Grief had wrapped itself around me like a tight, unrelenting shroud, suffocating every breath. I could barely recognize the reflection that stared back from the mirror: pale, gaunt, empty-eyed. My frame had withered, my clothes now hung off me like they belonged to someone else. But what tore me apart the most wasn’t the weight loss.
It was the silence.
No echoes of laughter down the hallway. No tiny feet pattering across wooden floors. No soft bedtime murmurs whispering, “Mommy, I love you.”
Only a devastating void.
Then, a week ago, Hannah revealed something that didn’t just deepen my grief—it transformed it into a wildfire of rage.
Ronan was throwing an extravagant party.
For Gabriel.
His “son.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. That boy? His son?
Ronan had once thrown a nearly identical celebration for Elior’s eighth birthday. I could still see the joy dancing in Elior’s eyes, the way he had gripped Ronan’s hand like he was the center of the entire universe.
And now?
Now he was doing it all over again—this time for Carmela’s child.
As though Elior had never even existed.
As if our child—born of love, abandoned by his father—was nothing more than a ghost best forgotten.
Ronan hadn’t even brought a single flower to Elior’s grave.
Not one.
Of course he didn’t. He had convinced himself that Elior wasn’t his. Wrapped himself in lies he either created or chose to believe just to appease the woman who had once turned her back on him.
The fury boiled over. Before I could stop myself, my fist connected with the vanity mirror. The glass splintered under my skin, shards embedding in my knuckles.
Blood oozed down to the countertop.
But I felt none of it.
I was numb to pain now.
Earlier that morning, Hannah had handed me a letter. Ronan’s handwriting.
He was asking me to recognize Carmela and her son as part of the pack.
To acknowledge Gabriel as his rightful heir.
I didn’t even flinch.
As soon as I read the last word, I struck a match and burned it to ash.
Then I grabbed a pen and wrote my own message.
This was the only channel he could reach me through now. I had destroyed my phone months ago—burned it like everything else he left behind. The only relic I had kept was a printed photograph of Elior, tucked carefully in an album—the last remaining evidence of the life Ronan shattered.
It was time to go back.
To Ashfen Pack.