The entire sitting room fell into absolute silence.
Not a breath.
Not a rustle.
No one dared move an inch.
Alpha Reid’s Beta stood frozen, his body locked in place by the sheer weight of the stranger’s presence pressing down on him like a collapsing ceiling.
Logan didn’t even blink.
He stood in the wreckage of the shattered door, one hand casually tucked into his pocket, looking like he’d just strolled in for afternoon tea.
His free hand lifted.
One finger.
A lazy gesture toward Isla.
“Come.”
One word.
Absolute authority.
Isla’s buckling knees steadied at the sound of his voice.
She lifted her chin, dropped the glass shard—it hit the floor and exploded into a dozen glittering pieces—and walked toward him.
Toward safety.
When she reached him, Logan’s gaze swept over her, then stopped cold at the bruises blooming across her wrists.
“Who did this?” His voice dropped.
His wolf surged forward behind his eyes, and the air in the room turned to ice.
No one answered.
“This is none of your business.” Cassian stepped forward, puffing out his chest like a rooster trying to look taller than he was.
“A minor family matter.”
Logan finally glanced at him.
One look—cold, dismissive, the way you’d glance at a cockroach before stepping on it.
Cassian shrank back, sweat beading on his forehead.
“And you are?” Logan’s tone dripped with condescension.
Everything in Cassian screamed at him to back down.
But pride was a hell of a drug.
“Her father.”
“Too bad.” Logan’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“I’m her husband.
She’s my responsibility now.”
The temperature in the room plummeted.
No one could believe it.
She hadn’t been lying.
Cassian scoffed.
Melinda huffed.
Hilda’s jaw dropped.
“You must take us for fools.” Spit flew from Cassian’s mouth.
“She’s an unwanted mutt—despised by her fated mate.
You think I’d believe some fake certificate you shoved in my face?”
Before Logan could respond, Melinda cut in, her voice sharp as a blade.
“Even if what you’re saying is true—how dare you marry a woman without her parents’ consent?” She jabbed a finger at him.
“In any pack, that marriage is invalid!”
Cassian and Hilda nodded in unison.
Logan laughed.
Low.
Quiet.
Terrifying.
“It’s funny that you still think your permission ever mattered.” His gaze swept over the family with naked disgust.
“News flash—it never did.”
“How dare you!” Cassian’s face purpled.
“She is my daughter!
Whatever I say goes!”
“Not anymore.” Logan’s voice carried the weight of an avalanche.
“She made a choice.
And there’s nothing—absolutely nothing—any of you can do about it.”
“Who do you think you are?” Cassian’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“Who I am doesn’t matter.” Logan took a step forward.
“But I’ll tell you what I see—a man who doesn’t deserve to call himself a father.
No father does what you’ve done to his own pup.”
“You—”
“Silence!”
The command hit them like a tidal wave.
Omegas bowed their necks.
Melinda and Hilda dropped their gazes against their will, wolves submitting to something far greater than themselves.
Utter silence.
Isla stood in the middle of it, her fists clenched so tight her nails bit into her palms.
Old memories crashed over her—years of being less than nothing in this house.
Something inside her snapped.
“Not again!” She screamed like a banshee.
Every head turned.
“You were never my family.” Her voice was ice.
Her eyes were steel.
Cassian gasped.
Melinda and Hilda’s smug expressions crumpled.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Cassian muttered.
“I’m done taking your shit.” Isla grabbed her bag, pulled out a thick envelope, and shoved it into her father’s chest.
He took it reluctantly.
His eyes swept the document.
His face went pale.
A formal severance.
She had signed it that morning.
Logan’s lawyers had drawn it up before she’d even left City Hall.
“You don’t know what you’ve done, girl,” Cassian whispered.
“I have formally severed every tie with this cursed family.” Isla’s voice rang clear and steady.
“I take nothing.
I am nothing to you.
And you are nothing to me.
It’ll be exactly like I never existed—because I never really did in this house, did I?”
No greater humiliation existed—being cut off by your own child in front of witnesses.
“You stupid bitch!” Cassian’s wolf surged forward.
His hand shot toward her throat.
It never landed.
In the space of a blink, Cassian was dangling in the air—choking, scratching uselessly at the steel grip around his neck.
Logan held him like a sack of garbage.
Then he flung him.
Cassian sailed across the room.
A loud crack echoed as he hit the wall.
He crashed through a sofa, wood splintering, dust exploding.
Silence.
Cassian pushed himself up on twisted limbs.
Blood poured from his nose, his mouth, a gash across his forehead.
His body was a canvas of fresh scars.
Logan hadn’t broken a sweat.
He slipped his hand back into his pocket.
Bored.
Unbothered.
“I said,” Logan’s tone was almost conversational, “anyone touches a single hair on her head, and I’ll rip them limb from limb.”
The promise lingered in the air like smoke.
Alpha Reid’s Beta took a careful step backward.
Logan took Isla’s arm and walked out.
No one dared stop him.
No one even breathed until the sound of the black Mustang’s engine faded down the street.
The moment the car turned the corner, the air in the Spencer house became breathable again.
Hilda’s face twisted into something ugly.
How could that useless thing—that weak, pathetic Omega—land someone so powerful?
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t right.
Isla didn’t deserve him.
Alpha Reid’s Beta finally spoke up, his voice flat and impatient.
“I came to collect what was promised.”
Cassian’s blood ran cold.
“I… I wasn’t aware she was married.”
“Alpha Reid doesn’t like being crossed.” The Beta’s smile was thin.
“I’m not leaving empty-handed.”
“B-but she’s gone!”
The Beta’s gaze slid to Hilda.
She took a step back, shaking her head.
Her wolf cowered.
“She will do.”
“No—Dad!
Do something!” Hilda screamed as the Beta threw her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
“Please!
Dad!”
Cassian turned his face away.
Hilda screamed bloody murder all the way to the door.
For the first time in her life, she wasn’t the one watching someone else get sold.
She was the merchandise.