The apartment in Millbrook cost eight hundred dollars a month and smelled like old carpet and someone else's cooking.
Zaia signed the lease as Zoe Ashford—a name she'd constructed at three in the morning in a bus station bathroom, borrowing her grandmother's maiden name and the middle name she'd always hated. The landlord didn't ask questions. Millbrook wasn't the kind of town that asked questions.
The apartment was a studio on the third floor of a walk-up with a fire escape that rattled in the wind and a window that overlooked a parking lot. Zaia stood in the empty space—her space—and felt the mate bond pulse weakly, like a radio signal fading with distance.
She was four hundred miles from Sebastian Blackwood.
It wasn't far enough.
She unpacked slowly. Three changes of clothes from the bus station Walmart. A toothbrush. The ultrasound photo, framed with a dollar-store frame. The cufflinks, which she put in a drawer and tried not to look at.
That night, she woke at two a.m. with her stomach heaving and her wolf whimpering. She made it to the bathroom just in time, bracing herself against the cracked tile while her body rejected everything and nothing at once. When the spasms passed, she slid down the wall and pressed her hand to her abdomen.
"Just us," she whispered. "Just us three."
The twins fluttered in response—or maybe it was wishful thinking. Either way, she let herself believe they understood.
Morning brought sunlight through dirty curtains and the sound of traffic on the street below. Zaia made instant coffee with water she'd boiled in a pot because she didn't own a kettle yet. She sat at the wobbly table that came with the apartment and opened the laptop she'd bought with the last of her personal savings—the savings Sebastian hadn't known about, the account she'd kept from her design school days.
She'd been a graphic designer before she was a Luna. Before she'd given up her career to stand beside an Alpha who'd promised her the world and delivered a council chamber full of witnesses to her humiliation.
Her fingers moved across the keyboard.
**Z Design — Brand Identity Concepts**
The name came without thinking. Z for Zaia, for Zoe, for zero—starting from nothing. She uploaded portfolio pieces she'd archived in a cloud account Sebastian had never thought to ask about. Logos. Packaging. A complete rebrand she'd done pro bono for a women's shelter in the city, back when she'd still believed in using her position for good.
By noon, she had three client inquiries from a freelance platform.
By evening, she was retching over the toilet again, alone, with no one to hold her hair back and no Alpha to scent the air with comfort.
She learned to be sick quietly. She learned to eat crackers before standing up. She learned to work through the nausea, her laptop balanced on her knees while the twins made themselves known with kicks that grew stronger each week.
On the seventh day, a letter arrived.
Blackwood Legal. Official seal. Her hands shook as she opened it.
*Dear Ms. Ashford,* it read—because somehow they'd found her, or they'd found the name she'd used for the lease, or Marcus Hale was better at his job than she wanted to admit—*we write to confirm receipt of your refusal of the settlement offered. Please be advised that this offer expires in thirty days.*
There was no mention of the pregnancy. No inquiry about her health. No acknowledgment that she'd been his wife.
Zaia fed the letter through the shredder she'd bought at Office Depot.
That night, she dreamed of Sebastian's hands on her throat—not choking, but removing the pin, the metal cold against her skin. She woke gasping, the bond flaring hot enough to make her sweat through her sheets.
She was five hundred miles away and he was still inside her.
She needed to sever that connection. Pack law said rejected mates could petition for bond dissolution after one year of separation. One year of this fire in her chest. One year of waking to pain that wasn't hers.
She couldn't wait a year.
She opened a new browser tab and searched: *how to dull mate bond rejection pain werewolf*
The forums were full of broken hearts and herbal remedies and warnings that nothing worked except time or death or the mate's regret.
Zaia closed the laptop.
"I don't need his regret," she said to the empty apartment. To the twins. To the wolf inside her that still howled for a man who'd chosen someone else. "I need to survive."
Outside, a siren wailed. Inside, her phone buzzed with a new client message—a startup in the city, three hours south, looking for a full brand package.
The company name made her blood run cold.
**Northern Ridge Technologies.**
Celeste Vane's family pack. Celeste Vane's corporate arm.
Zaia stared at the screen. She could decline. She could hide. She could spend the rest of her pregnancy in this studio apartment, anonymous and safe.
Or she could take the job.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
The mate bond pulsed—once, twice—as if Sebastian could feel her decision from across the distance.
Zaia typed: *I'd be happy to discuss your project. My rates are competitive.*
She hit send before she could change her mind.
And somewhere in the city she'd fled, Sebastian Blackwood woke from a dream of his mate's pain with her name on his lips and no idea where she was.
The Northern Ridge inquiry sat in her inbox for three days before Zaia answered.
She researched the company between bouts of nausea—Celeste's family pack, their tech arm, their political ties to the elders who'd watched Zaia's humiliation without protest. Taking the job would be a knife slid between their ribs. Taking the job would pay her rent.
She told herself it was business. Only business.
Priya wasn't part of her life yet—that came later, with Z Design's first real office—but Zaia had a friend from design school, Maren, who called when the burner phone buzzed with an unknown number Zaia almost didn't answer.
"Zaia?" Maren's voice had cracked. "God, are you alive? The pack forums are insane. They say you cheated. They say—"
"I'm alive." Zaia stared at the water-stained ceiling. "Don't use that name. I'm Zoe now."
"Zoe." Maren exhaled. "Do you need money? A couch?"
Pride burned Zaia's tongue. She swallowed it. "I need a reference for a freelance platform. Human credentials only."
Maren sent it within the hour. By the time Zaia's first client paid her invoice, she'd learned to be sick in the shower so neighbors wouldn't hear.
The mate bond never let her forget what she'd left. Some nights it felt like Sebastian was standing in the room, hand outstretched, mouth full of words he'd never speak aloud. Zaia learned to work through those nights too—logo sketches by lamplight, brand guidelines until her eyes burned, building a fortress out of pixels and defiance.