My Alpha Has Ninety Days to Make Me Hate Him

For six months, my Alpha husband has been teaching me how to hate him.

He moved out of our bedroom.

Stopped touching me.

Let his childhood sweetheart wear his shirt, sit beside him at Pack dinners, and slowly take every place that used to be mine.

So when I started coughing black blood, the doctor gave me ninety days and one impossible cure.

Stop loving my mate, or we both die.

That night, I went home ready to tell Noah.

Instead, Serena walked out of his room half dressed.

“I want a divorce,” I said.

Noah looked at me for a long time.

Then he said, “Finally.”

So I left.

I resigned as Luna.

I got into another Alpha’s car.

And I started learning how to live without my husband.

What I didn’t see was Noah waiting until my car disappeared before collapsing against the wall.

Coughing up the same black blood.

****

LENA'S POV

Noah's collar was crooked.

It was such a small thing. Most people in the Blackthorn banquet hall wouldn't have noticed, not with the chandeliers blazing and the string quartet playing and half the pack already three glasses deep into the good wine. But I had spent six years noticing everything about my husband, and my hands moved before my brain could stop them.

I reached up to fix it.

Noah stepped back.

It wasn't dramatic. He didn't flinch or snap at me. He just shifted half a step out of reach, like my fingers were something he'd rather not touch, and my hand hung in the air between us in front of the entire Alpha council.

"Serena," he said, without looking at me.

She was there in a second, as if she'd been waiting for her cue. Serena Blake, his childhood friend, his "advisor," the woman the pack whispered about when they thought I couldn't hear. She slid her arm through his and smiled at me with perfect, glossy sympathy.

"Don't worry, Lena. I've got him."

I lowered my hand and smiled back, because I was the Luna of this pack and Lunas didn't fall apart over a collar.

For the next hour, I did my job. I thanked the elders for coming. I asked Beta Marcus's mate about her newborn. I laughed at a joke from the Eastwood Alpha that wasn't funny. Across the room, Noah stood with Serena on his arm, and every time I glanced over, he was already looking somewhere else.

By the time I reached the restroom, my chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped wire around my lungs and was slowly twisting.

I locked the door, gripped the marble sink, and coughed.

Something wet hit the white porcelain.

It was black. Thick and black, like tar, sliding toward the drain in a slow, ugly streak.

I stared at it while my reflection stared back, lips stained dark.

---

Dr. Elara didn't say anything for a long time.

She was the oldest healer in the pack. She had delivered half the wolves at that banquet, and I had never once seen her hands shake. They were shaking now as she lowered the scanner from my sternum and pressed two fingers to the mark on my neck, the one Noah had given me the night we were mated.

The skin there had gone gray at the edges.

"How long have you been coughing?" she asked.

"Tonight. Just tonight." I swallowed. "Elara, what is it?"

She pulled her stool closer and sat, which scared me more than anything else had. Healers stood when the news was good.

"It's called Twin Rot," she said. "It's a sickness of the mate bond itself, not of you. I've only read about it. There are only three recorded cases in four hundred years."

"Okay." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "So how do we fix it?"

"Lena, listen to me first." She took my hand. Hers was cold. "The bond is feeding on itself. On the two of you. As long as you and Noah are still in love with each other, it keeps growing, and in about ninety days it will consume both your wolves at the same time."

I laughed. I didn't mean to, but it just came out, short and broken.

"Then it's wrong. Your scanner's wrong. He doesn't love me anymore. You saw him tonight. Everyone saw him tonight."

"The bond doesn't lie," Elara said quietly. "If it's rotting, it's because the love is still there. On both sides."

I pulled my hand back and pressed it to my mouth. Six months of cold dinners. Of him sleeping in his private study. Of Serena at his elbow at every meeting, every event, every holiday. And the bond was telling me he still loved me?

"What happens to us?" I whispered. "When it takes our wolves."

She didn't answer. She didn't need to. A wolf without its wolf didn't live long.

"You said there are recorded cases," I said. "Did anyone survive?"

"One pair." Elara hesitated. "The only treatment that ever worked was when one of them truly stopped loving the other. Not pretending, not separating. Actually stopping. The bond starved, and they both lived."

The room went very quiet.

"That's not a cure," I said. "That's a funeral."

"It's the only one we have."

---

All the way home, I rehearsed it.

I would wake him up if he was asleep. I would make him sit down. I would tell him about the black blood and the gray mark and the ninety days, and maybe, just maybe, he'd look at me the way he used to. Maybe this would be the thing that cracked whatever wall he'd built between us. If the bond said he still loved me, then somewhere under all that ice, he did.

He deserved to know he was dying.

I deserved to know if he'd care.

The house was dark except for the hallway light outside his private room. I left my heels by the door and climbed the stairs barefoot, my heart pounding so loud I barely heard the door at the end of the hall open.

Serena stepped out.

Her legs were bare. Her hair was down. And she was wearing a white dress shirt that hung to her mid-thigh, the cuffs rolled to her wrists.

Noah's shirt. I'd bought it for him in Milan on our fourth anniversary. I knew the stitching on the collar.

She saw me and stopped. For one second, something flickered across her face, and then it was gone, smoothed over into that same polite sympathy from the banquet.

She didn't pull the shirt closed. She didn't say it wasn't what it looked like.

She tilted her head and asked, "Lena? Why are you home so early?"

As if I were the one who'd walked into the wrong house.

I didn't answer her. I looked past her shoulder, into the dim room behind her.

Noah was standing just inside the doorway, one hand on the frame. He was still in his suit pants. His feet were bare, and his jaw was tight, and his eyes were on me.

Not on her. On me.

I waited for the tears to come. They didn't. I waited for the scream, for the shaking, for all the things I would have done a year ago. None of it came. There was just a strange, hollow calm, like standing in the eye of a storm.

Ninety days. Both of our wolves.

Unless one of us stopped.

I looked down at my left hand. The ring was a simple platinum band with a single gray stone, the color of his wolf's coat. He'd slid it onto my finger under a full moon and told me he'd never take it back.

I twisted it once, and it came off easier than I expected.

Serena's lips parted. Noah didn't move at all.

I held the ring out on my open palm.

"I want a divorce."

My voice didn't break. I was almost proud of that.

Something happened to Noah's face. It was quick, so quick I might have missed it if I hadn't spent six years memorizing every line of it. His throat moved. His fingers tightened on the door frame until his knuckles went white. For half a heartbeat he looked like a man who'd just been shot and hadn't fallen down yet.

Then it was gone. He made it go.

He stepped forward, took the ring from my palm without touching my skin, and closed his fist around it.

"Finally," he said.

The word landed in the quiet hallway like a door slamming.

And beneath my collarbone, where his mark sat gray and rotting, something burned so hot I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from making a sound.