After My Mate Sheltered His First Love, I Left

I didn't run.

I walked out of that house—my house—with my spine straight and my head high, and I felt every eye in the pack house follow me as I crossed the threshold. The evening air hit my face, cool and sharp, cutting through the suffocating floral rot of Juliana's perfume that had saturated my bedroom.

Vera hummed with satisfaction inside me, a low, steady vibration that felt like vindication.

*Finally.*

"Samantha!" Collin's voice cracked behind me, high and panicked in a way I'd never heard before. "Samantha, wait—you can't just—we need to talk about this—"

I kept walking. The path from the pack house to the central square was lined with those decorative stone borders I'd insisted on last spring, the ones that looked like natural river rock but were actually carefully placed to define the flowerbeds. I'd chosen every single stone.

Footsteps pounded behind me, clumsy and desperate.

"Samantha, please—"

Then a sharp crack, a choked gasp, and the heavy thud of a body hitting the ground.

I stopped. Turned.

Collin lay sprawled across the stone border, his left leg twisted at an awkward angle beneath him. His face was white with shock and pain, one hand clutching at his ankle. He'd tripped. Actually tripped, in his frantic chase, and gone down hard enough that I could see the scrape blooming red across his palm where he'd tried to catch himself.

A small crowd was gathering. Pack members emerging from their homes, drawn by the commotion. I recognized Marcus Hale's Beta standing on his porch three houses down, arms crossed, watching with narrow-eyed interest.

Perfect.

"Collin!" Juliana's voice rang out, high and tremulous and pitched to carry. "Oh goddess, Collin!"

She burst from the pack house like she'd been shot from a cannon, all flowing hair and fluttering hands, and threw herself down beside Collin's fallen form with a theatrical sob that would have been impressive if it hadn't been so obviously performed.

"Don't move," she gasped, cradling his head against her chest in a pose that displayed her figure to maximum advantage. "You're hurt—oh, you're hurt because of her—"

Her eyes lifted to mine, wide and glistening with tears that had appeared with remarkable speed.

"How could you?" Her voice broke beautifully, trembling with wounded accusation. "He only wanted to help me—I have nowhere else to go, I escaped an abusive bond, and he offered me shelter out of the goodness of his heart—and you—you're so cruel, so jealous—"

She dissolved into sobs against Collin's shoulder, and I watched several pack members exchange uncomfortable glances. A few of the older females were already frowning at me with that particular disapproval reserved for mates who don't know their place.

I felt nothing.

No anger. No embarrassment. Just a cold, crystalline clarity that settled over me like armor.

I slipped my phone from my pocket with my right hand, hidden by the angle of my body, and tapped the voice recording app. The red dot appeared. Recording.

Then I took three steps closer, close enough that my voice would carry to Collin but not to the crowd, and crouched down so we were almost eye-level.

"Tell me something, Collin," I said quietly. Conversationally. "Where exactly did you get the money for Juliana's debts?"

His head jerked up. His eyes met mine, and I watched the color drain from his face.

"I—what—"

"Her debts," I repeated, still in that same calm, almost pleasant tone. "The ones you've been paying off. The ones that made her run from her 'abusive ex-mate.' Where did that money come from?"

Juliana had gone very still against his chest.

"Samantha, this isn't the time—" Collin tried, but his voice was shaking now, and I could smell the sharp tang of his fear cutting through the copper scent of his blood.

"No, I think this is exactly the time." I tilted my head slightly, and let a hint of my Alpha aura leak through—just enough that his wolf would feel the pressure. "Tell me. Where. Did. The money. Come from."

His resistance crumbled like wet paper.

"The pack treasury!" The words exploded out of him, too loud, edged with pain and panic and the desperate need to make me understand. "I used the pack treasury—but it was an emergency, Samantha, she needed help, she was desperate, I was going to pay it back—"

He kept talking, his voice rising, but I'd stopped listening.

Because every word was being recorded.

And every pack member in that square had just heard their Beta admit to embezzlement.

I straightened slowly, slipping my phone back into my pocket, and met Juliana's eyes over Collin's head.

She was staring at me with an expression I'd never seen on her carefully composed face.

Fear.