Alpha Daddy

Humiliated

Sasha

The whispers started the moment I walked through the college doors.

I felt them before I heard them — eyes tracking me, conversations cutting off mid-sentence as I passed, then picking back up the moment I cleared earshot.

Everyone knew.

That David Kessler had rejected me. That the bond was severed. That he had looked at what the Moon Goddess placed before him and chosen nothing.

I spotted Tatiana, Victoria, and Kelsey near the lockers. Old friends — or what had passed for them. I made myself walk over.

"Hey." I stopped in front of them and forced a smile that cost me more than I let on. "How's it going?"

The moment their eyes lifted to mine, whatever they'd been saying died on their lips.

"Hi, Sasha." Victoria was the one who spoke. "Good to see you."

Tatiana and Kelsey said nothing. They shifted where they stood, the silence between them doing the talking.

"Actually — I have somewhere to be," Kelsey said first. A smile that didn't reach anything. Then she was gone.

"I just remembered something," Tatiana said, already turning. "I'll catch up later."

And then there was only Victoria, who stayed because she couldn't figure out how to leave without it being obvious. So I made it easy for her.

"I should get to class." I smiled. Walked past her.

Behind me, I heard her exhale.

That sound stayed with me longer than it should have.

Pity or disgust.

I still couldn't decide which was harder to swallow.

I kept my head down and focused on the only thing that mattered — getting to class. Surviving the day in one piece. Not breaking here, not in front of any of them.

Then they stepped into my path.

Clarissa.

Tall, blonde, the kind of beautiful that knew exactly what it was. Daughter of a pack elder. The unchallenged centre of every room she walked into. She had always disliked me — quietly, consistently, for reasons I'd never been able to name.

Now she had a reason.

Her friends arranged themselves beside her — three of them, designer clothes and slow, deliberate smiles, forming a wall across the hallway that left me nowhere to go.

"Well, well." Clarissa's voice was honeyed and lazy, like she had all the time in the world. "Look who showed up."

I moved to step around her.

She shifted into my path without breaking eye contact.

"I'm honestly surprised you came back," she said, tilting her head with something shaped like sympathy. "After everything. If it were me—" she paused just long enough for it to land— "I don't think I could."

My throat closed. "Excuse me—"

"He probably just finally saw what the rest of us already knew," one of the others offered, studying her nails like this was a passing thought rather than a blade.

The words were out of my mouth before I could catch them. "And what's that?"

Clarissa's smile shifted. Sharpened. She took her time with it.

"That you're not special, Sasha. You never were." Her eyes moved over me slowly. "Maybe he just got tired of pretending — that you were pretty enough, interesting enough." A small pause. "Enough of anything, really."

Every word landed exactly where she aimed it.

"The Moon Goddess makes mistakes sometimes," the third girl added, sighing like she almost felt sorry about it. "Bonds that never should have formed. Mates that simply don't fit."

"Or maybe—" Clarissa leaned in, dropping her voice to something low and deliberate that somehow carried to every corner of the hallway— "you confused your stepfather's pity for love. Thought living under the Alpha's roof meant you were worth something. But you're not his daughter, Sasha. You'll never be his daughter. You're just the girl he inherited when your mother died. A responsibility he didn't choose. And deep down, you've always known that — haven't you?"

The air left my lungs.

My chest didn't ache. It caved.

"Nothing?" Clarissa laughed — bright, clean, vicious. "That's unusual. You're usually working so hard to prove you belong somewhere."

"Because she doesn't," the girl beside her said simply. "She's just the package deal. The inconvenient part of the arrangement Jaxon agreed to when he married her mother."

"I bet he counts the days," Clarissa continued, her voice almost bored with it now. "One less thing to manage. One less reminder of a marriage that was never really what it looked like."

My hands curled into fists at my sides.

Don't. Don't do it. Don't give them the—

"Oh, are we getting to you?" Clarissa's voice softened into something worse than cruelty — amusement. "Did you actually believe your mate would look at everything you are and choose to stay? All that damage. All that history." She tilted her head. "Who wants to carry that?"

"You're too broken," someone else said. Not even cruel. Just factual. Like they were reading something off a page. "Too much. For anyone."

The hallway had gone quiet in the way that meant everyone was listening.

I was the only thing worth watching.

I couldn't breathe through it. Couldn't find a single thought that wasn't unravelling. Couldn't stand there one more second without coming apart in front of all of them.

So I turned and walked.

Fast. Faster.

Before the first tear fell. Before they got to see what they'd done.

Their laughter reached me anyway — chasing me down the hall long after I'd stopped being able to hear the words.