Chapter 2

Death did not take me away from Sophie.

It only made me useless.

I could move through the bedroom, the hall, and the rest of the house. I couldn't open a door, lift the phone, or make the curtains stir. When I tried to touch my daughter, my fingers dissolved through her skin without warmth or pressure.

At first, my body held me near it. After Adrian came home, the broken mate mark gave me a second tether. It was a cruel reminder. If he hadn't severed our bond for that other woman, stripping away my Luna protection, the rogues could never have forced that lethal wolfsbane down my throat. My death was on his hands, yet here I was, trapped as a spectator.

Sophie did not know I was beside her.

She stayed on the bed for a long time, patting my cold cheek, waiting for a heartbeat that would never return. "Mommy, are you just super tired?" she whispered. "I'll be quiet. I promise."

At last, hunger pulled her toward the kitchen.

"I'm making your favorite," she called back to my body. "Tomato sandwiches."

She dragged a chair to the counter. The bread was in the top cabinet, too high for her even when she stood on the seat. She stretched until the chair tipped beneath her.

I lunged for it on instinct.

The chair crashed through me.

Sophie landed on one knee and bit her lip to keep from crying. She put the chair back, found a dinner roll in the pantry, and carried it to the bedroom on a plastic plate.

"You can have the big half when you wake up."

She tore the roll unevenly. She ate the smaller piece and placed the other beside my hand.

That small act hurt more than dying.

Desperate, she carried her step stool to the front door and tried the dead bolt. Adrian had installed it high after the first rogue threat. It kept intruders out when an adult was home. With no adult able to move it, the lock kept Sophie in.

She knocked on the door from the inside.

"Hello?"

The houses on our lane sat far apart. Music drifted from a Valentine's party three homes away, but no one heard her.

After a few minutes, she stopped knocking and returned to the bedroom. She put my phone beside my face as if I might wake and call for help myself.

"I tried," she told me.

Darkness settled over the windows. The house had become cold, but Sophie would not leave the bed. She wiped the dried blood from my mouth with a washcloth, then climbed beneath my arm and pulled it over herself.

"Just like bedtime," she whispered.

I sat on the floor beside her until the front door opened near midnight.

Adrian came in smelling of whiskey and Celeste's rose perfume. Lipstick marked the edge of his collar. A silver gift bag swung from one hand.

Sophie ran into the hall.

"Daddy!"

He looked down at her bare feet and stained pajamas. His first expression wasn't concern.

It was pure disgust.

"Of course she is." He sneered, tossing the gift bag onto the entry table. Tissue paper spilled out, revealing a red silk scarf. He hadn't bought me a gift in two years, claiming pack duties left him no time for 'frivolous things'.

"Enough of this nonsense," Adrian snapped, lifting Sophie and striding toward the master bedroom.

Hope rose in me again, stupid and automatic.

Look at the blood, I begged silently. Smell the toxic wolfsbane. Look at my face!

Adrian shoved the door open just a few inches. The moonlight spilled onto the bed, but his broad shoulders blocked most of it. From his angle, I was just a dark lump under the sheets.

"Evelyn!" He barked, striking the doorframe with his fist. "You don't get to ignore me! What kind of pathetic Luna ignores her own child just to throw a temper tantrum?"

Sophie twisted in his arms. "Daddy, no! Go inside, look at mommy!"

"I have no interest in her manipulative games."

He dropped Sophie unceremoniously onto the floor and nudged her toward the dark room. "Go to sleep. Your mother is a useless mate and an even worse parent. Don't let her drag you down with her."

"I don't want to sleep there!" Sophie cried.

That should have been his wake-up call. Sophie had never refused to sleep by my side since the day she was born.

Instead, Adrian crouched down and glared at her. "Your mother has made this house miserable enough. Stop learning these manipulative tricks from her. You're going to bed, now."

I stood between him and the door. I screamed until the effort felt as if it should tear my throat.

"I'm dead! Adrian, I'm dead! Look at me. Take care of her!"

He walked through me.

Cold split through my spirit where his body passed, but he felt nothing.

Sophie began to cry. Adrian rubbed a hand over his face.

"I'm exhausted. I spent all evening trying to keep everyone happy, and I come home to this."

Everyone meant Celeste and Chloe.

It had not meant us in months.

He closed the bedroom door and went to his study. A minute later, music played from behind that door. He did not come out again.

Sophie waited beside the closed door for several minutes. She raised her hand to knock, then lowered it whenever Adrian laughed at a message on his phone.

Finally, she whispered, "Daddy gets mad when I need things."

She was not accusing him. She was learning a rule.

Children built their worlds out of rules adults taught them. Don't touch the stove. Look both ways. Tell the truth.

Adrian had taught her another one: when you are hurt, be quiet enough not to inconvenience him.

Sophie stood alone in the dark.

Then she went back to the bed.

She moved the untouched half of the dinner roll to the nightstand, curled against my side, and pulled my stiff arm around her again.

"Daddy's mad," she whispered. "We have to be quiet."

I lay beside her though I could not hold her.

Near dawn, she woke from a nightmare and called for me. When I did not answer, she pressed her face to my chest and listened.

"You can sleep more," she decided. "I'll wait."

Adrian left the study after sunrise while brushing his teeth and reading messages on his phone. He smiled at something, typed with one thumb, and nearly stepped over the paper heart Sophie had dropped in the hall.

He picked it up.

For one second, I thought he might see the words she had written inside: FOR DADDY. PLEASE COME HOME.

He set it on the counter without opening it.

At the dining table, he waited for breakfast.

I had cooked for him every single morning since we mated. Even after he started sleeping in the study, even after he brought Celeste's scent into our home, I kept making his soft-boiled eggs and crisp bacon because I foolishly thought a warm meal might bring my husband back.

Ten minutes passed.

He opened cabinets without seeing the chair Sophie had left crooked beneath them. He found the empty bread bag and frowned, but he did not ask who had eaten the last roll or why half of it was still beside my bed.

The evidence of Sophie's night was everywhere. It simply required him to imagine that someone other than himself had needs.

Adrian slammed his empty mug onto the table.

"Evelyn!"

But it wasn't me who walked out of the bedroom. It was Sophie.

In the harsh morning light, the reality of her appearance was impossible to ignore. The dried blood on her pajamas wasn't just a small stain. It was a horrific, dark brown smear covering her chest and sleeves—exactly where she had clung to my poisoned body all night.

Adrian stopped. His eyes followed the stains.

At last, I thought.

At last.

"Sophie..." his voice trembled, the phone slipping from his grip. "What... what is that on you?"