I Abandoned My Mate and Chose a Real Alpha

Iris' POV: The sky over Blue Lake Pack was darker than I had ever seen it. A howl tore from the eastern watchtower, sharp enough to silence the night. Every werewolf in Blue Lake knew what it meant. Blood Moon Pack scouts had crossed our pack border again. My father, Alpha Layton Castillo, stood before me as the verdict had already been decided. "In three days, the Alpha of Grey Rock Pack will come to claim you. If you marry him, our pack may still survive. You are my daughter. You were raised under this pack's protection. Now it's time you do your part." I stood where I was and clenched my hands so tightly that my nails bit into my palms. The Alpha he wanted to marry me off to was pushing forty, and five Lunas had already died under his roof. If I married a werewolf like that, my life would be over! "No, Father, I won't marry him!" I resisted. Anger cut across Layton's face. "Iris, Blue Lake Pack is running out of time! You cannot go on acting like a child! Your mother died protecting this pack, and you have not forgotten her last wish, have you? Is this really how you honor her? By letting everything she bled for collapse? Her soul will never forgive you for this!" But my mother would never have wanted me trapped in a loveless life! I did not say another word. I turned and walked straight into the dark. I had to find Dane Gilmore. He was my Beta, the only werewolf who had stood beside me for three years without asking me to bleed for him. If anyone could get me out of this, it was Dane! More than that, he was the only werewolf I had ever wanted as my mate! His location pinged at a small tavern near the southern edge of our territory. The second I pushed open the door, a wall of noise hit me. Music pounded through the room, laughter burst from every corner, and the heavy stink of liquor rolled over me, thick enough to make me recoil. I scanned the dim room, searching for his familiar shape. Then I found him. Dane was in the back corner, half-hidden in a booth, with a she-wolf in his lap and his mouth on hers. For one long second, I forgot how to breathe. She had yanked his shirt open, baring the sculpted muscles of his chest. She was wearing a short, tight skirt. Her long legs were wrapped tightly around his waist, and his hands roamed and groped all over her body. They were pressed so close together that even the air was filled with a flirtatious, ambiguous mood. Then I saw Dane's face, and the look on it gutted me. He wanted her. It was in the way he held her, the way he kept kissing her, the hunger he had never once shown me. The Dane in front of me looked nothing like the quiet, restrained Beta I had thought I knew. The Dane in my memory was quiet, controlled, and careful. No... this couldn't be happening! My feet moved before my mind caught up, and I took one step backward. I could not make sense of what I was seeing. Pain hit me so hard that my knees nearly buckled, and for a second, I could not breathe around it. Then laughter broke out from the next table. "All right, enough," one of the patrol werewolves said with a grin. "Careful. Alpha Layton's precious daughter might walk in and get her little heart broken." A few of the others laughed. Dane let go of the she-wolf and casually leaned back against the sofa, the corner of his mouth curled into a frivolous smile I had never seen before. "So what if she finds out?" he said nonchalantly. "She's just a woman foolish enough to treasure a spy." Everything inside me stopped. He had called himself a spy. The word struck me so hard that for a moment the whole room seemed to tilt. 'Dane is a spy!' One of the wolves at the table lifted his drink. "I'll give you this. You've got patience. An Alpha's son, wasting three years in this miserable little pack? That's commitment." He took a drink, then asked, "So when is Blood Moon Pack making its move?" "Soon," Dane said. He spoke as if he were discussing the weather. "My father already has everything in place. I gave him Blue Lake Pack's defense maps last week. This time, Blue Lake Pack won't survive it." My head spun, and then everything inside me just... exploded. Then one name flashed through my mind, Brennan Gilmore, the Alpha of Blood Moon Pack, the werewolf who had killed my mother three years ago during the pack war. Dane was Brennan's son, and I had trusted him with everything I had. The werewolf I had spent three years building my life around was the son of my mother's killer! I barely heard the noise in the tavern anymore, because memory was all I could hear. I could still feel my mother's hands on my shoulders as she shoved me toward the cellar steps. I could still hear the terror in her voice even as she tried to make it sound strong. "Iris, my baby, you must live on!" Those were the last words she ever said to me. When I crawled out of the cellar later, the battle was already over. She was lying where I had last seen her, and her body had gone still. When I touched her hand, it was colder than ice. That cold had never left me. It had lived in my bones ever since. Back then, none of it had made sense. That attack had been a secret operation. Almost no one had known the details, and yet Blood Moon Pack had broken through our defenses as though someone had handed them everything in advance. They had known my father's strategy. They had known the watchtower positions. They had known the timing of every hidden patrol shift. Now I knew why... Dane had given it to them. Every death, every drop of blood, every werewolf we lost, and even my mother's murder felt like it had passed through my hands too. I had brought him close. I had trusted him. I had given him access. I had made it easy for him to hollow us out from the inside. My legs nearly gave out, and I caught myself against the wall before I could fall. At that exact moment, my phone lit up. A message from Dane appeared on the screen, clipped and emotionless as always. Dane: On patrol. Don't wait up. I stared at the words until they blurred. For three years, messages like that had comforted me. I had looked at them and thought he was protecting the pack. I had believed that even when he was busy, even when duty kept him away, he still took a second to answer me. But now... I could only see how ridiculously pathetic I was. I had spent three years in love with the son of my mother's murderer! I bought a bottle of liquor on my way out, and by the time I stumbled home, most of it was already gone. The alcohol burned all the way down, but it did nothing to numb me. It only made the memories come harder, brighter, and crueler. Three years earlier, in the chaos of that war, I had been trapped inside a burning building. The roof was coming down. Smoke was filling my lungs. I had truly believed I was going to die. Then a man I did not know came charging through the flames. He threw me over his shoulder and carried me out while sparks and burning debris rained around us. When a heavy beam crashed down, he twisted his body and took the force of it himself to shield me. He was bathed in blood, yet he cradled me beneath him. Though pain wracked his body, he never let out a single cry. In that moment, I was certain: this man was worthy of everything I had to give. I knew almost nothing about him, but I believed any werewolf willing to walk through fire for me had to be worth trusting. I made him my Beta. I used my authority to grant him the highest level of access in the pack. I gave him the privileges reserved for those closest to an Alpha line. Piece by piece, I handed him my trust, my loyalty, and eventually my heart. I did things for him I had never done for anyone in my life. He once said he hated the way the laundry machines left his clothes smelling, so I washed them by hand. He hated the food the pack cooks made, so I taught myself to make the food he liked. I burned my hands badly enough to scar, but I kept going because seeing him enjoy something I made felt worth it. Whenever he was injured, I sat beside his bed through the night and changed his bandages myself. He never took the initiative to touch me, and I thought it was because he respected me. He never told me goodnight, and I told myself it was because he was quiet by nature and did not know how to put love into words. Now there was no lie left for me to hide behind. He had never been shy or careful, because he had simply never loved me. By the time I sank onto the sofa in my room, tears were already running down my face. I did not even bother wiping them away. About an hour later, the front door opened, and Dane walked in. He looked at me and frowned. "You've been drinking?" I said nothing. He sighed, tugged off his jacket, and made sure I saw the fresh bruises along his arm. "We ran into Blood Moon Pack's scouts during patrol. It got ugly. Don't worry. I can take a few bruises for Blue Lake Pack." Before tonight, I would have been on my feet before he finished speaking. I would have crossed the room with tears in my eyes and bandages in my hands. I would have touched his bruises with shaking fingers and winced as if the pain belonged to me. When he turned his face away, I would have thought he simply did not want me to see his vulnerabilities. Now I understood. He had turned away because he was afraid I'd find him out. Because he'd been lying to me all along. I tried to curl my lips into a smile, but nothing came. Finally, I just said indifferently, "Go deal with that first." Dane stilled. "Iris?" Something in my voice must have reached him, because surprise flickered across his face. I turned away and refused to look at him. A second later, he crossed the room and wrapped his arms around me from behind. His chest pressed against my back. His body felt hot and solid, the kind of warmth that once would have made me feel protected. Now it only made my skin crawl. "Don't be mad at me." His voice dropped lower, smoother, laced with the kind of intimacy he knew I had always been too weak to resist. "I was busy tonight, sweetheart. That's all. I should have texted you sooner, and next time I will." He lowered his head until his mouth brushed the edge of my ear. Warm breath slid across my skin, stirring a tingling sensation. Sometimes the body remembered tenderness long after the heart had learned fear. "Please forgive me. Just this once." Dane murmured against my earlobe, and a sharp, unwanted heat streaked through me. We both knew what would happen if I let him keep going. It would end the way it always almost did whenever he chose to use that voice and those hands. A wild, relentless lovemaking driven by nothing but lust. The thought turned my stomach. The idea of letting the werewolf who helped destroy my mother touch me like that made me sick. I pulled away and turned just enough to hide everything on my face. "Sleep in the other room tonight. You need rest, and I don't want to make your injuries worse." He froze for a moment. "What?" I did not explain. I rose from the sofa, walked around him, and went straight into the bedroom. Then I shut the door behind me. The instant my back hit the door, all the strength went out of my body. I slid down against the wood, breathing hard. Love and hatred twisted through me together until I thought they might tear me apart. Then I closed my eyes and reached for the mind-link. "Father," I said through the mind-link, my thoughts shaking even as my decision held. "I accept the marriage alliance."