When My Mate Chose His Mistress Over Our Pup

I didn't remember climbing the stairs. My body moved on autopilot, one foot in front of the other, while my mind stayed locked in that freezer. The Alpha command still vibrated in my bones—stand up, stop making a scene—and I hated that I'd obeyed. I hated that even now, bleeding and hollow, some part of me still wanted to please him.

The roof access door hung open, rusted hinges groaning in the wind. I stumbled through it and into the night.

The cold air hit me like a slap. Below, the Winter Solstice Gala continued—music and laughter drifting up through the expensive glass windows, oblivious. I could see them all from here, tiny figures in their silk and champagne, celebrating under chandeliers while I bled out their dirty secret on a rooftop.

My legs gave out. I collapsed onto the gravel, my hands pressing against my empty belly. The cramping had stopped. Everything had stopped. There was just this terrible, echoing silence where something precious used to be.

Sasha.

I reached for her the way I'd reached for her a thousand times before—my wolf, my other half, the part of me that was supposed to be wild and free and strong.

Nothing.

Then—

A sound ripped out of me that I didn't recognize. It started low, guttural, and built into something that wasn't quite human. Sasha surged up from wherever the silver had buried her, and she howled.

It wasn't a howl of defiance. It wasn't a battle cry.

It was grief, pure and primal and so enormous it couldn't be contained in a human throat. The sound tore through the night, silencing the music below. I felt it in my chest, in my bones, in every cell that remembered what it was like to be whole.

The party stopped.

Footsteps thundered up the stairs. The roof access door slammed open, and Tobias appeared, his face twisted with fury.

"What the hell are you doing?" he snarled. "Every Alpha in three territories just heard that—"

I stood. My legs shook, but I stood.

And I walked to the edge.

The ledge was narrow, crumbling concrete with a four-story drop to the courtyard below. I stepped onto it, my heels hanging over empty air. The wind caught my oversized uniform, billowing it around me like a shroud.

Behind me, Tobias went very still.

"Eloise," he said, and for the first time in five years, he said my name like he actually remembered who I was. "Get down from there."

I turned to face him.

His eyes were wide, his Alpha aura flickering uncertainly. He looked almost afraid. Good. He should be.

"I, Eloise Knight," I said, and my voice was steady, clear, mine, "reject you, Alpha Tobias, as my chosen mate."

The bond snapped.

It wasn't gentle. It was a tearing, a ripping, like something vital being yanked out by the roots. Tobias staggered, his hand flying to his chest, his face going white. I felt it too—the hollow place where the bond used to live, the echo of five years of devotion curdling into ash.

But I also felt something else.

Relief.

"Eloise—" He reached for me, but his legs buckled. He dropped to one knee, gasping.

I smiled. It felt strange on my face, like a muscle I'd forgotten how to use.

"You told me to stop making a scene," I said softly.

Then I let go.

The wind rushed up to meet me. For one perfect, weightless moment, there was no pain. No humiliation. No five years of bending myself into shapes that didn't fit.

Just falling.

Then something massive slammed into me from the side.

I didn't hit the ground. Instead, I collided with fur and muscle and heat, wrapped in arms—no, paws—that were far too large to be a normal wolf. We tumbled through the air together, and then the world jolted as we landed.

The impact shook the courtyard. Cracks spiderwebbed across the concrete. Somewhere, glass shattered.

I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. I was cradled against a chest that rumbled like distant thunder, held in a grip that was somehow both crushing and impossibly gentle.

I forced my eyes open.

The wolf above me wasn't a wolf. It was a Lycan—easily twice the size of any werewolf I'd ever seen, with fur so dark it seemed to swallow the moonlight. Its eyes were molten gold, fixed on me with an intensity that made my broken ribs ache.

Then it turned its head toward the roof, where Tobias stood frozen at the ledge.

And it roared.

The sound was apocalyptic. Windows exploded. The party guests screamed. I felt the vibration in my teeth, in my skull, in the hollow place where my pup used to be.

The Lycan's lips pulled back from fangs the size of daggers, and it growled a single word that reverberated through the entire Pack House:

"Mine."

Then everything went black.