Chapter 24 Riley
— · —
Riley
Days passed, and the waiting became unbearable.
I developed a routine, because routines were what you did when your life had been upended and you didn’t know what else to do.
I woke up, made coffee, and stared at my phone waiting for a message that didn’t come.
I wrote, or tried to write, but every hero in my stories started looking like Caelan, and every romantic tension felt hollow compared to what I was actually living.
I picked up shifts at a local bookstore to distract myself, because I couldn’t sit at my apartment any longer. Margaret from Chapter & Verse was happy to have someone who actually loved books. I shelved, I recommended, I smiled at customers and pretended my heart wasn’t breaking.
Came home. Ate food that tasted of nothing. Stared at my phone again. Slept badly, restlessly, reaching for a body that wasn’t there.
Pathetic? Yes. But awareness of my patheticness didn’t make it stop.
The bond was there. I could feel it, a constant, low hum in the back of my mind that told me he was alive, he was out there, he existed.
But it was stretched thin, distant. The reception was terrible.
I could feel his presence but not his emotions anymore, couldn’t sense his moods.
Just a vague awareness that the other half of my soul was somewhere far away, fighting a war I couldn’t be part of.
I missed him. God, I missed him.
I missed the way he looked at me, that intensity in his gray eyes that made me feel seen in ways no one else ever had.
I missed the way he touched me, reverent and possessive all at once.
I missed the way he made terrible soup and watched me eat it with such earnest hope that I couldn’t bring myself to tell him it was inedible.
I missed his voice, his laugh, the weight of his arm around my waist when I slept. The way he said my name, rolling the R slightly, making it sound exotic and precious. I missed him so much it was a physical wound. An aching hollow that nothing could fill.
The only times I felt better were when I was with my friends.
Sloane dragged me out for coffee. Margo insisted on wine nights.
Jade came by with snacks and terrible reality TV recommendations.
They didn’t push me to talk about it, not at first, but they were there.
Constant, steady. Reminding me that I existed outside of my relationship with Caelan, that I had a life here, people who loved me.
I’d been feeling sick, too. Not sick enough to be alarming, but sick enough to notice. Nausea in the mornings that made coffee unappealing. Fatigue that didn’t go away no matter how much I slept. A general sense of wrongness in my body, off-balance and strange.
I blamed it on stress. On the separation. On the fact that I was a wolf now and I didn’t fully understand what that meant for my body. The wolf inside me was restless too, pacing in the back of my mind, whining for her mate.
There was good news, at least. The lawsuit against Damien finally went through.
He never showed up to the judgment, couldn’t probably, given that Caelan had wiped his memory and sent him wandering.
The court ruled in my favor by default. I was finally getting my independence back.
The contract was void. The 40% royalties were done. I owned my work again.
I should have been celebrating. Should have been thrilled. A year ago, this would have been the best day of my life. I would have thrown a party, gotten drunk with my friends, started planning my next book with the freedom to write whatever I wanted.
Now it just felt empty. A victory that didn’t matter because the person I wanted to celebrate with wasn’t here.
All in all, life was technically good. On paper, I was winning.
It just didn’t feel that way. It wasn’t what I wanted. I’d been surviving, not living. Going through the motions of a life that felt increasingly hollow.
Two weeks into the separation, I finally told my friends everything.
It happened at Sloane’s apartment, during what was supposed to be a normal wine night. But there was nothing normal about my life anymore, and the secrets were eating me alive.
“I need to tell you guys more,” I said, setting down my glass. “About what’s been happening. More than what you already know.”
Margo leaned forward. “Bigger than ‘I’m engaged to a werewolf prince from another dimension’? Because that was already pretty big.”
“Related to that.”
I told them all of it. The shifting, the white wolf, the Mirabelle heritage, my murdered parents, the prophecy, the reason Caelan left, his father under attack, a war in another realm. Everything.
When I finished, the room was silent.
“So,” Jade said slowly, “you’re telling us you’re also a werewolf.”
“Yes.”
“From another dimension.”
“Technically.”
“And there’s a prophecy about you.”
“Apparently.”
“And your fiancé, the werewolf prince, is currently fighting a war in said other dimension. A war that started because someone staged a coup against his father, the king.”
“Also yes.”
“And you can’t go help because...”
“Because he left me here to keep me safe. Which I am still annoyed about, for the record.”
The silence stretched even longer this time.
“I’m going to need more wine,” Sloane said.
We drank, we processed, and they asked approximately a thousand questions that I could only partially answer.
“What does shifting feel like?” Margo wanted to know.
“Uncomfortable. Bones cracking, muscles reforming. But also... right? It’s hard to explain.”
“Do you have, like, wolf thoughts?” Jade asked. “Does your wolf have a name?”
“She doesn’t have a separate name. She’s me. Just... a different part of me.”
“What color are you?” Sloane asked. “As a wolf, I mean.”
“White. Pure white.”
“That’s gorgeous.” Jade sighed dreamily. “You’re going to be the prettiest werewolf queen ever.”
“I’m not going to be a queen.”
“You’re engaged to a prince. The math isn’t hard, Riley.”
I hadn’t actually thought about that. About what marrying Caelan would mean for my life. For my future.
“Can you shift?” Margo asked suddenly. “Right now? Can you show us?”
I hesitated. I’d only shifted a handful of times since that first terrifying transformation. Each time was controlled, Caelan guiding me through it, teaching me how to reach for the wolf and let it take over. I’d never done it alone. Never done it in front of anyone else.
But Caelan wasn’t here. And I needed to prove, to myself as much as to them, that I could do this.
“Stand back,” I said.
They scrambled to the edges of the room, pressing against the walls, eyes huge. Sloane grabbed a throw pillow and held it in front of her body, her makeshift shield against a wolf attack.
I closed my eyes, breathed, and reached for the presence in the back of my mind. The wolf was calm and patient, waiting.
Come on, I thought. Let’s show them.
The shift took me.
It hurt less this time. Still uncomfortable, bones cracking, muscles reforming, but manageable, familiar. Within moments, I was standing on four legs, my perspective changed, my senses heightened.
I opened my eyes. Three screams pierced the air.
“HOLY SHIT,” Margo yelled.
“OH MY GOD,” Jade screeched.
“WHAT THE FUCK,” Sloane added, because Sloane had never been one for creative cursing under pressure.
I made a sound, a huff that I hoped conveyed amusement. I padded toward them slowly, carefully, trying not to frighten them more than I already had.
Jade was the first to move. She reached out with a trembling hand and touched my fur.
“It’s real,” she breathed. “You’re real. This is actually happening.”
“You’re so soft,” Margo said, reaching out too. “Oh my god, you’re so fluffy.”
“Can you understand us?” Sloane asked. “Blink twice if you can understand us.”
I blinked twice. Then rolled my eyes, which was harder to do as a wolf but I managed.
“This is insane,” Sloane whispered. “This is absolutely insane.”
“I think I need to lie down.”
We spent the next hour adjusting to this new reality. I shifted back, clumsily, still getting the hang of it, and they peppered me with more questions.
By the end of the night, they’d accepted it. Not easily, and their worldviews had been fundamentally shattered, but they’d accepted it because that’s what friends did. They adjusted, adapted, poured more wine and made inappropriate jokes until everything felt slightly less insane.
“So when do we get to visit this other dimension?” Margo asked.
“Never,” I said firmly.
“But...”
“There’s a war happening. And also, no.”
Our lives were upside down. But at least they were upside down together.
***
Two months had passed when everything changed.
I woke up feeling worse than usual, the nausea stronger and the fatigue heavier than it had been in weeks. There was a heat building under my skin that I couldn’t explain. Not quite a fever, but close. Pulsing and wrong, burning me from the inside out.
I managed to make it to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and took one sip before my legs gave out and I crumpled to the floor, my back hitting the cabinets as the world spun around me.
Get up, I told myself. Get up, get up, get up.
I couldn’t. My limbs wouldn’t cooperate. My body felt foreign, wrong, out of my control.
My phone. Where was my phone? I fumbled for it, found it on the counter above me, managed to pull it down. My fingers were shaking so badly I could barely navigate the screen.
Caelan had left me a number. Before he went. “If anything happens,” he’d said. “Call this. Ask for Aedan. He’ll help.”
I found the number, dialed, and waited. Each ring stretched endlessly.
“Hello?” A gruff, irritated voice. Clearly I’d interrupted something important.
“Aedan?” My voice came out weak. Pathetic. “This is Riley. Caelan’s... Caelan gave me this number. He said if anything...”
“Where are you?”
I gave him my address. He hung up without another word.