Chapter 3 Cold Indifference
ELARA
The world comes back in pieces. The murmur of voices. The scrape of a chair on the stone patio. The cloying scent of my birthday cake, now a nauseating sweetness in the air. Liam’s arm is a band of steel around me, his rage a furnace at my back. My mother’s hands are on my shoulders, her touch trembling.
“Get her inside,” my father says. His voice is gravel. A rockslide of controlled fury.
“I’m not leaving,” Liam snarls. His eyes are locked on the spot where Damon disappeared into the Alpha’s house. “He’s not getting away with this.”
“Liam, now is not the time,” Dad says.
“Then when is?” Liam’s voice cracks. “When he’s Alpha? When he can order us to do whatever he wants? He did this in front of everyone, Dad. He meant to break her.”
He says it like I’m not here. Maybe I’m not. I feel like a ghost, tethered to my body by a single, fraying thread of pain. The word echoes in my empty chest. Liability.
Alpha Marcus steps out onto his own porch. He stands with his hands on his hips, a silent challenge. He says nothing. He doesn’t need to. His presence is a shield for his son.
“Kaelen,” the Alpha’s voice is quiet, but it carries across the lawn like a thrown stone. “Control your son.”
My father’s shoulders tense. I can feel the war inside him. The Beta who must obey. The father who wants to kill.
“My son is defending his sister’s honor,” my father replies, his own voice dangerously low. “Something your son seems to know nothing about.”
The silence that follows is heavy. Thick with years of friendship and loyalty, now stretched to its breaking point.
“The boy made his choice,” Alpha Marcus says, his tone dismissive. “He did what he felt was necessary for the future of this pack.”
“By humiliating my daughter?” My mother, usually so calm, steps forward. Her voice is shaking with a rage I have never heard from her. “There was nothing necessary about that, Marcus. It was cruel.”
“It was a clean break,” the Alpha says, unmoved. “Better than dragging it out. Damon is focused on the Games. We all should be.”
I watch Damon’s silhouette move past a window in his house. He doesn’t even have the decency to face us. He’s already moved on. The Games. It was always about the Games.
“Let’s go,” my dad says, his voice final. He puts a firm hand on Liam’s chest. “Inside. All of you.”
Liam finally relents, his body slumping in defeat. He lets our father guide us away from the scene of my execution, back toward our own home. The short walk across the lawn feels like miles. I can feel eyes on us from the houses bordering the woods. Pack members hiding in the shadows, whispering.
Pity. Disapproval. Agreement.
Our front door closes and the sound of the latch clicking into place is deafeningly final. The festive decorations in our living room are a mockery. A banner with ‘Happy 18th Birthday, Elara!’ hangs crookedly over the fireplace.
“I’ll kill him,” Liam says again, the moment we are inside. He begins to pace, his hands clenched into white knuckled fists. “I swear to the Goddess, I will rip his throat out.”
“You will do no such thing,” Dad snaps, rounding on him. “An attack on the future Alpha is a death sentence. Do you understand me?”
“I don’t care!” Liam shouts, his face inches from our father’s. “He can’t do this to her. He can’t do this to our family.”
“He already did,” Dad says, his voice dropping. All the fight seems to drain out of him at once, leaving behind an old, tired man. He looks at me, and his eyes are filled with a pain that mirrors my own. “He already did.”
My mother walks over to me and gently pries my fingers from where they are clenched around my own arms. “Let me make you some tea, sweetie.”
I shake my head. I don’t think I can swallow. My throat is tight with unshed tears. I will not cry. I will not give him that.
I sink onto the sofa, my body feeling heavy and useless. I stare at the stupid birthday banner. The happiest day of my life. I had been so full of hope just an hour ago. Dancing in his arms. The spark of the bond. Mate.
It feels like a lie. A trick played by a cruel goddess.
“What are we supposed to do, Kaelen?” Mom asks, her voice a desperate whisper. “How does she live in the same pack as him? How do we face them every day?”
“We endure,” Dad says, rubbing his face with his hands. “We are the Beta family. Our duty is to support the Alpha. To maintain stability.”
“Duty?” Liam scoffs, his laugh bitter. “Our duty is to our family first. He broke that bond tonight, not us. Alpha Marcus stood there and defended him. He defended cruelty.”
“He defended his son,” Dad says wearily. “Just as I am defending mine. Stop talking about treason, Liam. It won’t help Elara.”
They keep talking about me, their voices a swirling storm of anger and duty and pain. But I am an island in the middle of it, silent and still. I can feel the mate bond, or what’s left of it. It’s not a warm connection anymore. It’s a raw, open wound. A constant, throbbing ache in my soul where he should be. Every breath hurts.
I look out the front window. Through a gap in the curtains, I can see the Alpha’s house. A few of the younger warriors, Damon’s friends, are gathered on his porch. I see Damon come out to join them. He claps one of them on the shoulder. He laughs at something another one says.
He is laughing.
My humiliation, my family’s fury, the potential rift in our pack’s leadership… it means nothing to him. He is free. He has cut the liability loose and is celebrating his freedom with his friends.
The coldness of it is more painful than the rejection itself. The indifference. That is what breaks me.
“He’s laughing,” I say. My voice is a dry rasp, barely audible. But it cuts through their argument like a knife.
Liam and my parents fall silent. They all turn to look at me.
“What did you say, sweetie?” Mom asks, kneeling in front of me.
I can’t look at her. I keep my eyes fixed on the window, on the boy who shattered my world and then smiled about it. “He’s laughing with his friends.”
Liam walks to the window and looks out. A low growl rumbles in his chest. “That bastard.”
My father joins him, and I see his posture stiffen. The Beta’s duty warring with the father’s rage. I wonder which one will win.
“He said I was a weakness,” I continue, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “A liability. He said it so everyone could hear.”
I finally look at my family. I see their faces. My mother’s tears finally fall. My father’s jaw is clenched so tight a muscle jumps in his cheek. Liam looks like he wants to tear the world apart.
“You are not weak,” my mother says fiercely, taking my hands in hers. Her grip is tight, desperate. “You are the strongest person I know, Elara. Do you hear me?”
I nod, but I don’t believe her. How can I be strong when I feel so completely broken? How can I be strong when my very existence is a problem for my pack? For my family?
The division Damon created tonight isn’t just between us. It’s between my father and his Alpha. Between my family and our friends. Between pack members who pity me and those who agree with him.
And I am at the center of it all.
“I’m tired,” I whisper. “I want to go to my room.”
“Of course, honey.” My mother helps me to my feet, her arm a steady presence around my waist.
I walk up the stairs like an old woman. Each step is an effort. My bedroom is exactly as I left it. Streamers are taped to the walls. A pile of gifts sits unopened on my desk. It’s a room for a happy girl. A girl who believed her life was about to begin.
I close the door, shutting out the sound of my family’s hushed, angry voices downstairs. I lean against the cool wood, the silence of the room pressing in on me.
I catch my reflection in the mirror above my dresser. My eyes are wide and haunted. My skin is pale. I look like a stranger. A ghost in my own room.
My hand goes to my neck, my fingers closing around the silver locket my mother gave me. A crescent moon. A gift from a grandmother I never met, passed down to me on this cursed day. It feels cold against my skin.
I stare at the girl in the mirror, the wolf-less, rejected, worthless girl. And for the first time, I don’t just feel the empty space where my wolf should be. I feel the empty space where Damon should be. A void carved out by cold, calculated words.
He didn’t just reject me. He erased me. And as I stand here, in the wreckage of my eighteenth birthday, I realize with chilling certainty that the storm is only just beginning.