(Author's POV)
But Ophelia didn't stop.
Instead, her palm cracked across Elias's face with a force that sent a sharp sting up her own hand. His head snapped to the side, amber eyes going wide with pure shock.
"Don't you dare touch me," she whispered, her voice low and furious.
She stepped back, putting distance between them.
The entire hallway had gone silent. Every person in that medical wing had frozen in place, eyes wide, breath held. No one moved. No one spoke.
Elias's jaw tightened. A muscle jumped in his cheek, right where her palm had landed. His eyes darkened with a rage she had seen before, but never directed at her with quite this much intensity.
"Ophelia." His voice came out dangerously quiet. "You need to stop this right now."
She didn't stop.
She pulled the wooden box tighter against her chest and looked at him with eyes that had already cried themselves hollow.
"We're done, Elias."
The words fell between them like stones dropping into still water.
"What did you just say?" His voice cracked at the edges.
He reached out and closed his fingers around her arm.
"Let go of me." She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to.
"You're my mate. You don't get to just-"
"Five years." She cut through him cleanly. "Five years, Elias. Every birthday. Every school play. Every night she pressed her face against that window waiting for your headlights. You were never there."
He stared at her.
"You always had time for Elara." Her voice didn't waver. "You always had time for Vivienne. But you couldn't give your own daughter one afternoon. Not one. Not even on her last birthday."
"Her last-" He stopped. His brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"
She lifted the wooden box slowly, holding it up between them.
"Liora is dead, Elias."
He looked at the box. Then back at her face. Something flickered in his expression, something uncertain and uneasy, but he shook his head.
"Stop it. Stop lying. Liora is at home, she's just-"
"She's not at home." Ophelia's voice broke on the words, but she held herself steady. "She's here. She's been here this whole time. In my arms."
He stared at the box.
She watched his face and waited for the moment when it would finally land. When he would finally understand what she was telling him.
It didn't come.
"You're making a scene," he said slowly. "You're upset, and I understand that, but this is not-"
"She died waiting for you to love her."
The words came out barely above a whisper, but they carried across the entire silent hallway.
Elias's lips parted. He said nothing.
Ophelia lowered the box back to her chest. She took a slow breath.
"I'm leaving," she said. "Don't follow me."
She turned and walked away.
He didn't stop her.
Three days passed.
Elias had been sleeping in his office, telling himself it was because of work, telling himself Ophelia needed time to cool down, telling himself she would come back on her own once the grief had run its course.
Vivienne called twice a day, every day.
"She slapped me in front of everyone, Elias." Her voice was tight with wounded dignity. "In a public hospital. In front of my daughter. Are you really going to let her get away with that?"
"I'll handle it," he said each time.
"You keep saying that."
"I'll handle it."
On the third day, he drove home.
He expected to find Ophelia sulking in the bedroom, or sitting rigid in the kitchen, waiting for him to come and acknowledge her grief so she could feel seen and then slowly, eventually, come back to herself.
He opened the front door.
The house was empty.
Not just quiet. Empty. The kind of empty that had weight to it, that pressed against the walls and settled into the corners.
He walked through the rooms. Her closet stood open. The shelves were bare. Her shoes were gone. The small items she kept on the bathroom counter, all of it, gone.
He stood in the middle of the bedroom and stared at the space where her things had been.
Then he pulled out his phone and called her.
The line didn't even ring.
He called again.
Nothing.
He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen.
Blocked.
The word registered slowly, and then all at once.
His wolf surged up from somewhere deep and furious, slamming against the inside of his chest with a force that made him grip the doorframe.
Blocked.
She had blocked him.
His mate had blocked him.
He stood there for a long moment, breathing through the rage, his knuckles going white against the wood.
This was not something he was going to allow.
Ophelia had spent three days at her foster mother's house on the edge of the city, in the small, quiet place she had grown up in, with its low ceilings and its old wooden floors and its garden that smelled like earth and green things.
She had placed Liora's box on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, surrounded by photographs. Liora at two, laughing with her whole body. Liora at four, holding a sunflower almost as tall as she was. Liora at six, gap-toothed and proud, showing off the drawing she had made for Ophelia's birthday.
For three days, Ophelia had finally been allowed to grieve properly.
She cried until she had nothing left. She sat with the box and talked to her daughter. She slept when she could and ate when she remembered to.
On the morning of the fourth day, she took the trash out to the bins at the side of the house.
She heard footsteps on the gravel behind her.
"Why did you block me?"
She turned around.
Elias stood at the end of the path, hands in his pockets, jaw set. He looked like he hadn't slept well. His eyes were hard and flat and very, very angry.
"Answer me." He walked toward her.
She turned back to the bins and finished what she was doing.
His hand closed around her wrist, hard.
"I'm talking to you."
She didn't answer. Instead, she brought her heel down sharply onto the top of his foot.
He hissed and loosened his grip for half a second.
That was all she needed.
She pulled free and ran for the front door, taking the steps two at a time. But he was faster, and she knew it, and by the time she reached the top of the porch stairs, he was already there, blocking the doorway.
She stopped.
They stood facing each other on the narrow landing.
"We're separated," she said. Her voice was completely flat. "You have no right to grab me."
He let out a short, humorless sound. "Separated. You think that's how this works? You're my mate, Ophelia. You belong to me."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"Get out," she said. "We're done. Leave."
She turned and walked through the door.
He followed her inside.
She didn't try to stop him. There was no point.
He stepped into the living room and stopped.
The photographs covered every surface. Liora's face looked back at him from every angle, every age, every expression. On the mantelpiece, the wooden box sat at the center of it all, quiet and still, with a small incense stick burning slowly in front of it.
Elias stood very still.
He was holding something. Ophelia noticed it now, a child's dress, pale pink with small white flowers along the hem. Something about it tugged at her memory.
He looked around the room. Then he moved toward the bedroom, glancing inside, then back out.
"Where is Liora?" he asked.
His voice had shifted slightly. Something in it had gone uncertain.
Ophelia pressed her lips together hard. She forced herself to breathe.
"You'll never see her again," she said.
He frowned. "What does that mean? Is she at a hospital? What-"
"She's gone, Elias."
She crossed the room and took the dress from his hands. Her fingers were shaking.
"This dress." She held it up. The pale pink fabric caught the light. "She asked you for this dress for two years. Two years. You said it was too expensive."
He said nothing.
"You bought it now." Her voice cracked. "After Elara wore it. After Liora was already dying. You brought it now, when she has no use for it anymore."
"She's not-she's just sick, she'll-"
"She doesn't need it!" The words tore out of her.
She crossed to the mantelpiece and laid the dress down beside the wooden box. The hem drifted too close to the burning incense, and a small dark hole bloomed in the pink fabric, the edges curling and browning before she pulled it back.
"Stop this," Elias said sharply. "You're being irrational."
"Get out." She said it without heat, without fury. Just a simple, quiet instruction. "Get out of this house."
His phone rang.
The sound cut through the room.
He pulled it from his pocket. Vivienne's name lit up the screen. He looked at it, then looked at Ophelia, and answered the call.
"Elias?" Vivienne's voice came through warm and sweet, coated with concern. "Where are you? I've been worried."
"I'm taking care of something," he said. His voice softened without him seeming to notice it.
Ophelia watched his face change. She watched it happen in real time.
"Oh." A small pause. "Is Liora there with you? Don't forget, we planned to take the girls to the amusement park this weekend. Elara has been so excited."
Elias's eyes moved to Ophelia's face.
He watched the pain move across it at the sound of her daughter's name, raw and unguarded, like something being torn open.
"No," he said into the phone, his eyes still on Ophelia. "Liora isn't here. We'll have to cancel that plan."
"Oh," Vivienne said softly. She sounded genuinely disappointed. "Elara is going to be so upset. She's been looking forward to it all week."
"I'll come to you," Elias said. "I'll be there soon. We can spend the day with Elara together."