Chapter 7: A Stranger's Gaze

The city was a symphony of anonymity, and I was a silent, grateful note within it. For three months, I had built a new life brick by painstaking brick. A small apartment that smelled of fresh paint and my own choices, not the lingering scent of wolf and regret. A job at a quiet botanical garden, where the only demands were from plants that needed water and sunlight, not a tortured Alpha whose pain echoed in my soul. The constant, low-grade ache in my bones was my new normal. A phantom limb pain...