Two months later, I still hadn’t seen any of the four of them.
On the day I moved out of Valerius’s penthouse, I stood inside my brand–new place and pulled every single
curtain wide open.
Sunlight flooded every corner of the room.
Valerius leaned against the doorframe, watching me with a faint smile.
“Satisfied?”
“Yeah.”
I turned toward him.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.”
He walked over and set a set of keys into my palm.
“These are the keys to your new home. My penthouse will always be open for you. Come back any time. You
don’t owe me anything.”
I curled my fingers tight around the keys, and my throat tightened.
“You’ve always been like this, even when we were little. On the day everything went wrong with my family,
everyone crowded around Chloe. Only you came looking for me. Then you moved away, and it took me so long to get used to you not being around.”
Valerius stayed quiet for a moment.
“I came back too late.”
“No.”
I lifted my head and smiled at him.
“You weren’t late. The Invisibility Game is over. I won, and my prize is my freedom.”
Later on, I heard news about all of them through mutual friends.
Cassian ended up hospitalized from stomach hemorrhaging caused by heavy drinking.
His support rate kept plummeting, and other wolves challenged him for his Alpha title. He didn’t even seem
to care.
Tristan quit his research job and went to do volunteer work in Africa.
Jax cut Chloe out of every shared social circle they had.
But he also pulled away from everyone else.
People said he locked himself in his office every single day, staring at old photographs.
Chloe had it the worst.
Every opportunity and resource she had gotten through the Ashwood family and Cassian vanished
completely.
The dance troupe removed her from their roster.
The house she had scraped together money to buy was seized to pay off her debts.
In the end, she moved into a shared apartment in a run–down neighborhood.
People spotted her working behind a cosmetics counter in a shopping mall, smiling at every customer who walked past.
Her smile was still as sweet as it had always been.
But nobody fell for it anymore.
Those stories drifted to me while Valerius and I sat out on my balcony having a barbecue.
The grill sizzled, and condensation dripped down the sides of our cold beer cans sitting on the table.
Valerius handed me a freshly grilled chicken wing.
It was cooked perfectly.
I took a bite and teased him.
“Do you remember when we were kids and we talked about opening a barbecue restaurant when we grew up?”
He paused, then smiled softly.
“I remember. You said you’d handle all the eating, and I’d handle all the grilling.”
“What about now? Does that deal still stand, my prince?”
Valerius looked at me.
The glow from the charcoal fire reflected in his eyes.
“It stands,” he said. “For a lifetime, my princess.”
I bit into a piece of venison and couldn’t stop smiling.
My phone sat silent on the table, screen completely dark.
Those four names never popped up on it again.
For twenty years, from age five to twenty–five, I had been the invisible girl.
Now, little by little, I was finally bringing color back into my life.