Divorcing My Cheating Mate To Become The Lycan Queen

Cora POV:

The single candle flame flickered across the white tablecloth, untouched. The steaks were cold. The Cabernet was unopened. The second crystal glass sat empty, collecting dust.

Three years. Our third wedding anniversary. And Vance hadn't been home in thirty-one days.

I pressed my fingertips to my temple, reaching for the bond-that thin, silver thread of awareness that was supposed to connect mated wolves. Nothing. A flat, dead silence where his presence should have been. He'd blocked me. Again. Walled me out of his mind like I was spam he couldn't be bothered to delete.

I picked up my phone and dialed.

Ring. Ring. Voicemail.

I dialed again. And again. And again. Seven times. Twelve times. Sixteen.

My parents had wanted this. That was the only reason I was still trying. Before the mission that killed them, my father had gripped my hand and said, "Find someone, little wolf. Settle down. Let us see you safe before we go." So I had settled. I had married Vance Hayes. And for three years I had endured his coldness, his absences, his silence, because I had made them a promise.

But they were gone now. And today, finally, the military was releasing their remains to family. All I needed was for him to stand beside me. Just once.

The seventeenth call connected.

My heart leapt. "Vance, I need you to come with me tomorrow morning. It's my parents' ashes, they're finally being-"

"Jesus Christ, are you serious?" A woman's voice. Sharp. Irritated. Caroline Le. "Can you give him some space? He's at a private event. You call, call, call, like some desperate little barnacle glued to a man's hull. Do you have zero ability to function independently? Get a hobby. Get a job. Get a life that doesn't revolve around ringing his phone like a lost puppy."

Click. Dead air.

I stared at the screen. Checked the number. Checked it again. I hadn't misdialed.

Maybe he was in a meeting. Maybe his phone was in her hand by accident. Maybe.

I booked a single train ticket for the morning. Then I texted my lawyer: "Prepare divorce papers. Maximum favor. All clauses."

The next day, I collected my parents' ashes alone. The colonel saluted me. The cadets roared "Duty, Honor, Country!" I held the wooden urn to my chest and walked out into the afternoon sun, the white roses I'd bought trembling in my grip.

My phone buzzed. Instagram notification. Caroline Le had posted twenty minutes ago.

The location tag: a private beach club in the Hamptons. Forty minutes from where I stood.

The photo was a video, actually. Vance and Caroline, arms intertwined, drinking from each other's glasses in a slow, deliberate toast. His free hand rested on the small of her back. Her head tilted against his shoulder. His friends cheered around them. A beach party. He'd been here the whole time. Not in a meeting. Not blocked by work. At a beach, drinking cross-cups with another woman while I stood in a military chapel holding his dead in-laws.

Something hot and ancient snarled behind my ribs. The wolf my parents had trained to stillness ripped its leash.

I hailed a cab. "Hamptons. The Shoreline Club. Now."

I arrived with sand still gritty under my shoes and the urn clutched to my chest like a shield. The party was in full swing-music, champagne, laughter. Vance stood at the center of it, tie undone, grinning at something Caroline whispered.

"Vance."

He turned. His smile died. "Cora? What the hell are you doing here?"

"I called you seventeen times. You didn't answer. Your girlfriend answered instead and called me a barnacle." My voice was steady. Flat. "Where were you supposed to be this morning?"

Before he could speak, his friend Tristan Knight materialized, champagne flute in hand, sneering. "Oh look, the stray followed him to the beach. Seriously, Taylor, don't you have a community college exam to fail? No job, no skills, no pedigree. You're a leech with a pulse. Maybe if you stopped chasing men and got a résumé, someone would take you seriously."

Caroline drifted over, draped in a sarong, looking effortlessly gorgeous. She tilted her head with a pitying smile. "Cora, sweetie. A woman should be self-sufficient. You can't just cling to a man and expect him to orbit you. It's unbecoming."

I looked at her. At the intertwined-cup wine still staining her lips. At Vance's hand still resting possessively on her hip.

"Self-sufficient," I repeated. "Like you? Is that what you call it-drinking cross-cups with another woman's husband at a beach party while his wife collects her dead parents' bones alone? That's not independence, Caroline. That's being a mistress with a PR team."

Her smile shattered. Color flooded her cheeks. "You little-"

She lunged. Not at me. At the urn.

Her hand swiped the wooden box from my arms in one vicious arc. It hit the sand with a crack. The lid split. A plume of fine grey ash puffed into the salt air, settling over the white roses, over my shoes, over the ground.

My parents. Scattered in the sand like cigarette ash at a beach party.

The world went white.

I didn't think. I didn't plan. My hand moved on fifteen years of combat reflex, and my palm connected with Caroline's cheek with a crack that silenced the music.

She spun. Hit the sand. Stared up at me, mouth agape, a red handprint blooming across her face.

"I said," I whispered, crouching down, my voice a blade wrapped in silk, "pick. Them. Up."

Cora POV:

The beach went silent. Then it exploded.

"CAROLINE!" Vance dropped to his knees beside her, cradling her face, his thumbs brushing the red mark on her cheek. His voice was tender, wrecked, dripping with a concern he had never once directed at me. "Are you okay? Does it hurt? Baby, look at me-"

Tristan surged forward, pointing at me. "You psychotic bitch! You just hit her! In front of everyone! You're a violent, unhinged, trailer-park nobody and you just put your hands on a Yale graduate! You should be on your knees begging forgiveness!"

Another friend, Marcus, flanked him. "She's deranged. Actually deranged. Someone call the cops. Caroline, don't cry, we've got you. You don't deserve this. You're too good for this."

Caroline pressed the back of her hand to her reddened cheek, tears welling perfectly. "I just... I just wanted to teach her a lesson. Knock the box out of her hands so she'd stop being so dramatic. I have class. I don't hit people. I just... moved a thing." She sniffled. "And she attacked me."

Vance stood, his jaw tight, eyes burning at me. "Cora. What the fuck is wrong with you? She barely touched your stupid box and you hit her in the face? Apologize. Now."

I didn't move. I knelt in the sand, my fingers gathering the grey dust, pressing it back into the cracked urn with the tenderness of a woman holding a dying child. The roses were coated in ash. My parents were in the sand, in the salt, in the dirt beneath strangers' feet.

"This," I said, my voice low, carrying across the silent beach, "is my parents."

I held up the broken box. The flag-draped wood. The military insignia still visible on the lid.

"Captain John Taylor. Dr. Anya Taylor. They died on a peacekeeping mission holding a line so a field hospital could evacuate a child. Their remains were repatriated this morning. I collected them alone because you couldn't be bothered to answer your phone." I let that land. "These are the ashes of two decorated war heroes. And your girlfriend just scattered them in the sand like confetti."

Silence. Total. Even the waves seemed to hush.

Tristan recovered first. He let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. "Oh, give me a break. You'd sell your own dead parents' story to guilt-trip Caroline into not pressing charges. 'Oh no, it's hero ashes, don't hit me!' You're pathetic, Taylor. You probably bought that box at a thrift store."

My hand moved before my mind authorized it. A backhand, clean and sharp, splitting his lip. He staggered.

Then I crossed the sand in two strides, grabbed Caroline by the sarong, and drove her down. She shrieked. I pinned her wrists, my knee on her sternum, and struck-controlled, precise, military. Not enough to break. Enough to teach. Three hits to the body. A backhand to the other cheek.

"Pick them up," I said.

"Cora, STOP!" Vance grabbed my shoulder.

I twisted, used his momentum, and put him in the sand with a hip throw that sent him sprawling. Marcus lunged. I sidestepped, drove an elbow into his solar plexus, and swept his legs. Two more friends rushed me. Three seconds. Two joint locks. Both on the ground, groaning.

I stood over them, breathing steady, the wolf in my blood purring with grim satisfaction. Five years of special operations training didn't evaporate because I'd played housewife.

"Vance Hayes," I said, looking down at him. "You just told me it's a small thing. That I'm overreacting. That I should apologize to the woman who scattered my dead parents in the sand." I crouched, meeting his eyes. "You are not worthy of the air they breathed."

I turned back to Caroline. She was crying, mascara streaked, sand in her hair. "Pick. Them. Up. Every grain. Now."

She looked at Vance. He opened his mouth-then closed it. Something in my expression told him that if he spoke, he'd eat sand again.

Caroline got to her knees. Trembling, weeping, she began to scoop ash from the sand with her manicured fingers, pressing it back into the cracked urn. Grain by grain. The beach watched in silence.

When she finished, I took the urn from her shaking hands. For a long moment I just looked at her-kneeling in the sand, mascara streaked, her manicured fingers still grey with ash she would never fully wash away.

"Next time you look in a mirror," I said, quiet enough that only she could hear, "remember whose dust is still under your nails."

I straightened. Didn't wait for a reply. The urn against my chest. The white roses, grey with ash, still in my hand.

Behind me, Vance called my name. I didn't turn.

Cora POV:

I sat on the bluff above the beach for an hour. The urn in my lap. The Atlantic wind drying the salt on my skin.

"Dad. Mom." My voice cracked. "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you better." I pressed my lips to the cool wood. The wolf in me whined, low and wounded, curling around the grief. "I promised you I'd settle down. Be safe. I tried." I swallowed. "No more."

I stood. Brushed sand from my knees. Went home.

The private elevator opened into the penthouse foyer. No key. Eleanor had seen to that. I raised my hand to the bell and froze.

My sharpened hearing caught every word through the door.

"She's a vase, Mama. A decorative nothing." Felicia, bright with glee. "No pedigree, no career. She can't function without a man holding her leash."

"A pity marriage," Eleanor agreed, pouring tea. "But that's over. Caroline is the right match. Yale. Breeding. She'll look magnificent at the IPO gala."

A tinkling laugh. Caroline. Here. In my home. "Oh, you two flatter me. But I do feel for Cora. She tries so hard. It's just sad, watching someone reach above their station."

"Of course, darling," Eleanor cooed. "You're family. She never was."

The three of them laughed. Warm. Easy. A family.

I felt nothing. Just the cold confirmation of a death I'd pronounced hours ago. Let them talk. They were already ghosts.

I pressed the bell.

Felicia opened the door. Her smile died. "What are you"

I walked past her into the living room. And stopped.

There, draped over Caroline's collarbone, catching the light in a flash of deep blue. A sapphire. Teardrop cut. Silver chain. A tiny scratch near the clasp I'd known since I was seven years old.

My mother's necklace.

The one she'd worn every day until the deployment that killed her. The one I'd tracked for years across estate sales and auction houses. The one that surfaced at a charity gala weeks ago. The first and only time in three years I'd told Vance what I wanted. Not begged. Told. "That's mine. Buy it. Anniversary gift." He'd kissed my forehead. "Done."

I never received it.

And now it hung on the throat of the woman who'd knocked my parents into the sand four hours ago.

The wolf in me went silent. The terrible, focused silence before a kill.

"Where," I said, my voice dropping to a register that made Caroline's own dormant wolf-blood freeze, "did you get that necklace?"

Her hand fluttered to her throat. "Oh, this? Vance gave it to me. A little gift between friends. Nothing deep."

"Friends." I stepped closer. "That is my mother's sapphire. The only thing she left in this world. I told Vance to buy it. He put it on your neck instead."

Caroline's smile tightened. "I'm sure it's a coincidence. Teardrop sapphires are common. You're being paranoid and possessive. Maybe if you weren't so obsessed"

I didn't let her finish.

My hand shot out. Fast. Military fast. I caught the chain at the nape of Caroline's neck and yanked. The silver snapped with a clean ping. Caroline shrieked, stumbling back. The sapphire landed in my palm, warm from her skin.

"HEY!" Felicia lunged. "You can't just"

"I can. I just did." I closed my fist around the stone. "It's mine. It was always mine. Your brother had no right to give it away, and you had no right to wear it." I looked at Caroline, whose hand was still pressed to her bare throat. "Especially not you. Not after today."

"Cora, what the hell is going on?" Vance strode in from the hallway, tie still sandy, jaw working. He took in the scene. Me, rigid. Caroline, clutching her throat. Eleanor and Felicia flanking her.

"She stole my necklace!" Caroline cried, tears springing instantly. "I told her you gave it to me, and she just ripped it off"

"It's my mother's," I said. "The one I told you to buy. The one you said was 'done.' And you draped it on her." I didn't raise my voice. "The same woman who scattered my parents in the sand this afternoon."

Vance sighed. Ran a hand through his hair. "Cora. It's a chunk of old glass. I'll buy you a better one. Cartier. Whatever. Just stop making a scene over a trinket."

Old glass. Trinket.

I looked at him. Really looked. And the last thread, the one I'd been holding because my father asked me to settle, be safe, have a family, snapped.

"No," I said. "I don't want your Cartier. I don't want your money. I don't want anything from you." I tucked the sapphire into my pocket. Picked up the urn from where I'd set it by the door.

The room went still.

Eleanor found her voice. "You ungrateful little after everything this family has done for you"

I stopped. Turned back. Smiled.

"Everything this family has done for me." I let the words hang. Let them taste the irony. "You're right, Eleanor. You've done so much." I let my gaze sweep the room. The silk, the marble, the crystal. "I'll remember every bit of it."

I walked out. The urn against my chest. The sapphire in my pocket.