My Alpha Planned My Death to Keep His Lover Alive

The file sat on Soren's glass desk between us like a grenade with the pin already pulled.

I stared at the name on the genealogy chart. Monroe Castro, born to Elena Voss-Stephens, twenty-six years ago. My mother's name. My mother's other daughter. The one she took when she left.

I'd known my mother abandoned me. I'd known she walked out after Colin died, that she packed a bag and drove away and never called. What I hadn't known — what nobody had ever told me — was that she hadn't left alone.

She took a baby with her.

My baby sister.

The room was very quiet. Soren stood by the window, giving me space, his hands loose at his sides. He'd delivered the report without preamble, just set it in front of me and stepped back, and I'd been sitting here for — I didn't know how long. Long enough that the city lights below had shifted from gold to pale blue.

"She was three months old when your mother left," Soren said. His voice was careful, the way you'd speak around something fragile. "Elena placed her with the Castro Pack under a new surname. She raised Monroe there until she died eight years ago. Monroe has known about you since she was sixteen."

Since she was sixteen. So Kayden hadn't introduced them. Monroe had come to him already knowing exactly who I was and what my blood could do.

I thought about the compatibility report. 98.7%.

I thought about my mother leaving me behind. Choosing to take one daughter and not the other. I'd spent twenty-three years trying not to wonder why.

Now I knew. She'd needed Monroe for Colin. When Colin died, I became useless. So she left me. And then, years later, Kayden found me and decided I was useful again. A different purpose, same function. Spare part. Living backup. Something to keep on a shelf until the moment someone needed to crack me open.

I set the file down.

"Double your fee," I said.

Soren looked at me.

"Whatever you quoted me," I said. "Double it. I don't just want evidence. I want him gone. His title, his finances, his reputation, his mother's standing in pack society." I paused. "All of it."

Something moved behind his eyes — not surprise exactly, more like recognition. Like he'd been waiting to see what was underneath the composure, and now he had his answer.

"Understood," he said simply.

He didn't try to talk me down. He didn't ask if I was sure. I appreciated that more than I could say.

---

I went back to the Ironveil Pack and became the best version of myself I'd ever performed.

The Manhattan territory idea came to me on the drive home. I pitched it to Kayden over dinner three days later, my eyes bright, my hands clasped under my chin like a child asking for something wonderful.

"A satellite territory in Manhattan," I said. "Think about what it would mean for the pack's status. The Ironveil name in New York. We could host inter-pack events, establish business connections — Kayden, we'd be the first mid-tier pack to have a Manhattan presence."

He looked at me across the table. Behind his eyes, I could see him calculating — the cost against the optics, the drain against the appearance of strength.

"It's not a small investment," he said.

"I know." I reached across and touched his hand. "But we can afford it. And it's what a pack like ours deserves."

He agreed within the week.

The vehicles came next. Then the renovations — I commissioned a full redesign of the pack house common rooms, imported Italian marble for the foyer, a new training facility with equipment I'd researched specifically for its price tag. Mrs. Elliott stood beside me at every contractor meeting, beaming, calling me inspired, patting my arm.

"She has such vision," she told Kayden once, not knowing I was around the corner. "She's really coming into her role."

I pressed my back against the wall and smiled at the ceiling.

---

The New York trips became a rhythm. Luna networking, I told the pack. Charity work. Building connections.

Mrs. Elliott packed me supplements for the road and reminded me to eat enough protein. "Your iron levels," she said, frowning at a printed chart she kept on the kitchen counter. "We've been a little low."

"I'll be careful," I promised.

I thought about what that chart really was. What all her careful monitoring had always been.

I smiled and took the supplements and drove away.

---

It was past midnight on a Tuesday when it happened.

We'd been working for three hours straight — intercepted financial records spread across Soren's dining table, Kayden's personal accounts laid bare in columns of numbers that told a story of a man stretched dangerously thin. Barnaby was asleep under the table, his warm weight pressed against my feet.

I was reading a memo for the fourth time when I realized I couldn't make the words stay still.

I blinked. Read it again. The lines blurred.

I set the paper down. Pressed my fingers to my eyes. The exhaustion hit all at once, the kind that lives in your bones rather than your body — the weight of three years of smiling, of performing, of pretending I was whole when something inside me had been quietly dying since before I even knew it.

I heard movement. Then something warm and heavy settled around my shoulders.

Soren's coat. He'd draped it over me without a word, without touching me, and stepped back to his side of the table.

My wolf surged so hard I had to grip the table edge. That scent — cedar and winter rain — wrapped around me from the fabric, and every starved, desperate part of me wanted to press my face into it and just stop fighting for five minutes.

I stood up instead. "I'm fine," I said.

"I know," he said. He was already looking back at his papers.

I didn't leave. I sat back down. And at some point the words on the page stopped making sense entirely, and the next thing I knew I was waking up on his couch with a blanket tucked around me and pale morning light coming through the windows.

Barnaby was on Soren's lap.

Soren was reading, one hand holding a case file, the other moving in slow, absent circles behind Barnaby's ears. He hadn't noticed I was awake. His face was relaxed in a way I'd never seen it during working hours — the careful control softened, the sharp watchfulness gone quiet.

Barnaby's tail thumped once against Soren's thigh.

I watched them for a moment I couldn't afford to name.

Then I looked away, and pressed my hand flat against my sternum, and told myself the feeling there was just the coat. Just the scent. Just exhaustion making me sentimental.

I almost believed it.