I Abandoned My Mate and Chose a Real Alpha

Chapter 2 He Chose to Lie

Iris' POV:

The door was thin enough that I could hear Dane hesitating on the other side of it.

I heard one step, then another, then a third.

After that came the faint scrape of movement near the door, like he'd lifted a hand to knock and thought better of it.

I didn't move. I sat on the floor with my knees pulled to my chest and my back pressed to the wood, letting its cold seep through my clothes and into my skin.

It was almost more than I could bear.

"Iris."

His voice came through the door low and gentle, so different from the werewolf in that tavern that he almost sounded like someone else.

"I know you're angry. I should've explained sooner, and that's on me. It won't happen again. I promise. You know I love you."

Love me? At that, I let out a quiet laugh that sounded more bitter than amused.

If Dane wanted to, he could soothe any woman in the pack.

He had been doing exactly that to me for three years. Every time I was upset, he would lower his voice, say exactly what I needed to hear, and smooth everything over before I could hold on to my anger for long.

If this had happened before tonight, I would have opened the door with tears in my eyes and let him pull me into his arms.

But now I knew the truth. Now I knew I had shared a bed for years with the man who had helped get my mother killed. I had curled against him in the dark and let him hold me, touch me, and leave his scent on my skin as if he belonged there. I looked down at my arms and felt nausea rise so fast that it nearly choked me. His scent was still on me. I wanted to claw my own skin off.

I said nothing.

For a few seconds, the silence stretched between us. Then he spoke again, "When this is over, I'll take you to Sena Lake. You wanted to see the stars there, remember? Just you and me."

My hand curled into a fist.

Sena Lake had been nothing more than a passing wish, something I had murmured while sitting up with him through one of his fevers. I had stayed awake all night changing the cloth on his forehead.

He remembered that.

He remembered a passing little wish I'd murmured in exhaustion, and yet he had never told me who he really was.

He had remembered my wish while helping plan the destruction of the pack that had raised me.

"You don't need to worry about the pack. As long as I'm here, nothing's going to happen."

At that, a sharp, humorless smile pulled at my mouth. Nothing was going to happen. My mother was dead. The words nearly tore out of me before I could stop myself.

I was already drawing breath to answer when his phone rang.

The sound cut clean through the stillness of the room.

He picked up almost immediately. He lowered his voice, but it did not matter. I heard every word anyway.

Alpha blood ran in my veins, and my hearing had always been sharper than most werewolves knew.

"Dane," a woman said on the other end, her voice soft and trembling with practiced helplessness. "The storm's getting bad. I'm scared. Can you come stay with me?"

I closed my eyes. I was behind a locked door, angry and silent. For one strange, suspended second, I found myself wondering which one of us he would choose.

Then I heard him sigh. When he answered, his voice changed. It softened into something warm and protective, something he had never once given me.

"Don't be scared. I'm on my way."

The line went dead. He stood outside my door for another moment, and then, with insulting ease, he chose to lie.

"Iris, the pack's under attack. I need to go help with the defense first."

Then I heard him walk away. He did not hesitate, linger, or come back.

I closed my eyes, and tears slipped down my face soundlessly.

So that was all I meant to him. I meant less to him than a single phone call.

Worse, he had dressed his choice up as duty, as if I were supposed to admire him for the lie instead of choking on it.

I stayed there in the dark for a long time. By the time I finally stood up, both of my legs had gone numb. When I opened the door and stepped into the living room, the apartment no longer felt like a home. It felt like evidence.

Everywhere I looked, I saw evidence of the life we had built together, or at least the life I had believed we were building.

His suits still hung in the wardrobe beside my dresses. The ties I had chosen for him were lined up neatly where I had left them. Our photograph still hung on the wall. In the picture, I was smiling up at him, caught mid-laugh. Dane was looking somewhere past the camera with that same distant expression he always wore.

I remembered the day we bought those clothes. It had been our second anniversary, and I had insisted we buy something formal, something we could look back on years later and remember. He had thought the whole errand was a nuisance. He had barely concealed his impatience. In the end, he let me choose everything for both of us because he simply could not be bothered to care. When I asked him to try things on, he refused, saying that if I liked them, so did he.

At the time, I had mistaken that for tenderness. I had thought it meant he trusted me and he wanted to indulge me. What it had really meant was that none of it mattered enough to him for him to have an opinion. Our history meant nothing to him, and he'd never seen me as his mate.

I looked back at the framed photograph. I was radiant in it. He looked indifferent. I had once told myself that he simply loved quietly, that not everyone wore devotion openly. Now, I could see the truth all over his face. He had never looked at me with pride, or desire, or reverence. He had looked at me as if I were a fool for believing any of it. Every single thing between us was just him going through the motions.

I had taken his silence, his distance, his carelessness, and dressed them up as restraint, depth, and love.

I had told myself every corner of this apartment held proof that we belonged to each other. I had been wrong.

I remembered the first time we slept together. That night, he took me in the bedroom first, then against the edge of the bathtub, then on the sofa before dawn.

Even though his eyes had always been so cold, his body was burning hot.

And the cruel truth was that to him, I was nothing but a pastime — just an outlet for his desires.

Everything in the apartment seemed to change shape after that. What had once looked intimate now looked tainted. What had once felt tender now felt humiliating. The entire place hurt to look at.

I pulled a large garbage bag from the cabinet and started stripping the apartment of him.

At last, I crouched in front of the bottom drawer and pulled out a small iron box I had not opened in months.

Inside were the keepsakes from the last three years, the heart-shaped stone he had given me after his first patrol, a photo from the night I burned my hand cooking for him, and every other foolish little proof of how much I had cared. I had kept it because I wanted to remember the night I learned how to make his favorite meal. There was also a picture I had secretly taken while he slept off a fever, back when I still believed caring for him made me his.

I went through them one by one. Each one cut deeper than the last.

By the time I closed the lid again, my chest felt hollowed out, as if the last soft thing inside me had been scraped clean. I did not throw the box away.

I did not keep it because I still loved him enough to need souvenirs. I kept it because I wanted proof. I wanted something I could look at one day and remember exactly how foolish I had been.

I wanted something that would remind me how completely I had loved the werewolf who nearly destroyed my family.

My suitcase was shoved into the back of the closet.

I dragged it out and started packing with a numb, methodical calm that frightened me more than tears would have. Then my fingers brushed against a sweater, and I stopped.

I had knitted it for Dane the winter before. It had taken me a month to finish. I had unraveled it three separate times before I finally got it right.

He had worn it once. After that, he said it was too warm and never touched it again.

I took the sweater out of the suitcase, folded it carefully, and laid it on top of the garbage bag.

By the time I reached the front door with my suitcase, it was two o'clock in the morning.

I had one hand on the handle when I heard the lock turn.

Dane walked in.

His gaze landed first on the garbage bag by the door, then on the suitcase beside me. He stopped short.

"Iris... What is this?"

"I'm going home for a few days." My voice came out calmer than I expected.

He looked at me again, then at the things stuffed into the garbage bag. His brow furrowed, but he did not look alarmed or frightened. He barely even looked surprised.

"Is this because of what happened earlier? Iris, are you really going this far over that?"

"Over that? No, not over that."

I could have forgiven anger, distance, even betrayal, if betrayal had been the worst of it. But I would never forgive what had been done to my mother.

I lifted my gaze to his and said evenly, "I'm not angry, Dane. Don't overthink it."

"Fine," he said after a moment. "Things have been unstable around the pack lately, so be careful on the road." He simply stepped aside and gave me room to leave.

I nodded once. "Okay."

When I opened the door, the night wind rushed in hard enough to make me shiver.

I walked away without looking back. I made it three steps down the hall, then five, then ten. I did not turn around once.

The tears did not fall until the elevator doors closed around me. I lowered my head and gripped the handle of my suitcase.

Dane, this time, I would break the bond for good.