Chapter 3
681 Words
When Lyra tracked me down to where I was living, she came at it like a feral wolf, smashing straight through my floor-to-ceiling window. She screamed herself raw, throwing out aggressive scent in waves, and burned through whatever patience Kael still had left for her.
I was never going to be that stupid.
I scrubbed myself clean with stream water, slipped into the newest cinched-waist red dress of the season, and let the Luna's pressure roll off me at full force. Even the meeting place was chosen carefully. The most expensive restaurant under the pack's name. The one in the clouds.
I had Faye's file memorized. A low-class Omega from a conquered pack. Her father was a gambling drunk drowning in debt. She had timed her move for when Kael was making the rounds in the lower districts, stripped naked, and released heat scent right at his feet to climb up to him.
Even more unpresentable than I imagined.
But the second the door to the private room opened, and I saw her face clearly, my fingers closed around themselves on their own.
She looked like her.
Almost exactly like her.
Faye's upturned amber eyes, even that faint tear-mole at the corner of her eye, were a perfect copy of Lyra when she was young.
Something rang in my head.
After mating with Kael, I worked obsessively on my coat, changed my entire wardrobe, all of it to wash away the last traces of anything that reminded anyone of Lyra. And now, Kael had gone and found a younger version of Lyra to replace me with.
Absurd.
Faye hadn't even bothered to make an effort. Bare-faced, in a loose cotton tank top, with an oversized men's coat thrown casually over the whole thing.
I knew that coat. It was the one Kael loved wearing on his rounds through the territory. And right now, the aggressive scent of a top-tier Alpha was wrapped all around Faye, coming off that collar, announcing her claim on him like a flag.
"Top-tier blood wine?"
Faye pulled her chair out and sat down, gesturing carelessly at the waiter. "I'll have a warm milk instead."
She looked at me, challenging. "Going to all this trouble to drag me out here, Luna. Don't tell me it was just to buy me a drink."
I forced down the storm inside my chest and pushed a top-tier black card and a territory transfer document across the table to her.
"Fifty million. Plus a standalone villa at the southern border. Enough to clear every debt your drunk father racked up. Enough to keep you set for life. Take it. And get out of Kael's territory."
Faye glanced down at what was on the table, and then she started to laugh. Almost to tears.
"Fifty million?" She looked at me like I was a joke. "Elara, have you really been kept up on that Luna's throne like a pet bird for so long that you don't even know how many mines Kael controls these days?"
My eyes darkened.
Seven years into our mating, Kael had always told me he didn't want me touching the bloody business of the pack. Except for major events I attended on his arm, I really had never gotten my hands on anything else.
"Kael just gave me the most profitable establishments on the east side last month." Faye leaned in slightly, her eyes mocking. "And you think this kind of pocket change is going to do it? Putting on this whole 'I'm above you' Luna act for what exactly?
"When you were riding your heat up to that throne, your methods weren't exactly classier than mine, were they?"
My face turned ashen, my inner wolf roaring inside me to tear her throat out. But just as I was about to lose it, Faye slowly, deliberately, ran her hand over her own stomach.
The smile on her face spread, inch by inch. Her eyes were like knives going straight into my heart.
"And besides, you and I aren't the same. Kael's pups can't get to wander around homeless."
- Writer
