Goodbye.... My Ex Alpha Mate Want Me Back

Chapter6

Sera POV

The courtyard was still buzzing every wolf in that space was talking in low urgent voices, leaning into each other, eyes moving between the doors Ralph and I had walked through and the spot where Henry and Jennifer were still standing.

Buzzing.

Like something electric had just moved through the air and nobody quite knew where to put the feeling.

I knew what they were all processing.

The quiet Luna from Henry pack. The woman Henry had dismissed publicly at a gala not three weeks ago. The woman Jennifer had looked at like she has taken everything from. That same me had just walked through the inner doors of Redfang fortress on the arm of the Nightmare Alpha while a priest waited and two hundred pack nobles watched.

I gave them a few minutes to process before acting generous like I didn't know what was running in their mind.

Ralph stayed beside me through the first part of the reception.

He didn't hover. That was not his way. He stood close enough that everyone in the room understood the message and far enough that I had space to breathe. He introduced me to three Alphas and two council elders in the first twenty minutes and every single introduction was the same.

"My Luna, my mate.”

Not this is Sera neither was it you may know her from Stonecrest. Not a single word about where I had been or what I had been before tonight.

Just my Luna, which made me feel appreciated and love like I've always wanted.

One of the council elders a wide old wolf with silver in his beard looked at me for a long moment after Ralph said it. Then he bowed his head. Low and slow. The bow that meant real respect and acknowledgement for a higher Wolf.

"Great Alpha's daughter," he said quietly. "The fortress missed you."

I smiled at him and meant it.

After then forty minute later on Ralph was called away beside me to attend to some important dignitaries among the Alpha pack.

A group of visiting dignitaries near the east wall, three Alphas from the northern territories who had travelled far and needed to be received properly. He turned to me before he left. His dark eyes moved over my face once in that careful way he had.

"Twenty minutes," he said quietly.

Twenty minutes. He promise he would be back.

I liked that about him already he's concern and caring even at the slightest time.

"Take your time," I said.

He held my gaze for one second longer than necessary.

Then he walked away toward the north wall and the crowd moved to let him through without being asked.

After he left I had been alone for approximately four minutes when I felt her coming.

Jennifer walked toward me, she moved through a room just the way a bad smell does, quietly, and then suddenly very present.

I turned slightly so she was in my eyeline before she reached me. I did not want Jennifer behind my back at any event, at any time, for the rest of my natural life.

She stopped two feet away.

Her white dress had a juice stain on the hem from an earlier spillage near the drinks table. Her hair was still beautiful. Her face was doing something complicated, a mix of fury and confusion and wounded pride that she was trying very hard to wear as confidence.

She almost managed it.

"So," she said.

Her voice was light. Conversational. She was probably pretending this was just a chat between two friends who happened to end up at the same party, but to me she's no longer a friend

"Sera."

"Jennifer," I said.

Same energy I had used at the gala. Mild. Unbothered. I wasn't ready to have a conversation with her after what she did to me but no I won't give her the pain of betrayal she want from me.

Her eyes moved over my dress, the Redfang gold on my wrists.

"You want to explain," she said slowly, "how exactly this happened?"

"The wedding?" I said. "Priest. Vows. The dress, which of them" I asked

Her jaw tightened at my pretense.

“You know what I mean."

I looked at her calmly.

"I really don't," I said. “And I'm not sure this is the time or place for whatever conversation you think you're having with me."

"You seduced him." Her voice dropped. Sharp and certain. "That's what happened. You couldn't keep Henry so you went and found the most powerful Alpha you could and you…."

"Jennifer." I cut her short from completing her statement.

"....threw yourself at him. Used that little quiet act, that whole helpless routine you do, and somehow convinced a man like Ralph that you were worth…"

"Jennifer."

She stopped talking seeing that something in my voice had changed and she felt it.

I looked at her steadily.

"I'm going to give you one moment to hear yourself," I said quietly. "And then I'm going to walk away. Because I am a guest of honour at my own wedding and I will not spend it explaining myself to you or creating a scene."

Her face went very still.

Then something ugly moved across it.

"A slut in a fancy dress," she said, low and mean, "is still a slut."

The words landed hard on me, still I let them.

I let them sit in the air between us and I looked at Jennifer and I felt absolutely nothing shift in my chest. No sting, no urge to respond to her.

She had given me everything she had.

And it was not enough to move me.

I turned and walked away.

I had taken four steps.

Four clean, steady steps toward the inner hall where I could find my father and a glass of water and twenty minutes of quiet dignity.

Four steps.

And then I felt the pressure on the back of my gown. The particular resistance of fabric being stepped on by a heel that knew exactly what it was doing.

Jennifer had just stepped on my gown.

My body lurched forward as my heel caught the edge of the floor tile and the world tilted and I had exactly half a second of understanding what was happening before I was falling.

My hands came out instinctively.

Open palms with the automatic response of my body trying to catch itself.

One hand caught air.

The other hit the glass Jennifer had been holding.

It happened so fast and slow at the same time that no one so what she just did to me.

The glass went sideways. The juice deep red with a mixture of berry colour went upward first, the liquid splash briefly on Jennifer and on my body.

On the pale expensive fabric of her white dress and the deep crimson of mine.

I hit the floor on my palms and one of my knee was in sharp pain. It was insulting more than it hurts.

The sound it all made, my fall, the glass, the gasp of the people nearest to us was enough for me to feel embarrassed.

The nearest corner of the courtyard went silent.

Heads turned.

I looked up from the floor.

Jennifer was standing above me, soaked in red juice from her collarbone to her waist, her white dress ruined beyond any recovery, her face a perfect portrait of horror. Not guilt. Not even the decency of guilt. Just horror at what the situation looked like and what it was going to cost her.

I looked down at my own dress.

The juice had caught the lower half. A deep stain spreading through crimson fabric that, honestly, almost matched. My gown had caught under Jennifer's heel when I fell, the seam at the left side had torn. A long clean tear from the hip down.

I sat on the floor of Redfang fortress in a torn wedding dress covered in berry juice.

A year ago that would have destroyed me.

I looked up at Jennifer.

She opened her mouth then she closed it like she was the victim of all this.