I couldn’t hear, and the pack maids treated it like a weakness they could exploit. They mocked me behind smiles, dumped duties on me that weren’t mine, and made sure I felt unwanted in every corner of that house. I couldn’t hear their words, but I didn’t need to. Faces said enough. Smirks said everything.
“Easy to push around a deaf Luna,” they would say, thinking I wouldn’t catch on.
And Adrian… he never stopped them. Not once. He barely acknowledged me unless tradition demanded it. Even standing beside him in ceremonies felt like I was invisible.
Then one night, he came home drunk.
Really drunk.
And for a single night, he held me like I mattered.
I thought maybe that was the beginning of something real.
A month later, I found out I was pregnant.
Ezra’s birth gave me hope I hadn’t allowed myself in years. I told myself things would change—that maybe he would finally see me differently. Not as a burden. Not as repayment. But as the mother of his child.
Nothing changed.
Five years passed like that. Five years of trying. Five years of enduring. Five years of quietly hoping he would look at me the way he once did, even just once.
And now, after all that time, my hearing had returned.
I thought maybe this was a new beginning.
Maybe he would be happy for me.
“Mommy?” Ezra pulled on my sleeve again, his small face worried. His eyes—so like his father’s—searched mine. “What’s wrong?”
I forced a smile. “I’m okay. Mommy can hear now, sweetheart.”
His face lit up instantly. “Really? Daddy will be so happy!”
“Yeah…” I said softly, though my voice didn’t feel steady. “Maybe he will.”
But I didn’t stay.
I needed to tell Adrian myself.
I left Ezra with the nanny he trusted most and made my way out of the hall, stepping into the cold night air where fireworks still painted the sky. My ears ached from the sudden flood of sound, but I kept walking anyway.
Inside the pack house, I climbed the stairs toward the second-floor veranda.
That’s when I heard it.
A woman’s voice—soft, familiar.
Too familiar.
“How much longer are you going to keep me waiting, Alpha? It’s been five years. When are you finally ending things with her?”
My steps stopped.
Mira.
The omega always by his side. The one who smiled too comfortably around him. The one everyone noticed but no one dared question.
Footsteps followed after a pause.
Adrian.