Chapter 67: When the Scale Broke

The scale broke because Rowan stepped on it.

At least that was my version.

His version involved "pre-existing structural weakness."

He was lying.

I heard the crack from the bedroom.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing."

I walked into the bathroom.

The digital scale displayed half a number and then died.

"You killed it."

"It was old."

"It was six months old."

"Ancient."

I should've been annoyed.

Instead, I stared at the broken scale.

Something unexpected happened.

Relief.

Then guilt about feeling relieved.

For months, I had reduced how often I weighed myself.

Once a week.

Then every few weeks.

But the scale still held a strange authority.

A good number improved my morning.

A higher number could quietly follow me all day.

Rowan noticed my expression.

"I'll replace it."

"No."

He paused.

"No?"

"I don't think I want another one."

"Okay."

That was all.

No celebration.

No speech.

Just okay.

Later, I told Garrick.

He was my training instructor and therefore one of the few people allowed to discuss my physical condition professionally.

"Fine."

"Fine?"

"We track performance anyway."

He looked at his notes.

"Strength up. Endurance stable. Recovery better than last year. Sleep improved."

"Weight?"

"Don't care unless medically relevant."

I stared.

"You used to weigh us constantly."

"I used to be an idiot."

"Growth."

"Don't tell anyone."

My relationship with food had improved too.

Not perfectly.

Stress still made old habits whisper.

Skip breakfast.

Run farther.

Earn dinner.

But now I recognized the voice.

It sounded less like discipline and more like fear.

The Seraphina Center hired a nutrition specialist who worked with athletes and wolves recovering from restrictive eating patterns.

I booked an appointment.

Not because I thought I was sick.

Because I wanted better tools.

The specialist, Dr. Mina, asked why I had originally lost weight.

"To meet a boy."

She waited.

"That's the short version."

"I have time."

So I told her.

Knox.

The photograph.

The fear.

The training.

The hunger.

The stomach pain.

She didn't tell me losing weight had been wrong.

She didn't tell me being thinner was wrong.

She asked whether the methods had hurt me.

"Yes."

"Would you recommend them to another seventeen-year-old?"

"No."

"Then maybe your goal now isn't to judge past Nessa."

She smiled.

"Maybe it's to give current Nessa options she didn't have."

I liked that.

We built a nutrition plan around training.

Enough food.

Flexible meals.

No punishment.

Dessert included because dessert was food, not moral failure.

Tessa celebrated this by bringing cake.

"Medical cake."

"That's not a thing."

"It is now."

Rhea ate two slices.

Cassian ate three.

Rowan tried to steal mine.

I stabbed his hand with a fork.

Supreme Alpha dignity survived.

Barely.

A month passed without a scale.

My body did not collapse.

My mate did not leave.

My Pack did not vote me out.

Civilization continued.

Then a fashion magazine contacted me.

They wanted a feature.

"From Fat to Fated: Nessa Arden's Incredible Transformation."

I stared at the proposed title.

No.

The editor called.

"We can change wording."

"Good."

"What would you prefer?"

"Why does my weight need to be the headline?"

"Your transformation inspires people."

"Which transformation?"

"Your physical one."

I looked around my office.

Lunaris maps.

Council documents.

The Moonwell Charter copy.

Photos from the Seraphina Center.

"That's not even the most interesting one."

The editor went quiet.

We negotiated.

The final feature became:

NESSA ARDEN: REBUILDING LUNARIS.

My weight appeared in one paragraph because it was part of my story.

Not the title.

Not the point.

The cover photo showed me in Alpha training clothes.

No retouching beyond lighting.

When the issue released, one comment said:

She looked better at 110.

I laughed.

Another said:

She looks healthier now.

That bothered me too.

Both strangers believed a photograph gave them authority to diagnose my body.

I closed the comments.

That might have been the healthiest decision of all.

That evening, Rowan asked whether I missed the scale.

"Sometimes."

"Want another?"

"No."

"Okay."

I leaned against him.

"What if I change my mind?"

"Then we buy one."

Simple.

Choice again.

Apparently most of healing came back to that word.

Dr. Mina also taught me to separate fitness goals from punishment. If I wanted to improve sprint speed, we trained for sprint speed. If I wanted more strength, we fueled more strength. No vague goal called smaller. That word had controlled too much of my life. My body could have specific jobs without becoming a permanent renovation project. Some mornings I still stood before the mirror and searched automatically for flaws. When I noticed, I practiced naming something functional instead: shoulders that carried weight, legs that ran territory, lungs that recovered, hands that signed laws. It sounded silly until it started working.

Later, I wrote the day's events in my private journal. I had learned not to trust memory to preserve uncertainty, because hindsight made every decision look cleaner than it had felt. I recorded what frightened me, what I almost misunderstood, and which people had changed my mind. Leadership was easier to romanticize after the danger passed. I wanted the record to remain honest.