Confrontation.
1027 Words
When the old alpha fell, and Matteo stood in the circle to challenge for leadership, it was Diana’s voice that rang loudest from the crowd.
“Fight!” she’d yelled. “Show them you’re worthy!”
He had.
And he’d won.
He’d risen from the dirt, bloodied but victorious, and turned to her with that half-smile he always wore when the impossible bowed beneath his will.
“Thank you,” he’d whispered, pressing his forehead to hers under the watching moon.
And she had believed, in that moment, that he would always be hers.
Now, as thunder roared overhead and the cabin’s light came into view between the trees, Diana felt something deep inside her fracture—not the love she’d carried, but the trust she’d built.
She had made him strong.
She had lifted him from nothing.
And in return, he had abandoned her.
The betrayal wasn’t just tonight. It was a knife forged over years, sharpened by every promise, every look, every quiet vow he’d spoken beneath their shared moon.
She slowed at the tree line, watching through the rain. Inside the cabin, she could see them—Matteo standing tall by the window, Roxanne sitting on the bed, the fire between them casting warm shadows across their faces.
He wasn’t worried.
He wasn’t grieving.
He looked…free.
Her hands curled into fists at her sides, nails biting into her palms.
“You owe me,” she whispered into the storm. “You owe me everything.”
The wolf stirred beneath her skin, rising, stretching, tasting the night with the owls as witnesses.
The door creaked open before Diana could knock. Matteo stood in the threshold, framed by firelight, rain dripping from his dark hair. His golden eyes glinted down at her, unreadable.
“You came,” he said, almost lazily, as though her presence had been inevitable.
“I came for answers,” Diana managed, though her throat felt raw. “For justice.”
Behind him, Roxanne leaned against the bedpost, arms folded, watching with a cool, silent gaze. The faint scar across her jaw caught the light, a pale reminder of the duel that had nearly killed her.
Matteo stepped aside, letting Diana into the warmth of the cabin. “Justice?” He let the word hang in the air like smoke. “Or revenge?”
Diana’s dress dragged mud across the floor as she crossed the room, stopping just feet from him. “You left me at the altar.” Her voice broke despite her best effort. “You humiliated me. You humiliated us.”
He chuckled under his breath, a sound low and sharp. “You still think this is about us?”
“I saved you,” she snapped. “When you were nothing. When no one else wanted you.”
He tilted his head, a glint of something colder settling in his gaze. “Exactly.”
Her breath caught. “What?”
“I was nothing,” he said, his smile turning bitter. “And you loved me because I was nothing. Because you could mold me. Train me. Keep me under your wing. But I was never going to stay beneath you, Diana.”
Her lips parted, stunned.
“You thought making me strong meant owning me,” Matteo continued, circling her now like a predator. “But you didn’t create an obedient mate—you created a rival. Every lesson you gave me? Every weapon you handed me? You forgot one thing.”
He stopped behind her, leaning close enough that his voice brushed her ear.
“I was always going to use them against you.”
Diana spun, fury rising. “I gave you everything!”
“And I took it.” His smile widened, cruel and calm. “Because I never belonged to you. I never belonged to them. I was waiting—for someone who saw me not as a pet project, but as an equal.”
His gaze slid to Roxanne, who met his eyes with a quiet, steady pride.
Diana’s heart twisted. “Her.”
“She found me when I crossed into her pack’s border, two winters ago,” Matteo said, his tone almost fond now. “She challenged me. Didn’t care who I was. Didn’t pity me. Didn’t try to ‘save’ me. She fought me until I bled, and then she spared me because she respected the fight in me.”
Roxanne’s voice broke the silence, low and deliberate. “He didn’t need a savior, Diana. He needed a Luna who could bleed beside him, not one who hovered above.”
Diana felt the sting of those words like a slap. “And you think she’s better for you?”
“I know she is.” Matteo’s voice was firm, final. “You made me strong, Diana. But she made me free.”
Outside, thunder rolled again, shaking the cabin’s walls.
Diana’s hands trembled at her sides. “You owe me. I made you alpha.”
Matteo’s smile turned knife-sharp. “Then consider this your reward.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice to a venomous softness. “You made me king. And tonight, I rule without you.”
The final blow wasn’t loud. It wasn’t shouted.
It was the quiet dismissal in his voice. The cold certainty in his eyes.
He turned away from her, back to Roxanne, who welcomed him with an arm around his waist, drawing him close as though Diana had already faded into memory.
Diana stood there, the firelight casting long shadows around her, the heat unable to touch the growing chill inside her chest.
She had come for answers.
Instead, she found the sharp edge of the truth: she hadn’t just been left. She’d been replaced.
And as Matteo pressed a kiss to Roxanne’s temple, as the storm outside broke open in sheets of rain, Diana felt something deep within her snap—not her heart, but the last fragile thread tying her to the girl who had once saved a broken boy in the woods.
Now, she wasn’t his savior.
She wasn’t his queen.
She wasn’t his anything.
He used and dumped her.
- Writer
