose wrath was older than the mountains and whose wolf carried the bite of centuries.

“You are no daughter of mine,” he had snarled, his voice shaking the stones, his beast pacing beneath his skin. The ground itself seemed to bow beneath his fury. “Take that boy if you wish, but know this: your bond to me is severed. Crawl back to my gates, and I will rip your throat myself before I ever call you kin again.”

I had stood in the shadow of his dominance, my own wolf trembling but unbroken, and whispered through the storm of his rage: “I love him.”

“You love a shadow,” he spat, eyes gleaming with silver fire. “And shadows always devour their own.”

Thirty winters have passed, and his curse has come to gnash its teeth in truth. The boy I once loved, the mate I bled for, has withered into a man who can snarl me down, shove me aside, and never look back. A man who books moonlit voyages with another female while leaving me to scrub his boots as if I were nothing but packless prey.

And I finally understood. My father hadn’t banished me out of cruelty. He had recognized the rot long before I did.

I stared at the landline. Old. Forgotten. But it still worked. My hand moved before I could stop it. I dialed the number I had carried like a scar for three decades.

It rang. Once. Twice. A third time.

And then…

“Hello?”

His voice. Older now. Roughened with years. But still him. Still the Alpha of the Vale. Still my father.

My throat closed. I held the receiver like it was the last rope keeping me from drowning. Tears fell, quiet and relentless.

“…Father,” I whispered, the word splintering from me like bone. “…It’s me. Stella...”

The line was still warm in my hand when I heard my father’s voice. His tone carried the weariness of a wolf who had howled through a thousand lonely nights, the kind of exhaustion that seeps into marrow and lingers like frost. Yet beneath it, there was a calm I hadn’t heard in decades.

“Come home, Stella,” he said, his voice roughened by age and silence. “I’ve been waiting for you for twenty years.”

Twenty years. Two decades of empty seasons. Of full moons where I stood alone, my wolf restless but shackled. Of battles I had fought in silence, my pride too sharp, my heart too wounded, my spirit too broken to return.

My knees threatened to give way, but instead of collapsing, I sank to the edge of the bed and let the tears fall freely, hot rivers cutting through years of restraint.

“I’m coming home,” I whispered, my voice no louder than a ghost brushing across the wind.

There was no further word from him, only the sound of his breathing, steady, real, grounding me like the heartbeat of a pack I had long abandoned. I hung up before I could weaken, before I could whisper a goodbye I wasn’t ready to say.

The door creaked open, and that was when Alpha Shawn appeared, sliding into the room like a shadow that had always belonged there. His scent hit me before his words, bitter wine laced with deceit, the musk of a wolf who had long since traded loyalty for ambition. His eyes locked on mine, cold and calculating, nostrils flaring like he could already scent the truth clinging to my skin.

“I know you saw the tickets,” he said, his smirk slicing like a blade across my already raw nerves. Six only. Me. Marga. Mark. Lydia. The twins. That’s it.”

My throat tightened, but I forced myself to swallow past it.

“You were never included,” he continued, his voice dropping into that dead calm, sharp as winter ice cracking beneath one’s feet.

Then came the mockery, his promise wrapped in poison. “When I get back, I’ll buy you a diamond set. Take you to Hawaii.” As if trinkets and faraway shores could mask the truth. As if he thought I could be distracted like some desperate she-wolf begging for scraps of affection.

He turned his back on me without another glance, leaving behind nothing but the faint musk of arrogance and the slam of the door, a sound that felt more coffin than closure.

The next morning, I moved like a ghost through the kitchen, preparing omelets, bacon, and toast. The scent rose sharply in the air, almost mocking me with the illusion of family. From the living room, the twins’ laughter rang out, high and wild, like wolf pups on a first hunt.

“This cruise is the biggest ever!” Mark howled. “We’re going to have so much fun!”

Their voices were innocent, bright, but cruel in their ignorance.

Marga soon arrived, her arms laden with takeout bags. She dropped them onto the counter with a deliberate thud, her smirk flashing like a wolf baring her teeth.

“I don’t like Stella’s cooking,” she announced, loud enough to echo. “It’s like chewing on cardboard, or swallowing salt straight from the shaker. Bland. Over-salted. Completely uninspired. Just like her.”

Her words hit like claws raking across my ribs. The twins giggled. Lydia leaned in, her grin sharp.

“Honestly, Mum, it’s sad. You cook like you’re punishing us. Like every burnt edge is your little rebellion. But we see right through you.”

Invisible, I faded into the background, a shadow in my own home. Their words stripped me down until only bones remained. Still, I clenched my jaw, swallowing the bitterness before it could burn my tongue.

Then Alpha Shawn’s voice cut through the room like a whip.

“Where’s my wallet?” His eyes snapped to me instantly, burning with suspicion. “You’re hiding it, aren’t you? Always hiding. Hiding from respect, hiding from responsibility. Useless. Jealous. Nothing.”

I shook my head, but he didn’t wait for the truth. His hand lashed out across my face with a crack that echoed like a breaking bone. My head snapped sideways, blood flooding my nose. The world spun. My wolf stirred within me, howling in pain, clawing at the cage I had built around her all these years.

I crumpled to the cold tiles, the scent of iron filling the air.

Marga’s gasp was sweet poison. “Oh, Alpha,” she purred, pulling his wallet from her bag with a smirk only I saw. “I must have taken it by mistake. How clumsy of me.”

The trap was perfect. The humiliation is complete.

They gathered their bags, voices light and cruel.

“Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll bring you a fridge magnet,” Mark said.

“And I’ll bring you a keychain,” Lydia added.

“We’ll bring you dirty laundry, Grandma,” the twins howled, their laughter cutting deeper than claws.

The slam of the door left behind a silence so sharp it felt alive.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I simply rose, went to my room, dropped to my knees, and dragged out the old bag I had hidden long ago. My hands moved steadily, deliberately. I packed only what mattered. The rest could rot with them.

At the airport, my phone buzzed.

Guard the house while we’re gone. We’ll be out for a week. Don’t mess anything up.

Another message followed instantly.

Sorry, I slapped you. But you provoked me. If only you weren’t always so damn jealous. You ruin things for yourself.

I stared at the words, and something inside me, something wild, something ancient, finally snapped free. I blocked his number, deleted the thread, and slid the phone into my pocket.

The smile that curved my lips wasn’t joy. It was the wolf inside me, stirring for the first time in years, baring her teeth in savage clarity.

I was done guarding a house that had never been a home.

I was going back to the only place that ever was.

Back to the pack. Back to blood. Back to the forest where my name still lived.

Home.