My Alpha Said I’d Crawl Back in Three Days

She didn't go to the gathering place in the lower valley to find them.

She went because she was leaving in three weeks, and she'd wanted to go with Ethan for two years.

Every time she'd suggested it, he'd had somewhere else to be.

Now she went alone.

She saw them the moment she walked in.

They were sitting close, the way people sit when they've stopped being careful.

The table between them was covered in dishes — everything spiced, everything she liked.

He didn't eat spiced food.

He'd always told her it affected his sense of smell for tracking.

He was eating it now.

Neither of them had seen her.

Selene was laughing, and she picked up a piece of meat from her plate and held it to his mouth.

He took it.

She let her fingers brush his jaw when she pulled her hand back.

He didn't flinch.

He looked young.

That was the thing she couldn't stop staring at.

Ethan always looked controlled, self-contained, the Alpha's son who'd been raised to hold everything in.

But sitting across from her, watching her laugh, he looked like someone who hadn't learned yet to hide what he wanted.

"We should mark this," he said.

Low, like he was trying to sound casual and failing.

"The tavern. Together—"

Selene looked up.

She was looking directly at Elena.

Her expression flickered — surprise, then calculation, then something like satisfaction.

"Elena." Her voice carried.

"Are you following us?"

The room went quiet.

Ranked wolves, mid-bite, turned to look.

Ethan froze, his hand halfway to his wine cup.

Elena didn't move.

Didn't run.

Didn't let her wolf rise to the challenge in her voice.

"I'm here to eat," she said.

"And we're not bonded. Not anymore."

She walked to the counter, ordered from the menu — everything spiced, everything she'd denied herself for years.

Then she found a table with her back to them.

She could still hear them.

"When did you become so impatient?"

Selene's voice, teasing, intimate.

"I remember when you'd spend months planning surprises. The winter solstice, you spent three weeks tracking that white stag just to impress me."

"I was fifteen," Ethan said.

But he didn't sound dismissive.

He sounded nostalgic.

"Fifteen, twenty-five. You still know how to make someone feel chosen."

A pause.

The sound of her hand on his arm, familiar, proprietary.

"Why can't you do that for her?"

"She's not you."

Three words.

Simple.

Final.

Elena took a bite of the spiced meat.

It burned.

She kept eating.

She'd spent seven years telling herself she could earn that warmth.

That patience and care would eventually make her enough.

He'd just told her she never would be.

She finished her meal.

Paid in full.

Walked out without looking back.