Betrayed by Her Alpha, Chased by Three

Chapter 2

Evelina's POV

"Nothing," I said. "I am fine."

She crossed the room, took my arm, and steered me toward the door. "You are standing in a child's room in the dark and you look like a mess," she said. "Come with me."

I let her lead me out.

Dara did not let go of my arm until we were in the sitting room, the fire long dead in the grate and the room cold enough that I could see my own breath. She sat me down and crouched in front of me instead of beside me, the way she did with patients who needed to look someone in the eye.

"What happened, Evie," she said. This time it came out as a demand, low and even, nothing like the question from the doorway.

I looked at her and thought about the storage building and the request already sitting on Dr. Osei's desk. Until it came back, I had nothing but a voice in the dark and a child's face I could not stop reading for resemblance.

"I cannot tell you yet," I said. "Not until I am certain. I asked for a test to confirm it. It has not come back."

She studied me with those sharp brown eyes the way she studied a wound before she decided how to treat it. Then she nodded, once, and did not push.

"When it comes back," she said, "I am here. Whatever it is."

"I know," I said, and I did.

She stayed until my eyes grew heavy, then went to sleep in the spare room. I sat alone with Ren breathing down the hall until exhaustion finally won and I dozed off where I sat.

It came back four days later.

I was sitting in my car outside the pharmacy on a Tuesday afternoon when my phone lit up with a message from Dr. Osei.

I opened it.

I read it once.

I sat with my hands in my lap and my eyes on the screen. The pharmacy's fluorescent sign buzzed through the windshield. A car pulled in beside me, doors opened, someone laughed at a joke I could not hear.

None of it reached me.

I read it again.

Ren was not the dead brother's son.

He was Malik's. Malik and Isadora's, conceived while the brother was still alive, and I had raised him anyway, believing it was my duty, loving him without a moment's hesitation. Now I understood how completely, and how long, I had been lied to.

A sound tore out of me, sharp and ugly and too loud for the inside of a car. My eyes burned. I pressed both hands over my mouth but it did not help. I sat there in that parking lot and shook until there was nothing left.

Then I wiped my face, checked my eyes in the mirror, and drove home.

I did not go to Ren's door that night. I already knew what I would see there, and I did not trust myself near it a second time.

I put the confirmation in the folder, closed it, and went to bed.

The next day was the water rights meeting with Alpha Dorian's pack.

I was already in my seat when Alpha Dorian's Beta arrived, my folders open, my notes in order, and the jug of water filled and breathing on the table. The meeting was scheduled for nine. It was eight fifty-three.

Alpha Malik's chair at the head of the table was empty.

Alpha Dorian took the seat across from me, his Beta beside him. He gave the empty chair one glance, then looked at me and said nothing about it. He did not have to.

"Shall we begin," I said, and we did.

Alpha Dorian's Beta had been talking for eleven minutes about water rights when I cut in respectfully.

"The eastern stream has moved course twice in the last dry season," I said. "That puts the original boundary markers about thirty meters off from where the actual water line sits now. We are not disputing your access. We are proposing that we redraw the markers to reflect what is actually there, which protects both packs from future disagreements."

Alpha Dorian looked at me across the table with the eyes of someone who had been doing this long enough to know the difference between a tactic and the truth.

"That is a reasonable position," he said.

"It is the only position that makes sense," I said. "The alternative is leaving the markers where they are and having this same conversation in two years when someone's patrol crosses a line that does not match the land anymore."

He nodded. "And the grazing access on the northern slope?"

"Shared, rotating by season, same as the current arrangement. We are not looking to take anything from you. We are looking to close a gap before it becomes a problem."

The door opened.

Alpha Malik walked in forty minutes late with two of his men behind him and the easy stride of someone who had never once worried about what a room thought of him when he entered it. He pulled out the chair at the head of the table and sat down and looked at Alpha Dorian like the meeting was only now beginning.

"Alpha Dorian," he said. "Thank you for making the trip."

Alpha Dorian glanced at me for just a moment.

I kept my face still.

"The water boundary," Alpha Malik said, leaning back. "Our position is straightforward. Redraw the markers to the actual water line and both packs have clarity going forward."

The Beta across the table wrote a note of his own. I picked up my pen, made a note on the paper in front of me, and said nothing.

The rest of the meeting ran another forty minutes. Alpha Malik spoke with confidence and a good grasp of the details, because I had sent him a full briefing the night before and he had clearly read it.

When Alpha Dorian's people rose to leave, he shook Alpha Malik's hand and thanked him for his time. Then he turned to me.

"Luna Evelina," he said. "The water rights proposal was well-structured. Clear and fair. I appreciate that you came prepared."

"Thank you, Alpha Dorian," I said. "Safe travels."

He left, his Beta followed, and the door closed.

I began gathering my folders and did not look up. Alpha Malik stood at the head of the table for a moment, silence pressing into every corner of the room. Then his men filed out and I was left alone.

I stacked the last folder, capped my pen, picked up my bag, and left him standing there.

Dara caught me in the corridor before I reached the exit, falling into step beside me the way she always did, as though she had known exactly where I was headed and had gotten there ahead of me.

We walked until we turned the corner away from the meeting room and she stopped.

"He walked in and took credit for everything you just spent an hour building," she said.

It was not a question. I looked at her.

"I was in the back," she said. "I saw the whole thing." Her voice was low and even but her jaw was tight. "Alpha Dorian knew. You could see it on his face. He walks in late every time and you cover for him every time and he stands there and takes the room like he built it himself." She shook her head. "You are the reason this pack functions. He does not deserve to wear that title, Evie."

"I know," I said.

She studied me, and whatever she saw in my face made her stop walking altogether.

"Then why are you still standing beside him at every dinner?" she asked. "Why are you still filling his coffee?"

I held her gaze and made a decision I had been putting off since yesterday.

"Because taking credit is the least of what he has done," I said.

Her brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"Malik has been sleeping with Isadora," I said. "Since before his brother died."

Dara's breath caught. "Isadora. His brother's..." She stopped herself, the rest of the sentence arriving on her face before she could say it.

"Yes," I said.

"How long have you known?"

"Since the night you found me in Ren's room," I said. "I did not have proof yet. I do now."

Her voice went flinty. "What kind of proof?"

"Financial records. Private agreements he built without the council." I paused. "And confirmation that Ren is not the brother's son."

The color left her face.

"He is Malik's," I said. "His and Isadora's. The affair was already running while the brother was alive."

Dara stood there in the corridor and said nothing for a long moment, and I watched her work through it the way she worked through everything, methodically and without falling apart, until her shoulders squared and her eyes came back to mine.

"What do you need from me," she said. Not what are you going to do. Not are you sure. Just what do you need.

The knot in my chest loosened for the first time in weeks.

"Keep this between us for now," I said. "I am not ready to move yet. But I will be."

She nodded once. "I am with you," she said. "Whatever it looks like. I am with you."

I believed her. I had trained her myself, and I knew exactly what her loyalty was worth. I had been counting on it, and hearing it said out loud in that corridor on an ordinary afternoon was the closest I had come to relief since all of this began.

I squeezed her arm and we parted ways at the end of the corridor and I walked home to set the table for my seventh anniversary.

I cooked the things he liked. I set the table the way I had set it every year, the good plates, the candles we never used except for this, the wine he preferred opened and breathing on the counter. In the center of the table beside the folded napkins I placed the folder, closed, holding the confirmation, every financial record, and every piece of evidence I had spent weeks collecting, because tonight was the night. I had decided that weeks ago and I was not changing it now.

I arranged everything with the same care I brought to every other thing I did.

Then I sat down and waited.

The food cooled. The candles burned lower.

I refilled my glass once and looked at the empty chair across from me and the folder sitting between us. I was not surprised. I had not been surprised in a long time. But my hand tightened around the stem of the glass and I made myself loosen it, one finger at a time, and I looked at the clock.

Half past ten.

I already knew where he was.

I had known for hours. My wolf had known before I let myself admit it. I had been sitting here waiting for him to prove me wrong, and there was no uncertainty left.

I stood up, picked up the folder, put on my jacket, and left.

Isadora's house was a ten-minute walk across the pack grounds, a residence Malik had arranged for her after the brother died, close enough to the pack house to be convenient and far enough to look appropriate. I had always known that and had never examined it too closely. I was examining it now.

The lights were on downstairs.

I did not knock.

The door was unlocked, and I pushed it open and followed the sound of voices to the back of the house.

The bedroom door was half open, and I did not stop this time.

Malik's head came up first. Isadora's laugh cut off mid-breath, one hand grabbing for the sheet, her eyes wide for half a second before going flat again.

Malik did not scramble. He never scrambled. He sat up slow and looked at me the way he looked at difficult council members, like I was a problem to be managed rather than a wife who had just found him in another woman's bed.

"Evie." His voice was even. "This is not what you think."

"It is exactly what I think," I said. "I have known for the better part of a month. I have known since the night I stood outside that storage building and heard the two of you deciding how long you could keep lying to me."

I set the folder on the dresser and opened it.

"Financial records. Every private agreement you built without the council. And confirmation that Ren is not your brother's son." I looked at Malik. "He is yours. Yours and hers. And I raised him for four years believing I owed your brother's memory that duty, when the truth is you owed me everything and gave it to her instead."

Isadora's composure finally broke, the sheet clutched to her chest, her mouth opening and closing with nothing coming out. Good.

Malik's composure cracked. A muscle jumped in his jaw before he smoothed it back over. "Evie, I can explain."

"You cannot," I said. "There is nothing left to explain. Everything this pack is, I built while you stood in front of it and took the credit. And I am done."