Before His Fated Mate

Eirlys heard the noise before she saw anything. It was sooo loud and alive and buzzing in a way that made her slow down before she even reached the doors. This was not the usual pack noise. This was different. The kind of different that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up before your brain figures out why. She almost turned around and walked back the way she came. She should have. The hall was full. People packed in close, shoulders touching, everyone facing the same direction. She slipped in from the side and found a spot near the back where she could see without being too visible. That was just habit at this point. You did not survive long as a human in a werewolf pack by walking into rooms like you owned them. Then she saw Zevran. He was standing at the front, the way he always did when he was addressing the whole pack. Tall, composed, that quiet authority that never looked like it was trying too hard. She had spent enough time around him to know his different energies. When he was relaxed, when he was guarded, when something was pressing on him. She thought she knew all of them. She did not know this one. There was a woman standing beside him. Eirlys had never seen her before in her life. Not pack, not anyone she recognised from anywhere. She was standing close to Zevran, not touching him, but close enough that the distance between them said something all on its own. The pack was looking at her the way they looked at things that actually mattered. With attention. With weight. Eirlys felt something cold move through her chest. She told herself to calm down. Zevran dealt with outside people all the time. This was probably business. Probably nothing. She was probably standing in the back of this hall, working herself up over something with a completely boring explanation. Then Zevran opened his mouth. “She is my fated mate.” Just like that. The pack lost it. Someone near the front screamed. Not in a bad way, in that wild uncontrollable way people react when something they did not see coming suddenly becomes real. “Hahahaha!” Actual laughter broke out across the room. The kind that comes with shock and joy mixed together into something loud and unhinged. People grabbed each other, talked over each other, the whole room erupting at once. “Hahahaha, finally!” someone shouted. Another person near her left just kept repeating, “Oh my God, oh my God,” like they could not find any other words. It was chaos. Complete and total chaos. And Eirlys stood completely still in the middle of all of it. She could not have moved if she tried. Her feet had decided they were staying exactly where they were, and her body had agreed without consulting her. She just stood there while the pack celebrated around her and tried to get her lungs to remember what they were supposed to be doing. He did not look at her. Not once. She kept waiting for it. Kept thinking that at some point his eyes would find her at the back of that room. That there would be something, some small acknowledgment that she was standing right there, that this was landing on her differently than it was landing on everyone else. Some flicker of something that said he knew. It never came. He stood up there with that woman beside him and received everything the pack was throwing at him, and not once did his eyes move in her direction. “I always knew she was fooling herself, hahahaha.” The voice came from somewhere to her left. She did not turn to look. She already knew the type. There had always been people in that pack who never bothered hiding what they thought about a human girl being that close to their Alpha. They had been quiet about it because Zevran’s protection made it complicated to do otherwise. But right now, with that announcement still hanging in the air, that protection felt very far away. “Did she really think she was going to be Luna? A human? Hahahaha, please. ”More laughter. Low and mean and not even trying to be subtle about who it was aimed at. She felt every word land, even though she kept her face completely still. That was something she had learned early. Giving them a reaction was giving them exactly what they wanted, and she had never been willing to do that, no matter what it cost her to hold it in. She looked at Zevran one more time. He was leaning toward the woman now, saying something close to her ear. The woman smiled. Small and private, like whatever he said belonged only to the two of them. Like the rest of that room did not exist. Like Eirlys did not exist. That was the thing that finally broke through everything she had been holding together. Not the announcement. Not the laughter. Not the people around her enjoying this more than they should have been. It was that smile. That one small private smile, while she stood there feeling like a ghost in a room she had spent years trying to belong in. She turned and walked out. Nobody stopped her. Nobody even noticed. The hall was too full of noise and celebration and the excitement of an Alpha’s future becoming official. She was just the human girl slipping out through the side door the same way she came in. Small. Quiet. Invisible. The cold air hit her face, and she stopped. She stood there for a moment, just breathing. Trying to get her chest to loosen. Trying to make sense of something that refused to make sense, no matter how many times she turned it over in her head. She had given that pack everything she had. She had given Zevran everything she had. And he had stood up there and announced another woman’s place in his life without so much as a glance in her direction. She was still standing there when she heard the footsteps. She did not turn around immediately. Figured it was someone from the pack coming outside for air, someone who probably did not even know she was there. She was used to that. Being somewhere and not being seen. But the footsteps stopped right behind her. “You should not be standing out here alone.” She turned. She did not recognise him. He was not someone she had seen around the pack before, and something about the way he was looking at her made it very clear that him being here right now was not an accident. His eyes moved over her face like he was looking for something specific, and whatever it was, he seemed to find it because the corner of his mouth shifted into something that was not quite a smile. “Especially not tonight,” he said quietly. “Not with what Zevran is hiding about that woman. ”Eirlys stared at him. “Who are you?” she asked.He looked back toward the hall for just a second, then back at her. “Someone who knows things you should have been told a long time ago.”