You Wanted Me Too Late, Alpha

ANNA'S POV My husband had the divorce papers drawn up before he ever told me he wanted one. He thought the signing would be the easy part. He was about to learn what my signature cost. The folder was already on the table when I came in. He stood at the window with his back to me. "What are these?" "Divorce papers," he said. "I want you to sign them." His voice wasn't cold. Cold would have cost him something. He was just done. I crossed to the table without hurrying and opened the folder. Pages and pages of it. Terms and conditions. A settlement figure sitting at the bottom. Someone had spent real hours turning six years into three paragraphs. "You prepared this in advance." He turned. He looked at me the way he had since the night we mated — like something he'd already stepped over on his way to somewhere else. "I was waiting for the right time." I almost smiled. He'd been waiting six years — for the one moment he could erase me and have nobody ask why. "For her to come back," I said. "She's been home four days. You had these drawn up in three." His hand tightened on the window frame. "Felicia has nothing to do with this." No pause before it. The same flat certainty he gave everything he'd decided not to look at. But I'd seen her carriage come through the gates on Monday. I'd watched from this same window while half the pack went out to welcome her home. Four days, and here were the papers in his hand. Somewhere below us a kettle started to whistle and was lifted off the heat — the ordinary machinery of a house that didn't know anything inside it was ending. I closed the folder and set it down, my fingers steady. "Then you won't mind if I take my time." He cut a look back at me. Luca could hold his voice level when he wanted — his face, his scent, all of it. The eyes were the one thing he'd never learned. They weren't still now. "I don't want this dragged out," he said. "No," I said. "You don't." He came to the table and set his hands flat on the polished wood. His wedding band caught the light. I wondered if he still felt it there at all. "Sign the papers, Anna. I'll make sure you're provided for. A house, money, protection. You won't have to worry about anything." I looked at him then. Not the Alpha the pack saw. Just him. Six years I had lived in this man's house. He had never once said my name like it weighed anything. He said it now like a name read off a form. "You've already decided what I should want," I said. "You always have." His face didn't move. But he didn't answer, and he always answered. The pause was the tell. I'd been agreeable for six years. Quiet enough to forget. That was finished now. "Then tell me what you want," he said. "And we'll end this properly." There it was. The thing I'd been waiting on — longer than six years. The moment he'd finally ask, and I'd finally say it. I let the quiet stretch until he could feel it. "I'll sign." His shoulders came down, half an inch, quick. Most people would have missed it. I'd had six years of practice. "But not like this." The shoulders went back up. "Anna—" "I want terms." "Terms?" "You said you wanted this clean. So do I." He cut his hand through the air at the papers. "That's what this is." "No. This is convenient. For you. For Felicia. For the council. Everyone gets what they came for, and I get a house, a signature, and the quiet agreement that I was never more than a placeholder." "That's not—" "Six years in this house as your Luna in name only." I stepped closer. Not enough to touch. Just enough that the distance had to mean something. "Invisible. Unwanted. You don't erase that with a signature." His hand came down on the table and stayed. "What do you want, Anna?" Slower this time. I didn't make him wait. "You." The word landed in the middle of the room and just sat there. "Don't," he said. "Thirty days." He went still. "Thirty days," I said again. "You be my husband. Not in name. In action. And then I'll sign every page you put in front of me." His hand opened and closed once against the wood. Six years of underestimating me sat on the table between us, and thirty days wouldn't undo it. It might make him start to wonder. "That's not—" "You come home every night." I didn't let him finish. "You sit across from me at dinner. You stand beside me at pack functions. You correct anyone who disrespects me." I held there. "You sleep in my bed." He drew a slow breath in through his nose. "Anna—" "You touch me," I said. "Not like an obligation. Like a man who chose his mate." He went rigid. Outside, the birds kept on. Somewhere deep in the house a servant crossed a floor. Nothing out there stopped for what I'd just laid down between us. "That's what you're asking for?" His voice had dropped. "A performance?" "Yes." "You want me to lie to you." "I want you to try." His eyes flashed gold. "There's nothing to try." I looked at the window instead of at him. "Then you've nothing to lose." The bond pulled toward him, same as always. He couldn't feel his own end of it. Six years of that. I'd learned to stand inside the pull and not lean on it. He looked away first. Walked to the window. Ran a hand through his hair — controlled, not as controlled as he wanted. I watched him in the glass. Watched him work at it. "And after thirty days?" "I sign everything. No delays. No claims. No complications." "And you leave." "Yes." He turned back and looked at my face a long moment. Whatever he wanted to find there, he didn't. "And if I refuse?" I tilted my head. Let a fraction of a smile go — not warmth, not cruelty. Certainty. "Then we don't have a clean divorce." His eyes narrowed. "You take me to court. Challenge the terms. Drag it in front of the council. Let them ask why their Alpha is so eager to replace his Luna the week his old lover comes home. Let them wonder what you're hiding. Let them whisper." I watched him weigh it — his reputation, his authority, the council — against thirty days of playing husband. And under all of it, the thing neither of us said: Felicia was already inside these walls, waiting for the ink to dry. He wanted me gone before she'd finished unpacking. I was about to cost him a month he didn't think he had. "Thirty days," I said. "In exchange for six years." He looked at me again, slower, like the first read had missed something. "You've thought about this." "For a long time." The silence ran longer than any of them. Then— "Fine," he said. "Thirty days. And then you sign. No conditions. No delays." I nodded. "Starting tomorrow." "No." He frowned. "Starting tonight." "Why?" "Because I don't like wasting time." He held there a moment, then let out a short breath with no laugh in it. Not quite surrender. "Fine," he said. "Tonight." He picked up the papers. Folded them once. Set them back down with more care than they'd earned. "As of tonight," he said, "I'm your husband." Not again. Not properly. A role. A part he'd play for thirty days, the same way he'd played the absent one for years. He turned and walked out without another word. His footsteps went off down the hall. A door opened and closed. I didn't move. I looked at the folder. Ran a finger along its edge. Then I picked it up, carried it to the window, and stood where he'd stood. The glass was still warm from his shoulder. I laid my hand flat against it and felt the warmth go, slow, until there was nothing under my palm but cold glass. Somewhere in the east wing, Felicia was unpacking four days of certainty that this house would be hers. She'd have to watch him spend thirty nights being someone else's husband first. Down the hall, his footsteps came back. Slower than they'd left. They stopped outside my door — the door to the bed I'd slept in alone for six years. He didn't come in yet. He had no idea what it costs a man to pretend, every night, that he loves the woman he's throwing away. He'd start finding out the moment he opened that door.