Fated To My Stepbrother After My Mate Betrayed Me

The crunch of approaching footsteps halted abruptly.

"Well, well, well," Jax’s voice rang out across the gravel. "Look what we have here."

I tried to push away from Kael's chest, but his arm tightened around my waist like a steel beam, keeping me firmly pinned to his side.

"Don't move," Kael warned under his breath.

"Look at that!" Chloe shrieked from behind Jax, her fingers pointing directly at us. "She ran off acting like a broken-hearted victim, and she was just rushing to meet her side piece!"

A ripple of eager murmurs broke out among the students trailing behind them. Within seconds, half the bleacher crowd had spilled around the brick corner, circling like vultures smelling fresh blood.

Jax took three steps forward, a vile, triumphant grin spreading across his face.

"Look at you, Maya!" Jax bellowed, pitching his voice so every single person on the path could hear. "Put on a real sweet show by the five-yard line, didn't you? Crying your eyes out! Throwing a tantrum about loyalty and broken promises!"

"Jax, shut your mouth," I choked out, heat searing my throat.

"Shut my mouth?" Jax laughed, throwing his hands in the air. "Why should I? Everyone needs to see what kind of trash you actually are! You played the heartbroken mate for the crowd, but you had an Alpha lined up behind the fieldhouse the whole damn time!"

"That's a lie!" I shouted, struggling against Kael's grip. "You cheated on me! You were kissing Chloe five minutes ago!"

"Because I knew!" Jax roared, cutting me off with a vicious sneer. "I knew what you were doing behind my back! I smelled another wolf on you weeks ago, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. And look at you now. Caught red-handed with your arms wrapped around Kael Ward!"

Gasps rippled through the spectators.

"No way," a girl whispered. "She was cheating with Kael?"

"Under the same roof?" someone else scoffed. "That's disgusting."

"She's an Omega," a boy in the second row sneered. "They can't control themselves around Alphas anyway. Guess one wasn't enough for her."

"Is that why you gave him that little silver ring, Maya?" Chloe chimed in, stepping up beside Jax with her arms crossed over her chest. "Were you trying to buy Jax's silence before he exposed you? You're pathetic. A shameless, lying Omega playing both sides."

A cold, hollow shock punched through my ribs. The sheer audacity of his lie paralyzed my tongue. He had shattered our bond, rubbed his infidelity in my face in front of thirty witnesses, and now he was flipping the entire script to make himself the wounded party.

"You know that's not true," I said, my voice shaking with rage. "You know damn well what happened, Jax!"

"Do I?" Jax challenged, puffing out his chest as he strutted closer. "Then why are you pressed up against his chest right now? Tell everyone! Why are you clinging to him like a bitch in heat?"

Laughter broke out across the crowd, sharp and mocking.

I opened my mouth, but the words withered in my throat. I couldn't explain the truth. If I told them that a second fated bond had detonated between Kael and me thirty seconds ago, they would brand me a freak. Two mate bonds in one lifetime was unheard of; two at the same time was considered a curse.

"Cat got your tongue?" Jax taunted, his eyes gleaming with malicious satisfaction. "Nothing to say for yourself? You're an embarrassment to our pack. A stray with zero pedigree who thinks she can jump from bed to bed without consequences."

"Jax, that's enough," someone from the lacrosse team muttered, looking slightly uneasy.

"No, it's not enough!" Jax barked, feeding on the audience. "She disgraced my name! She dragged my reputation through the dirt acting like I was the bad guy, when she was whoring herself out to her own stepbrother!"

A dry, bitter laugh tore from my throat. It wasn't tears this time. It was pure, suffocating absurdity.

"You're a coward," I said, staring straight into his eyes. "You're a pathetic, spineless coward who can't even own up to what he did."

"Watch your mouth!" Jax snapped, taking another aggressive stride toward me. "You don't talk to an Alpha like that, you worthless—"

He never finished the sentence.

Kael moved.

It wasn't a sudden dash; it was an overwhelming shift of pure, suffocating pressure that seemed to suck all the air out of the gravel courtyard. Kael stepped in front of me, breaking his silence for the first time.

The low rumble vibrating in Kael's chest wasn't just a growl—it was an Alpha command, laced with so much raw dominance that the leaves on the nearby hedges shuddered.

The entire crowd flinched. Chloe took two fast steps back, her smug smirk vanishing into pale terror.

Jax froze mid-step, his boot hovering inches above the dirt.

"Take one more step toward her," Kael said, his voice quiet, deadly, and scraping like jagged rock. "Go ahead. I'm waiting."

Jax swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Kael, this is between me and my ex. You don't know the whole story."

"I don't need the story," Kael said, tilting his chin down as his gray eyes locked onto Jax with lethal intensity. "I heard every word that came out of your filthy mouth."

"She's playing you, man!" Jax insisted, his voice rising an octave as he fought to maintain his footing against Kael's crushing aura. "She's an Omega using you to get back at me! Look at the way she runs to you whenever things get tough!"

"She didn't run to me," Kael said flatly.

The crowd held its collective breath.

"What?" Jax blinked, thrown off balance.

Kael took a single step forward, towering over Jax by half a head, his broad shoulders blocking the sun.

"I said she didn't run to me," Kael repeated, each syllable heavy enough to crush bones. "I grabbed her."

A suffocating silence slammed over the courtyard.

"What are you talking about?" Jax stammered, his bravado rapidly crumbling into panic.

"I held her here because she's mine," Kael stated without an ounce of hesitation, the declaration echoing off the brick walls of the fieldhouse. "And if you ever open your mouth to insult my mate again, Jax, I won't just break your jaw. I'll rip your throat out where you stand."