Divorcing My Alpha Husband For His Uncle

Nolan's Response

~Althea

I knocked on his study door immediately after dawn, and he opened it not a second later, before I could second-guess myself.

Had he been expecting me?

I straightened my spine and looked him dead in the eye. "Yes," I announced. "I'll do it."

Alaric looked at me for a brief moment, then gave a short nod, like I'd just confirmed the weather.

He stepped back from the door and moved toward his desk without another word, already reaching for a document.

I blinked. That's it?

No relief or satisfaction? Not even a flicker of anything that suggested this mattered to him more than it did to me?

He just… carried on. As if he already knew the answer, and I was simply the last one to find out.

"You could at least pretend it means something," I said flatly, entering and shutting the door behind me.

He paused, glanced back at me over his shoulder. The corner of his mouth raised a little, and I arched an eyebrow to that.

Does he think this is funny? I clenched my teeth in frustration. I don't even know what started it, but it still made me want to throw something at his head.

"It means something," he said simply, and turned back to the desk.

I huffed, deciding to let it go, for now. I reached for the pen on his desk, reading the document briefly, and after a minute, a woman entered shortly after, a document tucked under her arm, her posture was straight and flawless.

She was striking, dark-haired and sharp-eyed, the kind of woman who knew not all men were worth her attention.

She threw me a measured and assessing look before turning back to Alaric, then dipped her head silently at him.

"This is Sera," Alaric introduced. "My Beta."

"Luna," Sera said evenly, dipping her head just enough to be respectful, but her eyes didn't quite match the gesture.

I met her gaze and held it, my shoulders squared, and my head held high. "Sera." I acknowledged.

The signing process took less than five minutes. Sera witnessed, signed her name beneath ours without comment, and gathered the document with the same precision she'd walked in with.

Before she left, her eyes moved to Alaric once, briefly, and a look crossed her features, then back to the door.

Hmm, what was that?

"The announcement goes out today," Alaric said once she was gone.

I turned to him, filing that out of the way. "Today?"

"Before Nolan can make his move." He explained with certainty and an edge to his words. "Everyone needs to know you're under Darkmoor's protection. My Luna."

My Luna.

I didn't know what to do with those two words or the way he'd said them, like they were simply facts and always had been.

I mean, I'm his Luna, but… Nevermind.

An unfamiliar feeling moved through my chest, unsettling and warm at the same time.

I looked away first, dipped my head, and I was out the door in record time.

My quarters were nothing like what I'd expected. They were spacious and quiet, with a window that opened to the tree line. Sera had walked me through without much conversation, pointing out what was what in clipped, efficient sentences.

When we reached the door, I noticed the latch immediately. A lock, from the inside. This was never in Darkmoon.

I reached out and ran my fingers over it slowly, just feeling the weight of it under my hand. Something I controlled. Something no one else could touch or enter without my permission.

I heard Sera shuffle behind me, and I could tell she was watching my every move. I find her weird, but I refused to dwell on that.

She didn't say anything, and neither did I, but I think she understood.

I found the balcony by accident later that evening, after Sera left. It was a narrow stretch off the east corridor with a view that opened wide over Darkmoor territory.

Beautiful. I stood there, breathing it all in. The air was light and free, almost peaceful, something that didn't feel like a threat for the first time in what felt like years.

Lost in my thoughts and the wonderful view, I didn't hear someone approach behind me. But I felt it in the air, the wind carrying manly cologne, a shift in the air, and the way the space around me changed when he stepped into it.

Alaric came to stand beside me without asking, close enough that the warmth of him reached me through the cool night air. He looked out at the same stretch of dark treeline, hands resting loosely on the railing.

Neither of us spoke for a while.

"The territory runs past the river," he said eventually. "Doubles the border of Darkmoon."

"Interesting," I replied dryly, not having anything else to say other than that, and I needed some space to think.

Another thick silence before he cleared his throat, and my thoughts stilled, waiting…

"Your wolf," he mentioned casually, "I hear you never awakened."

My shoulders raised on alert, and any little movement from me paused. I could feel his eyes on me, then slowly, I turned to look at him with my jaw tight, and every defense I had snapping into place.

"No," I answered, my voice cooler than I intended. "I never did." I waited for it. The slight tilt of the head. The careful, pitying expression, or worse, the poorly disguised contempt I'd spent five years swallowing from Nolan and my entire pack.

But this time… it didn't come. My brows creased. Alaric just looked at me with a straight face, eyes steady, like I'd told him something completely ordinary and not just a pain point in my life.

The silence stretched frustratingly long enough that I broke first. "Aren't you going to say something?" I mocked, the words coming out sharper. "Something sarcastic? Or are you saving the pity for later?"

He turned to face me fully then.

His eyes were so dark under the night sky, and the way they moved over my face made my breath catch in my throat, and I swallowed hard.

He stepped closer, one slow, deliberate step, and I stepped back instinctively, my spine meeting the railing, my fingers wrapped around it tightly.

His teeth clenched, and his posture was tensed and rigid. "A wolf doesn't make you dangerous, Althea," he grunted out, his voice dropping low, almost quiet enough to be private. His eyes stayed fixed on mine. "You walked out of that hell hole bleeding, alone, with nothing. And the first thing you did when you woke up here was plan your next move of survival."

He got even closer, no idea of what personal space means, and the rapid thumping of my heart. If he takes another step, I was sure my slightly heaving chest would be flushed against his.

He leaned down to my height, his voice dropping an octave, "You're already the most dangerous thing in this territory."

My heart stopped. Just completely stopped.

I opened my mouth and closed it, having found absolutely nothing to say.

Then, from somewhere down the corridor, a voice saved me from this moment.

"Alpha."

The urgency in that single word turned Alaric around instantly. A soldier stood at the corridor entrance, another man's weight draped heavily across his shoulders. The man was barely upright, his face swollen and bloodied, his clothes torn at the chest where a crest had been ripped clean off. The sight of him drew a shocked gasp from me.

The soldier's face was red, and his eyes narrowed. "We have a response message from Alpha Nolan."

The air changed completely. Alaric looked at the bloodied man for a long moment, his expression unreadable, before a cold, scary look settled on his face.

The soldier let go of the messenger, and he dropped to the floor in a loud thud and a painful grunt. The solidier pointed down at him.

“Here it is.”