My Ex Begged After Feeding Me to Wolves

The sand was wet against my cheek.

My ribs throbbed with every shallow breath. Three hours ago, the wolves had torn through my shirt, their teeth scraping against bone. It was day ninety-one of *Castaway: No Mercy*.

I had stayed alive because I had to. Cain was dying. Or so I believed. He was the heir to Crawford Capital, but he had told me his father cut him off. He claimed he had ALS. The experimental treatments cost three million dollars, and the show’s prize money was his only hope. I traded my flesh and blood so he could live.

Fifty feet away, production floodlights hummed over the dark water. I heard ice clinking in plastic cups.

A woman laughed. It was Dalia Lopez, the show’s medic. Only yesterday, she had stitched my lacerated arm with barely enough numbing medicine to dull the sting.

"I still can't believe she lasted ninety-one days," Jabari Ellis said. He was the head producer. He sounded half-drunk. "Best con I’ve ever been paid to run."

Dalia chuckled. "Cain paid double the bonus. He just wanted to break her. For Alessia."

"Imagine starving yourself for a fake terminal illness," Jabari scoffed. "Cain doesn't even have a cough. He’s in the Hamptons with Alessia right now, drinking champagne."

I lay in the cold dunes.

My heart didn't race. My chest simply went hollow.

There was no ALS. There was no medicine. Cain Crawford had paid for the wolves, the hunger, and the rotting infections just to crush the nobody who once stopped his childhood sweetheart, Alessia Stephens, from burying a hit-and-run.

The girl who loved Cain died right there on that beach.

***

The medevac helicopter pulled me out before dawn.

At the coastal hospital, the ceiling lights burned my eyes. A nurse cut away my blood-crusted shirt and asked, "Pain level, on a scale of one to ten?"

"Four," I whispered.

Breathing felt like swallowing broken glass, but I lied anyway. The nurse jotted it down and walked away without checking the bite marks on my ribs.

When the room went quiet, I reached into the lining of my duffel bag. I pulled out a small, folded piece of paper.

A social worker had given it to me years ago. A mix-up at birth had taken me from a family named Howard. I had kept the paper hidden because I wanted to earn my own life. I never wanted handouts.

Now, my fingers shook as I dialed the landline.

A man answered on the second ring. His voice was deep and weary. "Hello?"

"Mr. Howard?" My voice cracked. "My name is Violette."

A dead silence held the line for three seconds. Then, a sharp intake of breath.

"Don't move," Reed Howard said. "We're coming."

***

Before their private jet could land, my door clicked open.

Cain walked in. He wore a cashmere sweater and smelled of cedarwood cologne. Outside the glass window, Alessia leaned against the corridor wall, tapping her manicured nails on her phone.

"Vi," Cain said, his voice dripping with soft concern. He rushed to my bedside and reached for my hand. "Look at what they did to you. But you did it. The prize money cleared. We can start my treatment now."

I looked at him. I saw the careful rehearsal in his eyes.

I pulled my hand back.

"We are done, Cain. Do not touch me again."

Nine words. No tears. No heat.

Cain froze. The tender smile slid off his lips. "What did you say?"

"Get out," I said.

His eyes narrowed. The gentle lover vanished completely.

"You think you have a say in this?" he sneered, leaning over the guardrail. "You're a stray, Violette. A nameless nobody. You were lucky I even looked at you. No one else will ever want a damaged thing like you."

I didn't answer.

I reached past him, picked up my rough hospital gown, and folded it into my bag. My hands were perfectly steady. I smoothed the fabric the way I would sort clean laundry.

Cain waited for me to scream or cry. When I just kept packing, his jaw tightened. He turned on his heel and slammed the door behind him.

***

That evening, the door opened again.

A woman stepped in first. Miranda Black wore an expensive tailored coat, but her eyes were red and swollen. She held my medical chart in her trembling hands, yet she couldn't read a single line. She just stared at my scarred face.

Behind her stood Reed Howard. He was tall, with gray hair at his temples and quiet authority in his posture.

Neither of them gave a dramatic speech. Twenty-two stolen years stood between us like a glass wall.

Reed walked to the window, said nothing, and pulled a chair close to my bed. He sat down and stayed there.

Miranda sat on the edge of the mattress until the night nurses started their rounds. When she finally stood to leave, she reached down and gently tucked the thin white blanket around my feet. It was an instinct, twenty-two years late.

***

Over the next few days, the surgeons began repairing the torn muscle in my shoulder.

While I drifted under anesthesia, Reed Howard made two calls from the hallway. He ordered his lawyers to trace every dollar Cain Crawford had funneled to the show's producers. He sent Braylon Long, his head of security, to seize all production contracts. And he quietly reactivated the sealed police file on Alessia’s hit-and-run.

"Rest, Violette," Reed told me softly when I woke up, his hand resting briefly on mine. "Your family is handling it."

I stared at the white ceiling. I had spent my entire life taking the hit for everyone else.

I had never heard those words before, and I didn't know how to hold them yet.