Chapter 6

Eliana POV

They say chaos is a ladder. Today, however, chaos looked a lot like a moving truck.

The mansion was being gutted with military precision. My team descended like a swarm of locusts trained in logistics.

The velvet sofa where I had once sat, waiting hours for him to come home? Gone.

The Steinway grand piano I played to soothe his migraines? Already crated.

Dustin stood in the center of the swirling activity, leaning heavily on Jami for support. He looked like a king watching his castle turn to sand around him.

"This is petty, Eliana," he hissed, trying to summon a shred of his former dignity, though his voice wavered.

"You have billions," he continued, gesturing weakly at a mover walking past. "Why do you need the toaster?"

"It's a Breville," I said, not bothering to look up from the inventory list on my tablet. "And I bought it."

Laura stepped forward, a thick dossier cradled in her arm like a weapon. She faced Arthur, the Pack's legal advisor, who had just arrived looking disheveled and smelling of panic.

"Here is the itemized manifest of assets legally owned by Eliana David," Laura announced, her voice slicing through the noise of packing tape and dolly wheels.

"This includes the liquid capital in the joint accounts-which, for the record, was ninety percent Eliana's deposit-the deed to the summer lodge, and the patent for the Pack's security algorithm."

Arthur flipped through the pages, sweat beading on his forehead. "This... this algorithm runs our entire border defense grid. You can't just take it."

"It's intellectual property," Laura corrected, her smile thin and sharp as paper. "We are generous, however. We will give you twenty-four hours to procure a replacement system before we shut the servers down."

"Twenty-four hours?" Dustin choked, his face paling. "That leaves us defenseless against Rogues!"

"You should have thought of that before you rejected your Anchor," I said, finally flicking my gaze toward him.

Jami stepped forward, her face flushing a mottled red. "You are endangering the baby! If Rogues attack..."

I leveled a cold stare at her.

"Then maybe the baby's father should have spent less time in bed with his assistant and more time securing his borders."

Two movers marched past us, carrying the massive oil painting that had hung over the fireplace. I watched my own painted face disappear out the front door.

"Wait," Dustin said, his voice trembling. He pushed Jami aside, stumbling toward me with a desperation that was almost pitiful.

"The garden," he gasped. "The Moonflower garden."

I stopped.

The Moonflower garden was my sanctuary. It contained rare, medicinal flora essential for high-level Pack healing potions. I had cultivated that soil from seeds passed down from my grandmother.

"I'm taking the plants," I stated flatly.

"You can't move them! They'll die in transit!"

"Better they die with me than live with you," I replied.

I walked to the window. Outside, a specialized horticultural team was already excavating the root systems, placing the delicate specimens into temperature-controlled bio-pods.

Dustin watched, utterly helpless. His Alpha instinct to protect his territory was screaming, but the broken bond had left him physically hollowed out. He was hemorrhaging energy just by standing there.

"Eliana," he whispered.

"Please."

It was the first time he had used that word in years.

I turned to him one last time. I saw the raw terror in his eyes. He wasn't afraid of losing the herbs. He was afraid because he was realizing, for the first time, exactly how much of his "power" was actually *me*.

"Goodbye, Dustin," I said.

I walked out the front door, refusing to look back at the hollow shell of a house.

I climbed into the back of Laura's black SUV. The moment the door clicked shut, silencing the noise outside, I pulled out my phone.

"Are we done?" Laura asked from the front seat, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

"Not quite," I said.

I opened a secure app. I had one last card to play.

Dustin's company, Obsidian Tech, was currently bidding on a massive government contract in Europe. They were the frontrunners solely because of a proprietary encryption key.

My encryption key.

I tapped the screen. One anonymous tip sent to their biggest competitor, highlighting the expiration date of the license Obsidian Tech was using.

*Sent.*

"Now," I said, leaning back into the leather seat and closing my eyes. "Now we're done."