Chapter 15 A Life of My Own
Sable’s POV
The diner was never meant to be forever. I knew it the first week I tied the apron around my waist and poured burnt coffee for truckers who barely looked me in the eye. It was survival, not purpose. A way to keep moving, to keep breathing, while I figured out what came next.
And if there was one promise I’d made to myself the night I ran, it was this: I wouldn’t just survive.
I would live.
Three months had passed since I left Black Pine. Three months of breathing without the weight of a pack pressing down on me. Three months of waking without duties mapped across my day. The mate bond with Kier still pulsed faintly in my chest, like a heartbeat at the edge of my thoughts, impossible to silence. But I shoved it down, buried it beneath exhaustion, tips crumpled in my apron pocket, and the ache of sore feet after sixteen-hour shifts.
And slowly, the human world began to feel less foreign.
I bought clothes from thrift shops—jeans soft from too many washes, faded T-shirts with logos I didn’t recognize, sneakers that squeaked on the linoleum floors of the diner. Maggie, the diner’s owner, taught me things I’d never had to learn before: how to ride bus routes that twisted across the town, how to budget down to the last dollar, how to open a bank account without flinching at the questions on the forms.
“Start small,” she said, scribbling numbers on napkins during slow afternoons. “Save, plan, think past tomorrow. That’s how you make it out here.”
She never asked why I showed up in her town with nothing but a backpack and scars I couldn’t explain. She just saw a girl who worked hard, who never complained, and that was enough for her. For me, it was more than enough.
But I wanted more.
Every time a group of college kids crowded into the booths—laughing, textbooks sprawled between baskets of fries, arguing about exams like the world was theirs—I felt a pang sharp enough to cut. They looked free in a way I hadn’t imagined humans could be. They chose who they wanted to be. They chose what to study, where to go, who to love.
Choice. That was the one thing I’d hungered for all my life.
One evening, long after closing, I sat at Maggie’s counter with a cup of coffee gone cold, staring at the swirling patterns in its surface. The question tumbled out before I could second-guess it. “Do you think someone like me could… go to college?”
Maggie gave me one of her long, unflinching looks—the kind that stripped people down to bone. “Depends,” she said finally. “You willing to work for it?”
“Yes,” I answered without hesitation.
“Then you can.”
That night, she let me borrow her old laptop, the keys worn smooth from years of use. I sat cross-legged on my narrow bed above the diner, the glow of the screen spilling across the room. I searched for words that felt like they belonged to another world: applications, tuition, scholarships.
My heart raced as I read about degrees, careers, futures. Futures I could build with my own hands. Futures that didn’t have to be decided by the moon goddess, by my father, or by a bond I hadn’t asked for.
By the end of the week, I had a plan. I would apply to the community college in town. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was real. I’d study something that could give me a career—business, maybe, or criminal justice. Something practical. Something that meant I could stand on my own two feet without a pack at my back.
When I told Maggie, she only nodded, her expression unreadable. Then she said, “Good. Don’t waste that steel in you slinging hash forever.”
Her words ached in my chest, equal parts pride and homesickness. My father used to say something similar—that steel had to be tempered, shaped, given purpose. He’d meant for me to carry that steel for the pack. Now, I’d carry it for myself.
But at night, when the town settled into quiet and I was left alone with my thoughts, the mate bond still tugged. Sometimes it was faint, like a whisper on the edge of hearing. Other times it was sharp, a pull so strong I swore if I just reached out, I’d feel him there.
Kier.
I shook it off every time, pressing my palms against my chest until the ache dulled. He wasn’t here. He wouldn’t follow. And if he did, I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength to turn him away.
So I filled out applications. I checked deadlines. I circled scholarship essays in pen. I dreamed about walking a campus filled with humans who didn’t know me as the Beta’s daughter, or as a wolf, or as someone’s destined mate. Just Sable.
For the first time, I let myself believe that maybe—just maybe—I could choose a future that belonged to me.
And even if the bond never truly let me go, I was determined to prove I could live beyond it.