Chapter 6 Smith
ELARA
“You got a last name, kid?”
The man’s apron is a roadmap of grease stains. He smells like old coffee and disappointment. I keep my expression perfectly blank.
“Smith,” I say. The name feels foreign on my tongue. Plain. Human.
“Elara Smith.” He writes it on a pad, the pencil scratching loud in the quiet diner. “You ever worked a grill before?”
“Yes.” The lie is easy. I have learned to lie as easily as breathing.
He looks me up and down, his eyes lingering for a moment too long. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
“Not really.”
“Good.” He grunts, satisfied. “I need a cook, not a chatterbox. You start Monday. Six a.m. Cash at the end of the week. Don’t be late.”
“I won’t.”
He waves me off, already turning back to flip a burger. The entire interview lasts less than a minute. It is the longest conversation I have had in a month.
Three months pass. The diner becomes my world. The sizzle of the grill. The clatter of plates. The low murmur of human voices I learn to tune out like static.
“Order up for table four,” a waitress named Brenda calls out, sliding a ticket into my window.
I nod, not looking at her. I arrange the bacon and eggs on the plate, my movements efficient, practiced. My senses are a constant assault. The cloying sweetness of syrup, the bitter tang of burnt coffee, the sour note of a customer’s cheap perfume. I build walls in my mind to block it all out. To be less wolf. To be more Smith.
“Hey, quiet girl,” Brenda says, leaning on the counter. “You got plans for Friday night?”
I place the plate on the pass. “Working.”
“You’re always working. Live a little. Me and some of the girls are going out for drinks.”
“I don’t drink.” Another lie. I just do not drink with them.
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Your loss.” She grabs the plate and walks away, her hips swaying. I watch her go. I see the easy way she smiles at her customers, the way she belongs. It is a language I have forgotten how to speak.
At the end of my shift, I count the crumpled bills in my hand. It is not much, but it is enough. Enough for the tiny room I rent by the week. Enough for food. Enough to stay invisible.
It is the first anniversary of my rejection. A year. I am in a new city, a new job. I stack boxes in the stockroom of a grocery store. The work is mindless. It is perfect.
“Heads up.”
A box of canned soup lands on the pallet next to me. A guy named Marco grins at me. He has been trying to talk to me for weeks.
“Big night tonight,” he says, leaning against a shelf. “Full moon. You feelin’ wild, Elara?”
My heart stutters. I grip the box cutter in my hand, my knuckles white. He means it as a joke. He has no idea.
“Just feels like any other night to me,” I say, my voice flat.
“Nah, man. There’s magic in the air. You should come out with me. I know a place.”
I turn and slice open the next box, my movements sharp, precise. “I’m busy.”
“Doing what? Staring at your four walls?” he pushes, his tone teasing. “Come on. One drink. I don’t bite.”
My wolf, the one I do not have, snarls in my head. A phantom echo of an instinct I can almost remember. He is weak. He is not our mate. Put him in his place.
I put the box cutter down and turn to face him fully. I let a fraction of the coldness I feel inside show in my eyes. “I said no.”
He flinches. The cocky smile slides off his face. He actually takes a step back. “Whoa. Okay. Just asking.”
He mutters something under his breath and walks away, leaving me in the silence of the stockroom. I let out a breath I did not realize I was holding. My hand goes to my neck, my fingers closing around the crescent moon locket hidden under my shirt. The metal is cool against my skin. A reminder. A scar.
That night, I do not sleep. I sit by the window of my small apartment and watch the full moon rise over the city skyline. It is a pale, washed out version of the moon I grew up with. Its light is stolen by the orange glow of streetlights. It has no power here.
It still calls to a part of me, though. A deep, aching void that has never healed. I wonder if Liam is running tonight. I wonder if my parents look at this same moon and think of me. A tear finally escapes, hot and traitorous on my cold cheek. I wipe it away angrily. I do not have the luxury of grief.
The second year is a blur of gray days. I work. I eat. I sleep. I pay my rent. The cycle is a comfort. A cage.
“Your rent is three days late, Smith.”
My landlord, Mr. Henderson, stands in my open doorway. He is a small man who smells of mothballs and suspicion.
“I know. I’m sorry. I get paid on Friday. I’ll have it then.”
“You said that last month.” He peers past me into my apartment, as if looking for evidence of a life I do not have. The room is bare. A bed. A small table. Two chairs. Nothing on the walls.
“My hours were cut,” I say. It is the truth. The store is slow.
He sighs, a long, weary sound. “Friday, Elara. And not a day later. Or you’re out.”
He closes the door without waiting for a reply. I lean against it, the cheap wood cool against my back. I am not scared. I am just tired. I have learned that home is not a place. It is a feeling I am no longer capable of having.
I survive. That is all. I pick up extra shifts at a bar, washing glasses in a dark, noisy room until my hands are raw. The noise is a good distraction. It keeps the memories at bay.
Three years. It feels like a lifetime. It feels like yesterday.
I am a librarian’s assistant now. The silence is the best part of the job. It is a thick, respectful quiet that asks nothing of me.
I reshelve books, my fingers tracing the worn spines. I live in the stories of other people because I no longer have one of my own. I have become a ghost. A footnote. Elara Smith. A name on a lease. A number on a timecard.
“Excuse me?”
A young woman stands at the end of the aisle. She is holding a little girl’s hand. The girl has pigtails and a missing front tooth.
“Yes? Can I help you?” I ask, my voice soft from disuse.
“I was just wondering if you knew where the fairytales are?” the woman asks, smiling warmly. “My daughter is very insistent on a story about a princess and a wolf.”
A sharp, unexpected pain lances through my chest. A wolf. The word is an ambush.
I force a smile. It feels like stretching skin that has not moved in years. “Of course. Right this way.”
I lead them to the children’s section. I watch as the mother sits on the floor and pulls her daughter into her lap. She opens a book, and her voice is a soft melody as she begins to read.
I stand there for a moment too long, hidden by a bookshelf. I watch the easy affection between them. The head resting on a shoulder. The small hand patting a mother’s arm.
A longing so fierce it steals my breath rises up from the deep place where I buried it. A longing for my mother’s hug. For my father’s proud smile. For Liam’s infuriating, protective presence. For the feel of grass under my paws. For the scent of pine and damp earth. For home.
The pain is still there. Three years of running, of hiding, of being no one, and it is still there. A phantom limb that aches with the memory of a life that was stolen from me.
I turn and walk away, my footsteps silent on the carpet. The years have hardened me. They have taught me how to survive on my own. I am no longer the broken girl who fled in the night.
I am a survivor. I am resilient. I am strong.
And I have never, ever been more alone.