Chapter 1 One

"Is there anything you regret at the moment?" The therapist asked.

Elara's eyes closed, the salt of her tears stinging the raw skin of her cheeks. Her heart bobbed up and down in her chest. She couldn't even say no. How could she? The memories were everywhere, clinging to the corners of her vision like a lewdity, greasy and unwanted. She ran a hand over the back of her neck, feeling the prickly, unfamiliar sensation of her hair, newly clipped short at a salon. A physical shedding of a skin that no longer fits.

She still couldn't believe it. Ten years. She had wasted the entirety of her twenties on a man who didn't care if she existed or not.

The irony was a bitter pill she'd been forced to swallow daily. Elara was the one with the money hidden in dormant accounts; she was the one with the command in her blood. Her father, President Alexander Vance, ruled the entire nation with an iron fist, yet she had lived for a decade as if he were a commoner in some nameless, dusty outskirts city.

Twelve years ago, she had run. At eighteen, she thought Greene was her sanctuary. She thought his smile was a promise, not a lure. To be his wife, she had suppressed every instinct. She had served him, his ungrateful mother, and his leeching siblings at their table every single day. She, a dominant Alpha of the most powerful lineage in the country, had masked her pheromones, stifled her power, and played the role of a submissive Omega until her soul felt paper-thin. All for the sake of a man who ultimately looked at her with nothing but bored disdain.

The final message he gave her before tossing the divorce papers onto the stained kitchen table played on a loop in her head: "I have finally found the woman suitable for my status."

"What do you mean, love?" she had asked, her voice steady even as her world cracked.

She remembered looking down at her hands as she picked up the documents. They were smeared with dirt from the garden, calloused and rough, hands that had scrubbed floors and sold drinks in neon-lit clubs just to pay for Greene's tuition. She had built him. She had carved a man out of a boy with her own blood and sweat, while her father watched from the White House, letting her drown in her own choices just to prove a point.

"What do you mean, divorce?" Her heart had trembled then. It was trembling now.

"I found the right person for me," Greene had said, straightening his expensive tie, the one she'd bought him. "She's an Alpha. I knew her from college and she's ready to turn my whole life around. She's the daughter of President Vance."

Elara had scoffed, a jagged, hysterical sound. The President had only one child. Him. Her. Greene was being played, or he was a fool, or perhaps some social climber had successfully draped themselves in her stolen shadow. Greene didn't even know her real last name. To him, she was just a rag, a pity project he was finally finishing.

"You're so pitiful," he'd added, sliding a check for alimony across the table like he was feeding a stray dog. "That's why I want you to take care of yourself. Move out by tomorrow."

"How annoying," she finally said, her face turning dark. "Someone I could feed his entire family at a whim telling me to move out of his rickety house." She broke into a jagged laugh that didn't reach her eyes. "My father was right about one thing: everyone is supposed to be treated according to their status. Why did I ever think everyone was equal to me? I must've watched too many movies to think that was even true."

"Well..." the therapist began, shifting uncomfortably as the air in the small room suddenly felt heavy, charged with a static he couldn't explain.

"No 'well,' Mr. Therapist. Thank you for your entertainment these past ten years. Even when I thought I was losing my senses, you helped me gather them. I should've known when to walk away instead of sucking it all up like a fool." She sprang to her feet, her posture shifting. Gone was the slumped, weary woman; in her place stood someone whose very shadow seemed to lengthen against the office walls. "It's time to go home, where I belong."

"Ms. Elara Greene," the therapist stammered, reaching for his notepad.

"It's Ms. Elara Vance now. The daughter of Alpha Alexander Vance, the most powerful man in all of America. I'm his heiress, the one who will have America passed down into her grip."

She didn't wait for a goodbye. She walked out of the office, the bell above the door chiming a funeral dirge for her old life. Outside, the humid air of the outskirts felt suffocating, but not for long.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a small, metallic device no larger than a coin, a distress beacon she hadn't touched since the night she climbed out of the White House window twelve years ago. With a decisive click, she activated it.

She stood on the cracked sidewalk, her cheap, worn-out shoes a stark contrast to the fire burning in her golden-flecked eyes. She looked at her phone one last time. A text from Greene's mother sat on the screen: Don't forget to scrub the porch before you leave, you useless girl. My son's new Alpha girlfriend shouldn't see such a mess.

Elara's lip curled. She deleted the thread and tossed the phone into a nearby trash can.

Within minutes, the distant hum of rotors began to vibrate in the pavement. People stopped in their tracks, looking up as three sleek, black V-22 Ospreys tore through the clouds, their flight path direct and unapologetic. They weren't headed for the city center; they were descending right into this nameless, dusty neighborhood.

The helicopters hovered, the downdraft kicking up a storm of grit and debris that forced the onlookers to shield their eyes. Soldiers in tactical gear, bearing the unmistakable crest of the Presidential Guard, rappelled down with precision.

The lead commander, a man Elara remembered as a young lieutenant, hit the ground and snapped into a rigid salute.

"Alpha Vance," he shouted over the roar of the engines. "The President has been tracking your signal. He says your vacation has lasted long enough."

He stood right in front of her, "Elara..." He called with a distant familiarity that she was no longer aware of.

She looked into his eyes, she remembered him as a child, but she couldn't place his face though he was strikingly handsome especially in his suit, his physique was quite striking. His blue eyes were drowning... She didn't have the time to admire him as she walked past and set onto the helicopter. The roaring blades overhead drowned out the quiet chaos of her thoughts, the wind whipping her short-cropped hair into a frenzy.

"Do you remember me?" He asked as soon as they sat in the helicopter, "It's me Elara..."