I woke on the cot with ink on my hands and a knot in my back, and for one second I forgot where I was.
Then I heard boots in the hall, and I remembered everything.
Caelan: Get up. Wear your good dress. The pack's gathering in the hall.
He didn't say good morning. He didn't say sorry for the cot.
The hall was full. Salt workers, healers, elders, all of them with their eyes on me.
I stood in front of Caelan like a criminal waiting for a sentence.
Caelan: My wife has kept this house for two years. She's kept my ledgers clean and my table full.
My wife. He said it loud and clear, like it meant something.
My heart did something stupid. It lifted.
Two years of cold beds and colder words, and one praise in front of the pack made me want to believe.
Caelan: For your service. The Alpha's pin. Wear it and remember your place.
A silver pin. Like a medal for a dog that fetched the right stick.
I took it. My fingers didn't shake, and I was proud of that.
It was cold in my palm, and it weighed nothing at all.
He smiled at me, but his eyes had already moved past my shoulder.
They landed on her. They always did.
Then he kissed me. In front of the whole pack.
His lips came down hard and warm, and I gave in to it while a hundred people watched us.
His hand was on my jaw and his thumb moved against my cheek, and my whole body wanted to lean in.
But something in my chest was already going cold.
He pulled back, and his eyes found her again before they found mine.
Caelan: Rosalind. Come here.
Two words, and the kiss might as well have never happened.
She came forward with that soft, kind face she wears like a mask.
She didn't even look at me. She looked at him like he was the sun.
Caelan: These are the house keys. You'll take over the running of the Alpha house.
The keys to my house. The house I'd kept for two years.
Caelan: Avery. You'll teach her. You know the ledgers and the stores. Show her everything.
Teach her. Teach the woman who took my room and my seat how to take the rest of my life.
Rosalind: I'm sorry, Avery. I know this is hard. I'll try to make it easy for you.
She touched my arm like we were friends, and her fingers were soft and her voice was softer.
Avery: Don't touch me.
Caelan: Avery. Mind your tone.
Mind my tone, he said, as if my voice was the thing that had gone wrong in that hall.
He didn't look back at me. He walked her toward the door with his hand on her back.
The whole pack watched them go, and then they watched me.
I stood there with a silver pin in my hand and a kiss still on my mouth.
The pin was for show. The kiss was for show. Even my place at his side was for show.
I closed my fist around it until the edges bit into my palm.
I wanted it to hurt. I wanted something to hurt that I could point to.
I went back to the ledger room and shut the door behind me.
Two years I'd told myself that patience would earn me something. That if I just kept going, he'd see me.
That patience had bought me a cold pin and a public kiss, and then he put the keys to my house in her hand while I was still standing there.
So that was the end of it. The last hope I'd been carrying without even knowing it.
He didn't love me. He never had. And the worst part was that I'd let myself believe it might still happen.
I thought about Niall and his cough and the tonic Caelan had given away.
I thought about my brother's care being tied to a vow I couldn't break.
How much longer would I protect everyone else before I protected myself?
I didn't know the answer. But I knew I was done waiting for him to see me.
A pin for show. A kiss for show. I was done being the show.