Goodbye to the Alpha I Once Loved

Only after we got into the car did Ronan Blackwood explain, "Chloe is a server at the Grayridge Pack Hall. I'm the Alpha. I can't just ignore her." He usually met with pack members there. I murmured a response and slipped my medicine into my bag. "I've come home every day for the past 6 months. You still don't trust me?" "I trust you. I just wasn't badly hurt, so I didn't want to bother you." I felt him call to me again through the mate link. My wolf lifted her head, but I shut the link down. "Let's go home." He stared at me for a moment before finally starting the car. When we passed the Grayridge Pack Hall, he slowed down again. Chloe Tilden stood on the steps wearing only a thin dress, bracing herself against the doorframe because she couldn't put weight on one foot. He glanced at me, but his hand was already reaching for the door. I unfastened my seat belt. "Go. I'll get home on my own." I had only walked a few steps when Ronan caught up and grabbed my uninjured hand. "I promised I wouldn't touch her again. Her mother was just transferred to the medical center. Chloe is a half-human she-wolf with no one to look after her. Don't read too much into it." "I believe you. She's had a hard time. You should look after her. I don't mind." He didn't let go. He looked down at me as though he were waiting for me to say something else. In the past, if I caught another woman's scent on him, I would spend all night questioning him and begging him not to see her again. Now that I'd stopped fighting, he was the one blocking my way, waiting for me to ask him to stay. Behind us, Chloe cried out that her ankle hurt. I pulled my hand free and walked away. At the corner, I looked back once. Ronan was draping his coat over Chloe's shoulders. She tilted her face up. He lowered his head and kissed her. My phone rang, and I answered. "Ms. Ashford, we've finished verifying your father's assets. Mr. Hale will meet you at Mooncrest Station as arranged." "I'll be there in 10 days." The caller hesitated. "Going home to claim your inheritance doesn't require you to leave your mate." "I'm leaving because I want to. I don't love him anymore." I ended the call and hailed a cab. Back at Grayridge Keep, I took down our bonding photo. At 22, I had looked almost exactly like Chloe, who had just been nestled in Ronan's arms. A year earlier, he had stopped going from one woman to the next and kept only Chloe by his side. Even the way she looked up at him was almost identical to the way I had once looked at him. 'He'd rather fall in love all over again with someone who looks like the woman I used to be than treat me right.' Ronan and I had grown up together in a foster home for packless pups. When I was 17, the director tried to hand me over to an elderly pack leader in exchange for protection. Ronan took my hand and hauled me over the wall while our pursuers shouted curses behind us. "Can you protect her for the rest of her life?" He stepped in front of me. "I can." Later, he became a warrior on the border while I kept the books for trade convoys. Our little house was drafty all winter. We huddled under a single blanket and split the last piece of bread between us. The day he became Alpha, he held my hand and said, "No one will ever dare hurt you again." I managed Grayridge's granaries, accounts, and trade. He fought for territory while I held everything together behind him. That was how we built a home. Then he started coming back smelling like other women. At first, he denied it. Eventually, all that remained was impatience. "Without me, you wouldn't even have a home. You have all of this now. Isn't that enough?" 'So to him, all the hardship we survived together is nothing more than a debt I owe him.' I placed the photo facedown in a cardboard box and opened the small drawer beneath it. Inside was an unused baby hat. When rogue wolves attacked Grayridge Keep 6 months earlier, I was 8 months pregnant. That was when I discovered Ronan had sent every elite guard to Chloe. I locked the inner room, contacted the remaining patrol guards, and evacuated through the back of the building with the doctor. By the time our car cleared the gates, my dress was soaked through. Our baby was born early and survived for 3 days in an incubator. I was there for every visit. Following the doctor's instructions, I reached one hand into the incubator. His tiny hand brushed my fingertip, but he never managed to close his fingers around it. He never wore that hat, not even for a day. After the funeral, I hurt myself, and the doctor had to save my life. Ronan held me, and even his voice was shaking. "We'll start over. I'll never see her again. Evelyn, please don't leave me." Around that same time, Edmund Hale sent me my parents' records. My father had once served as High Elder of the Five-Pack Alliance and helped secure a ceasefire that lasted 20 years. I walked to the hospital window, clutching the documents that proved my parents had never abandoned me, only to see Ronan holding Chloe. "She just lost a child. I can't leave her right now. When she's doing better, I'll make it up to you." 'So every night he stayed by my bedside was one more night he thought he owed Chloe.' From that hospital bed, I contacted the priestess and asked how to dissolve the mate bond. Now I tucked the baby hat into my bag and replied to the priestess's message. Evelyn: The original bonding vow is at the old house. I'll go get it.