Mated To The Crippled Alpha

Chapter 487: I’m Back

I watched Vito board the ship, but something about him seemed far away even as he stood right beside me. He’d kissed me, and I still didn’t fully understand what that meant , only that it made my pulse do something strange. At sixteen, he already carried the quiet certainty of someone who knew his place in the world. I was different. Growing up on the island had kept me from all of that, sheltered from things most girls my age already knew.

Maybe that’s why he looked at me the way he did , careful, protective, like I was something he didn’t want to break.

The ship moved and I forgot everything else. I grabbed his sleeve before I even realized I’d done it. "Vito, look , seagulls!" He gave a low hum, barely glancing up. I didn’t care. Moments later I was dragging him toward the railing, pointing at a pod of dolphins cutting through the water below, their bodies catching the last golden light before they disappeared under the surface. The spray hit us both.

I laughed so hard my sides ached. "Vito, you’re soaked!"

He looked down at himself, then at me, and smiled , a real one, not the guarded kind he usually wore. "So are you." There was something different about him when it was just the two of us. The tension he always carried seemed to loosen, like a knot slowly coming undone.

I spun on the deck with my arms out, damp and giddy. "Vito, I actually made it off the island!"

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Whatever he’d been about to say, he kept it to himself.

That night I fell asleep against his shoulder, and for the first time in years, I felt completely safe.

After several stops, we arrived in Jaford. I stepped out of the car and instinctively reached for Vito’s hand , the city was enormous, loud in a way that pressed against my skin. I felt like a rabbit that had wandered too far from cover.

"Vito, where are we?"

"Jaford."

I knew the name. The capital of another country entirely. I looked up at him, confused. "But you said you were taking me to see my family."

"Your old name isn’t safe anymore," he said. "You need a new one."

Something cold moved through me. I thought of the first time I’d met Wisteria, how she’d pressed a new name into my hands like it belonged to me. This name is yours now. I hadn’t understood then either.

"If you show up as Anna," Vito continued, his voice careful, guilt flickering behind his eyes, "my family will know. Your family will know. This is the cost of leaving." He paused. "We can go back to the island. That’s still a choice."

I thought about what was waiting for me if we did. The Blackwelle enemies hadn’t gone anywhere. That I was even breathing was luck.

"Tell me what to do," I said quietly. "I’ll do it."

He handed me a folder. Inside was a life , another girl’s life, meticulously assembled. Alice White. Illegitimate daughter. Missing for years. I didn’t like it, but I memorized every detail the same way I’d once memorized tidal patterns: because survival required it.

Only after the paperwork was settled did Vito take me to Snowville.

I pressed my face to the cold glass the entire way, watching the landscape shift. When the door finally opened, I didn’t wait , I threw on my coat without zipping it and stepped out into the snow.

It hit me all at once. The cold, the silence, the pale gray light. I reached out and caught a snowflake in my palm. Tears came before I even knew they were there. "This is Snowville," I whispered. "This is exactly how I remembered it."

Vito crouched down in front of me without a word, zipped my coat, and wrapped a scarf around my neck with practiced hands. "You haven’t had a real winter in years. Your body doesn’t know cold like this anymore , you’ll get sick."

I smiled at him through blurry eyes. "Thank you. But why aren’t you bundled up? You’re barely wearing anything."

"I’m fine," he said simply. And somehow, I believed him.

He took me to a hotel first, and it hit me the moment I saw the banners. Elena’s birthday. I’d forgotten. I pressed into the crowd and stayed at the edges, watching from a distance.

She was stunning. A silver gown, a tiara that caught the light, standing tall and completely at ease with herself in a way I never had been. A boy stood beside her , tall, attentive, watching her like she was the only person in the room.

"Who’s that?" I asked.

"The Bolton heir."

An elder from the family made the announcement soon after. Engagement. I blinked. "She’s only sixteen."

"It’s complicated," Vito said, his gaze going somewhere else, somewhere distant and dark.

I watched Elena’s face when she looked at the boy beside her. Whatever the arrangement was, she wasn’t faking that softness. She looked happy. Our parents were there too , Josh, Kate, both of them laughing and close , and I stood behind a pillar and let myself fall apart quietly.

"I didn’t even get her a gift," I said when we were outside.

"It’s not too late," Vito said, and his voice was gentle in a way he usually kept hidden.

So I built them in the snow , two small figures side by side, the way Elena and I used to stand as children. The smaller one held a tiny snow cake, a twig for a candle. I smoothed the edges carefully and stepped back. It wasn’t much. But it was all I had.

We were already moving toward the shadows when I heard her footsteps stop behind us.

"Anna."

Her voice cracked on my name. Then she was running, out into the cold, searching the dark.

"Anna! Is that you? Are you back?"

Vito’s arms came around me from behind, one hand pressed gently over my mouth. I didn’t fight him. I just stood there while my sister called out for me in the snow, her voice getting smaller, and let the tears run silently over his knuckles.

I’m here, Elena. I’m right here.