PAULINE
The call ended with a click that felt too final.
I set the phone down on the dresser harder than I meant to. The sound cracked through the silence of my chambers. My chambers. Not ours. Never ours currently, not since we'd come to this backwater excuse for a pack territory.
Silver Creek.
Even the name tasted like rust in my mouth.
I turned to face the mirror. The woman staring back at me had my eyes, my bone structure, my mouth set in that same hard line I'd perfected over decades. But the rest... the rest was a betrayal written in skin and the cruel thing that was time.
Wrinkles creased the corners of my eyes. Fine lines branched from my lips like cracks in porcelain. My neck, which had once been smooth and elegant, now showed the faint suggestion of loosening skin. I touched my jawline and felt the barely perceptible softness there. Age was creeping in despite every cream, every treatment, every desperate attempt to hold it back.
I hated it.
