After He Defended Her, I Rejected My Alpha Mate

I was on my third row of folded onesies when I heard him.

Barnaby.

The sound came faintly through the leaded glass of the nursery window — that deep, throaty bark he only used when something was wrong. Not the polite woof he gave the mailman. Not the goofy yip he made when Levi's bassinet wheels squeaked. This was the bark of a dog telling the world, in the only language he had, that he had been wronged.

I froze with a tiny white sock in my hand.

I hadn't seen Barnaby since dinner. I'd assumed he was curled up in the mudroom, where he liked to nap on the heated tiles. I hadn't even thought to look for him.

The shame of that landed in me like a stone.

I set the sock down. I walked to the window. Below, past the hedges and the long sweep of frost-bitten lawn, the outdoor kennels glowed faintly under the security lights — those concrete-floored cages we used for visiting rogues during pack tribunals. Cold. Ungentle. Made for animals that weren't trusted.

I saw the silhouette of my dog hurling himself against the chain-link.

My hand went flat against the glass.

Before I could move, headlights cut up the long driveway. A black SUV took the gravel turn too fast, kicking up ice. Josephine.

She didn't go to the front door.

She went straight for the kennel.

I watched my sister — sharp-shouldered in her long wool coat, hair pulled back in that severe braid she wore when she was hunting — stride across the lawn like a woman crossing a battlefield. She tried the latch. It didn't give. She kicked it. Once. Twice. The third time it broke clean off and clattered onto the concrete.

Barnaby came out of that cage like a creature coming back from the dead.

Josephine knelt right there on the freezing ground and pulled him into her coat. I could see her mouth moving against the top of his head. I couldn't hear what she was saying. I didn't need to.

I pressed my forehead against the cold glass and closed my eyes.

Liam had done that. Liam had dragged my dog — the dog he had once carried, as a puppy, into our bedroom on Christmas morning with a red ribbon around his neck — out into the cold because Barnaby had growled at her.

Of course he had growled at her.

Barnaby had always known things the rest of us were too busy to see.

---

Josephine came in through the kitchen door with Barnaby still bundled against her chest. Snow melted in her hair. Her cheeks were pink with cold and something else — something that looked a great deal like rage held on a very short leash.

She set Barnaby down by the radiator. He came straight to me, pressed his whole shivering body against my legs, and didn't move.

I knelt and put my face in his fur.

"How long was he out there?" Josephine asked. Her voice was even. The kind of even that costs something.

"I don't know." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "Hours. He banished him before I came down from the study."

"Banished." She tasted the word like it was sour. "He banished a Golden Retriever from a pack house."

"Because Barnaby growled at her."

Josephine pulled out a kitchen chair and sat. She took her laptop out of her bag and opened it on the marble island. She didn't look at me when she said, "Tell me everything. From the toast forward."

So I did.

I told her about Liam's nostrils flaring. The champagne glass set down too carefully. The walk away. The midnight return with a small pale woman on his arm who smelled like gardenias and something I couldn't name. The Alpha tone pressed against the base of my skull. The phrase you're strong enough, she isn't. The word selfish, hovering just behind his teeth, never quite spoken but absolutely meant.

I told her I had said I understand.

Josephine's fingers moved across the keyboard the entire time. She didn't interrupt. She didn't gasp. She didn't ask if I was sure.

When I finished, she finally looked up.

"Ironclad," she said. "By morning. Severance of pack ties, formal rejection language, custody clause for Levi locked airtight. I want it so watertight that not one allied Alpha east of the Mississippi will side with him when this lands."

I nodded once.

She went back to typing.

Barnaby sighed against my knee.

---

Giselle did not waste a single morning.

By the next day her cashmere throw was draped across the back of the sofa in the main living room — my sofa, the one Liam and I had picked out together when I was seven months pregnant. Her vanity case sat on the marble in the powder room. A pair of her shoes appeared in the front foyer like a flag planted in conquered ground.

The Omega staff came to me with eyes lowered. Could they shift the lunch service to eleven instead of noon? Miss Giselle felt faint if she ate too late. Could the laundry be redone with a milder detergent? Miss Giselle's skin was so sensitive.

I said yes to all of it. Calmly. Smoothly. The way a Luna does.

At every meal she appeared on Liam's arm, breath catching prettily as though the walk from the guest wing had nearly undone her. Her voice around him was a soft, watery whisper. She would touch his sleeve and apologize for existing.

It was in the hallway, the second afternoon, that she and I passed each other alone.

She stopped.

She smiled.

And for one bright, unmistakable second, her eyes flashed a sick, feral yellow — the color of something that had been hungry for a very long time.

Then she lowered her lashes, murmured Luna in that breathy little whimper, and drifted past me toward the stairs.

I stood in the hallway with my hand resting on Levi's nursery door and I thought, very quietly: *I see you.*

*I see exactly what you are.*