Betrayed by Her Alpha, Chased by Three

Chapter 3

Evelina's POV

I closed the folder, tucked it under my arm, and walked out without waiting for either of them to find their voice.

The night air hit my face when I stepped outside, and I did not stop walking until I reached my own front door.

Ren's door was closed when I passed it, and for once I let it stay that way. I went to my study, sat down at my desk, and started sorting the folder into the order the council would need to see it.

I did not know how long Malik would take to follow me home. I only knew that when he did, I would be ready.

Hours passed. I was halfway through re-ordering the folder when I heard his footsteps in the corridor, and I did not look up.

Malik stopped in the doorway. I could feel him standing there before I looked up, a pressure at the edge of the room that meant he was picking his words with care, which meant he had already decided what he wanted and was working out how to make it sound like anything else.

"Evie," he said.

"I am busy," I said.

He came in anyway. He sat down in the chair across from my desk the way he had a hundred times before, easy and unhurried, like this was any other evening and I had not just walked out of Isadora's house an hour ago. He folded his hands on his knee and looked at me.

"I need you to hear me out," he said.

I looked up.

"What I have with Isadora," he said, and paused, his expression changing by a fraction before he continued. "It does not change what we have built here. This pack. Everything we have made together. That is real, Evie. Whatever else is happening, that is real."

I looked at him for a moment. "What do you want, Malik."

He held my gaze. "I want you to stay. I want us to continue as we are. You are the best Luna this pack has ever had and you know it and I know it and nothing that happened tonight changes that." He leaned forward slightly. "We can keep this between us. You continue as Luna, I handle Isadora separately, and this pack does not have to suffer for any of it."

I set my pen down.

"You want me," I said, "to smile over breakfast and run your negotiations and raise your son and pretend I do not know what I know."

"I want you to think about what is best for this pack," he said.

"I always have," I said. "That is the problem."

The careful version of him cracked slightly at the edges. "If you move against me you will tear this pack apart."

"You already did that," I said. "I am just the one who is going to clean it up."

He stared at me. The careful blankness he wore so well had slipped completely now, and what was underneath it was not pretty: something raw in his eyes, the look of a man who had never once considered that I might not do what he needed me to do.

"You will regret this," he said.

"Goodnight, Malik," I said, and picked up my pen.

He sat there for a moment longer. Then he stood, straightened his jacket, and walked out. I listened to his footsteps go down the corridor and did not move until I heard the front door close behind him.

Then I breathed out and kept working.

I heard Ren before I saw him. Small footsteps padding down the corridor, the shuffle of a child who had woken from a bad dream and was navigating by memory in the dark. I was out of my chair before he reached the door and I caught him in the doorway and crouched down to his level.

His eyes were red. He had been crying the way he did sometimes, without making a sound, which was the thing about him that always undid me most.

"Hey," I said. "Hey, I have you."

He did not say anything. He just walked into me and pressed his face against my shoulder. I sat down on the floor right there in the doorway of my study and held him in my lap, small and drowsy against my shoulder, until he grew heavy and still. I held him, and the tightness easing in my chest had nothing to do with Malik or Isadora.

This boy.

This boy who was not mine by blood or by any version of the truth anyone had told, who had come into my life already wrapped in a lie, who had looked up at me on his very first night and grabbed my finger with his whole fist and held on. Four years of holding on. His and mine both.

"Did you have a bad dream," I said into his hair.

He nodded against my shoulder.

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

He shook his head.

"Okay," I said. "You do not have to."

We sat there on the floor for a long time, his breathing slowing as he came back to himself. I held him and thought about what Malik had just asked me to do. Smile and pretend and make myself smaller again. Disappear back into the shape of Luna Evelina, useful and composed and invisible, while he stood in front of everything I built and called it his.

I looked down at the top of Ren's head, his dark hair soft under my chin, and felt my resolve settle, quiet and certain.

I was not leaving.

Not because I had nowhere to go. Not because I was afraid of what came next. But because this child was in this house and this pack was full of people I had spent seven years fighting for, and I was not going to walk away from any of them and let Malik continue standing on top of what I had built.

I was going to take it back. All of it.

I tucked Ren back into bed when his eyes grew heavy, smoothed the blanket down around his shoulders the way he liked, and stood over him for a moment watching him sleep. Then I went back to my desk and worked until the sky outside the window went grey and the birds started. My hand cramped so badly I had to set the pen down and press my palm flat on the desk and breathe through it.

The folder in front of me was complete.

Every redirected supply line. Every misreported cost. Every private Alpha agreement Malik had built without council knowledge. The DNA confirmation. Weeks of careful work laid out in the right order, airtight and unambiguous, and I had done it alone while smiling over his coffee every morning.

I closed the folder, went upstairs, washed my face, and changed my clothes.

By the time Ren woke up asking for breakfast I had already decided everything.

Malik called the pack gathering the next morning and I let him.

I arrived early the way I always did and took my seat and watched the hall fill up around me, warriors I had trained and omegas I had sat with through hard seasons and families who had brought their problems to my door for seven years because they knew which one of us would actually listen. I looked at their faces and they looked back at mine and some of them held my gaze longer than usual. I kept my face still and waited.

Malik arrived at five past nine. He did not look at me. He worked the room the way he always did, the lowered voice and the hand on the shoulder, and I watched him do it and there was nothing in me but clarity.

He took the floor without calling the gathering to order and I said nothing.

"This pack," he said, his voice dropping low and heavy, "has been my life. Every decision I have made, every alliance I have built, every sacrifice I have asked of you, has been for this pack and for the future of every wolf standing in this hall."

He waited, letting the room sit with it.

"It is because I love this pack that I have to tell you what I have been protecting you from."

He spoke for twenty minutes. He said I had been redirecting resources without council approval, that the alliance failures of the past year traced back to conversations I had conducted without his knowledge, conversations that served my own ambitions and undermined his. He said he had been covering for my instability because he believed in the bond, because he believed I would find my way back to myself, because that was what a mate did. His voice broke once, perfectly timed, and half the room leaned toward believing him.

"I cannot protect her from herself any longer," he said. "And I cannot protect this pack from her and stay silent."

The hall went quiet, unconvinced but not turning against him yet, waiting to see where this went.

I raised my hand. "I would like the floor."

"The Alpha speaks first at a gathering." Malik did not look at me. "The floor opens after."

"Luna Evelina." Freda's voice came from the far end of the table, dry and unhurried. "Has the floor."

Malik's jaw tightened. He looked at Freda and she looked back at him and neither of them moved for a long moment. Then he said nothing. The breath I had been holding since I walked into that hall finally left my chest.

I stood up, opened the folder, and placed the first page on the table.

"Let us talk about the finances," I said.