Five Years as His Backup,My Mate Was Rejected

Back in the empty manor, I start packing with savage precision. Shirts he'd gifted, creams from his half-hearted gestures-all flung into boxes as if they burn. I can't help checking Alice's social media: her latest post shows Alex at the bedside, IV needle in his left hand. Caption: "No wolf will ever love me like this." Tears splatter my phone, blurring his tender profile. For Five years, I'd done the same-rising before dawn to brew his breakfast, leaving the hall light on like a lighthouse, peeling his fruit until my fingertips ached. Now that gentleness belongs to a she-wolf who bares her throat to him. I draw a ragged breath, wipe my face on my sleeve, and toss the phone into my bag. It's over, I tell myself, fastening the last suitcase with a snap. No more being Grace Luis, the she wolf who stretched to reach a mate who never saw her . A week later, Alex bursts through the door as I seal the final box. His return is a shock-Alice's mother's ward has been his home since the transplant. "Family dinner tonight. Change." He drops his coat like a discarded pelt,. I wordlessly enter the walk-in, choosing the plainest pearl-white gown. In the mirror, my face is gaunt, eyes shadowed from sleepless packing-but his gaze skims over me like a stranger's, not a mate's. At the dinner, aunts and granddames circle like vultures sensing weakness. "Five years mated-time for a pup," my second aunt coos, piling food on my plate. Alex sits silent until he finally speaks, words dropping like icicles: "Not yet." Conversation dies in mid-chatter. All smiles freeze, but Alex pours himself wine. After dinner, the matriarch's eyes lock on me. "Grace, my study." I know what awaits. Alex frowns to intervene, but his phone rings. He steps onto the terrace, voice melting into a purr: "Alice, sweetheart, what's wrong?" The matriarch snarls, yanking my wrist so hard my bones grind. The study door slams, her face dark as a moonless night. "Kneel." Marble chills my bones through the gown, like lying in a snowdrift. "Do you know your transgression?" she demands, nails scoring the mahogany desk l. I bow my head, nails biting so deep I taste blood. "SMACK!" Her palm hits the desk, rattling a porcelain jar. "Alex says 'not yet,' and you don't bare your throat? Take this tonic. You will mate with him until you bear an heir-by force, if necessary." Once, I might have cowered and obeyed, but now I meet her gaze, voice steady. "I won't." Her pupils dilate, wolfish rage surfacing. "What did you say to me, whelp?" "Alex doesn't want a pup with me." Images flash: him watching me swallow birth control pills, his likes on Alice's posts about "true love." "He never did. Not once." "You dare defy the pack mother!" She shakes with fury. "As a she-wolf of the Brown bloodline, you refuse to breed? And you didn't stop him from offering his marrow to that interloper's mother!" She roars to the servants: "Bring the pack's whip-soaked in saltwater."