Chapter 5: The Ring I Finally Gave Away

I kept watering the orchids on the terrace and didn’t answer.

In the past, every time Julian brought a woman home, the scent of a strange she-wolf would send me to the bathroom to throw up.

Now, I didn’t care.

The air was easier to breathe than it had ever been.

When Julian saw I had no reaction, his expression only soured.

He spoke abruptly.

Where’s the Hawthorne signet ring I gave you?

My hand paused.

Only for a moment.

I set down the watering can and took a velvet jewelry box from the bedroom safe.

Inside was a heavy gold signet ring engraved with the Hawthorne family crest—a hawthorn branch—with Stonebridge’s black bridge emblem from the pack’s founding on the inner band.

Julian had given it to me right after our wedding.

That day, he had said:

Clara, this is the mark of the Hawthorne matriarch. Once you receive the elders’ witness on Tidewatch, it will become your Luna seal.

I had been so surprised then, and I had guarded it like my most prized possession.

Now, I placed it in Felicity’s palm myself.

You’re right. It represents the family’s future. Of course it should go to the one who gets to go to Tidewatch.

The moment I finished speaking, Julian crushed the crystal glass in his hand.

Glass shards and whiskey splashed across the floor. Blood welled from his palm, though a werewolf’s healing closed the wound almost immediately.

Clara Calloway, what the hell are you doing?

I didn’t know how to answer.

I genuinely didn’t understand what more he wanted from me.

Julian had once been infatuated with a woman who ran a pack art gallery.

To please her, he’d asked me for a painting I had brought from Red Mesa. It was my favorite work by a southern painter, depicting the Red Mesa pack’s first migration across the wasteland.

I refused, and we had a huge fight.

It was ugly.

The woman cried in public, and Julian rebuked me in front of everyone.

Clara, must you be this difficult?

It’s just a painting. Why are you fighting with her over it?

Now I could hand over the signet ring, the one thing that mattered most.

What was he so unsatisfied with?