Chapter 4

After that night at the lake, I stopped accompanying Freya.

Alpha Lucas didn’t say much about it. Instead, he quietly replaced me with another maid and reassigned me—this time, as his personal assistant at the company.

“You’ll be coming out with me from now on,” he said, casually twirling a bone-carved seal between his fingers. His golden eyes lifted to mine, unreadable. “You don’t have to stay locked away in the villa anymore.”

There was a pause. Then, softer, almost like a peace offering:

“About that day—Anna was trying to stir things up between you and Freya. I’ve already spoken to the elders. She won’t be attending any more events. She’s done in Snow Moon.”

I looked at him, confused. Was this guilt? A rare flicker of conscience?

“Anna was jealous. She lost her chance to be Luna and took it out on Freya. But… Freya’s cruelty? That was all her.” My voice was quiet, but firm.

Something shifted in Lucas’s face. His expression hardened, his pupils narrowing into sharp vertical slits.

“Elaine,” he warned, “don’t push your luck.”

I almost laughed. Who was really pushing their luck?

Freya didn’t need anyone's help to hate me—she’d hated me from the moment she returned. And Alpha Lucas knew that just as well as I did. But as always, silence was easier than the truth.

I was too exhausted to argue. The fever had drained me. My body still ached from the freezing water, and the cut on my forehead—thanks to the silver bottle opener Freya had flung at me—throbbed dully beneath the bandage. I just wanted sleep. Quiet. Maybe a dream without her face in it.

That evening, Freya showed up for dinner at the villa, dressed in something sheer and shimmering. She barely looked at me as I set the table.

“I don’t want her here,” she said, coldly and deliberately. “I hate eating with her watching.”

Alpha Lucas didn’t even blink. He turned to me.

“Go back to the attic.”

I nodded without a word and climbed the stairs. I didn’t expect anything else.

Back in the attic, I pressed my palm to the small pouch I always wore at my waist. Inside was the most precious thing I owned: my mother’s Wolfsbane Potionology—the journal of her life’s work, full of handwritten notes, herbs, sketches, formulas. It smelled like parchment and wild sage.

Tucked between its fragile pages was something new.

A letter.

The wax seal was already cracked, and I’d read the words a dozen times. Tonight, I read them again.

“Elaine,

The questions you’ve raised show extraordinary potential, and your manuscript was brilliant. Your application has been approved.

Welcome to Thorn Academy. I look forward to unraveling the secrets of your bloodline with you.

—Dean Willows”

Thorn Academy. My dream. My escape. My chance to finally understand why I was born broken, the only Omega in Snow Moon who couldn’t transform.

Alpha Lucas had no idea I’d even applied. I’d done it behind his back, knowing full well he’d never let me go.

That night, he didn’t return. For the first time in years, he didn’t call. Didn’t check in.

Instead, a cold, impersonal text: “Don’t wait for me.”

I stared at the screen. My fingers hovered. Then I typed: “Are you staying with her tonight?”

His reply came instantly. “Elaine, that’s none of your concern.”

I stared at those words until the screen dimmed.

He was right. It wasn’t my concern

because I wasn’t his mate. I was just a replacement. A shadow in Freya’s shape. A placeholder.

But tonight, I had something he couldn’t take from me.

Freedom.

I grabbed my coat and keys, got in the car, and drove out past the edge of the city, the stars overhead barely visible through the mist. The air was cool, quiet, solemn.

I parked by the old cemetery gates and walked the familiar path until I found her.

My mother’s grave.

Her photo smiled softly from the headstone—gentle eyes, warm lips. She looked so alive in that picture, like she was just waiting for me to visit.

I sat down beside her and traced my fingers over her name.

“Freya’s back,” I whispered. “Lucas chose her. Not me.”

My voice cracked, but I kept going.

“I’m leaving, Mom. When the contract ends, I’m gone. I’m going to Thorn Academy to find out why I can’t shift. I want to know what’s wrong with me… why I’m like this.”

The wind blew through the trees, rustling leaves like whispers. The moonlight spilled down over the headstone, cold and silver. It lit up my face, and the faint purple mark beneath my collarbone caught the light—a birthmark I’d never been able to explain.

I reached up and touched it. It pulsed faintly beneath my skin, warm despite the night air.

My mother’s photo didn’t answer. But her eyes… they didn’t judge. They just looked at me the way she always had. Like I was enough.

And maybe—just maybe—I could be.