Danae’s POV
Eirwen’s expression didn’t waver.
“Galen won’t risk making a scene in public.
Not after what happened.” She sat on the edge of the bed, her voice gentle but firm.
“You can’t hide in here forever, Dana.
You need to continue your life.”
The memory of his amber eyes—wild, unfocused, spilling past their human edges—rose up behind my own.
I pushed it down.
“Alright,” I said at last, the word tasting like surrender.
“Give me thirty minutes.”
Eirwen beamed like I’d said something wonderful and bounced off the bed.
“I’ll make toast while you get ready.”
As she left the room, something on the dresser caught my eye—a small canister of pepper spray that hadn’t been there yesterday.
She must have bought it while I slept.
My chest tightened with the particular kind of gratitude that doesn’t have words.
The supermarket was busy but not crowded, and I was grateful for the noise—the squeaking carts, the overhead music, the low hum of ordinary life proceeding without drama.
Eirwen pushed the cart while I walked alongside her, scanning every tall blond head in my peripheral vision.
None of them were Galen.
After fifteen minutes without incident, something in my shoulders began to unknot.
“See?” Eirwen said, watching the tension leave my face as we moved through the produce section.
“Not so bad.”
“It’s actually nice to be out.”
We filled the cart methodically—bread, eggs, coffee, the kind of snacks that Eirwen declared essential to any proper emotional recovery.
By the checkout, I was almost enjoying the mundaneness of it: the small decisions, the ordinary weight of a grocery bag, the way the fluorescent light made everything look cleanly, blankly fine.
“Want to look at clothes?” I asked as we stepped out into the afternoon air, emboldened.
“My treat.
As a thank-you.”
Eirwen raised an eyebrow.
“You should be saving every penny.”
“I can afford a shirt.” I nodded toward a boutique across the street.
“Come on.”
She was on the verge of agreeing when her expression shifted—a quick, subtle change, the kind that comes before bad news or a flinch.
Her eyes had found something past my shoulder.
Her fingers tightened around my arm.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” she said.
“I don’t—I don’t like that store.”
The change was too abrupt to be about the store.
A cold premonition moved through me before I even turned around.
Galen stood outside the boutique.
His hand rested at the small of Drusilla’s back in the proprietary way I’d once thought was romantic—that instinctive claim.
Beside them, holding Drusilla’s hand, was a small boy with Galen’s amber eyes and the distinctive hook of his nose.
The world tilted.
I’d seen the photographs.
I’d read the report card.
I’d sounded out the name in a trembling voice in an empty study.
But photographs are flat.
Paper is inert.
This—this living tableau of them, a perfect little unit moving through an ordinary Saturday afternoon—made the betrayal three-dimensional in a way nothing else had.
I remembered Drusilla’s phone, flashed briefly during some forgotten lunch.
The boy on her wallpaper.
She’d smiled and said, That’s my nephew.
He’s adorable, isn’t he?
Five years.
Five years of carefully chosen words and careful, curated truths.
“You’re right,” I said, my voice arriving from somewhere very far away.
“Let’s go.”
Eirwen steered me toward the parking lot, her grip on my arm steady and deliberate.
We were close—almost there—when a familiar voice cut across the distance between us.
“Danae!”