Chapter 4
The thermos flask slipped from my trembling fingers, crashing to the floor with a deafening bang.
Rich, steaming cocoa splattered across the cold linoleum.
I bolted towards the fire escape.
Frankson burst through the door.
Suddenly, a grip closed around my wrist.
"Olivia, it's not what you think."
He pinned me against the cold steel handrail.
Alice's mournful sobs drifted down the corridor.
"She just finished her psychological evaluation. The doctor said she can't be stressed-"
"Is that why you said yes?"
"She saved my life twice, Olivia," he pleaded, his grip on my wrist tightening.
I stared into his eye. The man who'd promised to never let me go.
Just then, Frankson's phone buzzed urgently.
His face paled as he listened to the nurse's panicked voice on the other end.
"Alice fainted again."
Instantly, his hold on me slackened, and he was already halfway down the stairs.
Watching his retreating figure vanish into the elevator, I felt my phone vibrate in my palm.
A voice message from Mom crackled through the static.
"How's the dizziness? The doctor said you need more sunlight during the last checkup."
When I'd emerged from my three-year coma, she'd sobbed into my hand, whispering,
"All I want is for you to be alive." But now, there was an unfamiliar hesitancy in her tone.
"Fine. No problems."
Dad coughed on the other end. "Your mother means-"
"Could you. keep your encounters with Alpha Frankson private when Alice is around?"
"Alice has suffered enough these past three years," Dad's words made my vision blur with rage.
"We're begging you," Dad's voice softened.
In the days that followed, Alpha Frankson seemed like a completely different person.
Today was my birthday.
As the salty wind whipped through my hair on the beach, Alpha Frankson presented me with a strawberry cake box.
My gaze fell on the silver bracelet he'd started wearing again.
The "O" charm glinted in the setting sun, but all I could see were the delicate pink sakura ribbons that had been tangled in the chain last week-ribbons that matched the ones in Alice's hair.
"No more running," he murmured, caging me in his arms.
His chin rested on the top of my head.
In the distance, a swarm of drones began to form a heart-shaped pattern, their lights twinkling like the fireworks he'd once set off to spell "LOVE."
I remembered how his palms had sweated as he held the ring box, how his knee had thudded against the sand when he'd proposed.
Our birthday dinner was set at a cliffside restaurant, the flickering candlelight casting a romantic glow over his profile as he sliced into his steak.
Then, as he excused himself to the restroom, his phone vibrated on the tablecloth.
When the screen lit up, the contact name-a single letter "A".
Alice's voice poured out of the speaker as I watched the waves crash against the rocks outside.
"I won't let any more boys walk me home, I promise!"
Memories flashed back to two days ago, when the housekeeper had reported seeing Alpha Frankson waiting outside the hospital, and Alice sporting a thick, masculine scarf around her neck.
That was the day he'd started acting like the loving mate I'd once known.
He snatched the phone away, his fingertips grazing my hand.
"Since when do you think you can snoop through my things?"
"Or how else would I know you only came back to me because you fought with Alice?"
The drone show raged on, thousands of lights forming a spinning heart against the night sky.
"Stop being irrational," he growled.
"Look at me!"
I wrenched my arm free.
"Tell me you're here for me, not because some wolf walked Alice home. "
"Why are you obsessed with her?" he roared.
In the distance, the drones began to form new words: "Happy birthday."
"There's nothing between us," he insisted.
"Then why won't you answer me?"
Alpha Frankson's phone blared its emergency tone.
It was my mom Laura.
"Alice collapsed again at the hospital. "
Alpha's face drained of color.
"I shouldn't have lashed out."
"Alice... she took a bad fall down the stairs."
"Next time, I'll make it up to you."
He pried my fingers off his arm.
I watched him sprint towards the parking lot.
In that moment, as if mirroring my shattered heart, the entire drone display flickered and died.
The first crack of thunder shattered the sky as the smoldering wreckage of the drones still hissed on the sand.
Deep into the night, my phone vibrated .
Alice's message popped up.
In the photo, Alpha Frankson lay slumped over her hospital bed.
"I told him to go home," her voice message trembled with a feigned sob.
"Alice,"
"that pearl bracelet on your wrist? It's my grandmother's heirloom, passed down through true - blooded heir."
"Everything you've stolen by mimicking me,"
"will slip through your fingers the moment you stop playing my shadow."
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