The Alpha's Sun-Blessed Mate

Chapter 4

I packed like someone was timing me because someone was.

My mother moved around my room pulling things from drawers, her hands shaking. She was trying to be useful because the alternative was falling apart, and she wasn’t going to give herself permission for that until I was out the door.

“Sweaters,” she said, her voice cracking around the edges. “Romania gets cold. You’ll need sweaters.”

“Mom.”

“And the boots. The waterproof ones. Mountains mean rain.” She pulled the boots from the back of my closet and stared at them like they’d personally offended her. Then she pressed them to her chest and started crying.

I took the boots from her and set them beside the suitcase. Then I hugged her. She gripped me like I was being torn away instead of walking out on my own two legs.

“Why is he doing this?” she whispered into my hair. “What does he want with you?”

I didn’t answer. Because the truth was something I couldn’t say out loud yet. That the most powerful Alpha in our pack was my fated mate. That I’d felt the bond hit me like a freight train in that hall. That my wolf was still pacing, still whimpering, still pulling toward him even now, through walls and floors and the hundred feet of hallway between us.

That he’d felt it too. And looked away.

“I’ll be okay, Mom.”

“You don’t know that.”

She was right. I didn’t.

My father appeared in the doorway. His face was still red from the confrontation in the hall, but his eyes were calm now. The deadly kind of calm that meant he’d moved past anger into something more controlled.

“Finish packing, sweetheart,” he said quietly. “I’m going to have a word with the Alpha.”

“Dad, don’t...”

“I’m not going to challenge him.” He held up his hand. “I’m just going to look him in the eye and make sure he understands what happens if my daughter is mistreated.”

He left. My mother went back to folding sweaters with wet cheeks and steady hands.

I packed the rest on autopilot. Jeans. T-shirts. The one nice dress that wasn’t the blue one from tonight because I was never wearing that dress again. My grandmother’s necklace. A photo of my parents from their mating ceremony, both of them grinning like idiots, my mom’s hand on her belly because she’d already been pregnant with me.

My entire life fit into one suitcase and a duffel bag. That felt like it meant something. I just didn’t know what yet.

A knock on the door. Soft. Almost hesitant.

My mother opened it and immediately stiffened.

Albert stood in the hallway. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, his broad shoulders curved inward. He looked smaller than I’d ever seen him. Which was saying something because he was over six feet of his father’s genetics.

“Can I talk to her?” he asked my mother. “Please?”

My mother looked back at me. The question in her eyes was clear.

“It’s fine, Mom,” I said. “Give us a minute.”

She shot Albert a look that could’ve peeled paint off the walls. Then she squeezed past him without a word and disappeared down the stairs.

Albert stepped inside. He looked around my half-empty room, at the open drawers and the bare shelves, at the suitcase on the bed. His blue eyes landed on the empty hook where my grandmother’s necklace used to hang, and something crossed his face that might have been the beginning of understanding. That this was real. That I was actually leaving.

“You don’t have to go,” he said.

I folded a shirt and placed it in the duffel without looking up. “Yes, I do.”

“My father can’t force you. It’s not...”

“He’s the Alpha, Albert. He can do whatever he wants. And we both know that.” I zipped the duffel shut. “Besides. What would I stay for?”

The question sat between us like something with weight.

Albert opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“I never wanted this to happen,” he finally said. “Not like this.”

I turned to face him. Really looked at him for the first time since I’d pushed that bedroom door open four hours ago. Albert with his father’s dark hair and his father’s sharp jaw and his mother’s softer eyes. The boy who used to bring me coffee every morning because he knew I couldn’t function without it. Who taught me how to drive stick shift in his truck and laughed for twenty minutes when I stalled it in the middle of an intersection. Who once carried me three miles home on his back when I twisted my ankle during a pack run.

Albert who had been sleeping with my best friend for six months while I planned our wedding.

“We were never lovers,” I said quietly. “Not really. You know that, right? We were comfortable. We were what our families expected us to be. But there was never...” I trailed off and shook my head.

“Fire,” he finished. “There was never fire.”

“No.” I sat on the edge of my bed. “There wasn’t.”

He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. A pose that should have looked casual but just made him look like he was trying to hold himself together. “So you’re not heartbroken because you lost the love of your life. You’re heartbroken because...”

“Because you lied to me.” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “Because Mira lied to me. Because the two people I trusted most in the world decided I didn’t deserve the truth. That’s what hurts, Albert. Not losing you. Losing my faith in the people I loved.”

He flinched. Good.

“We were always friends though,” I continued, my throat tightening. “Before any of it. You were my friend. And I want to get past this eventually. I do.” I met his eyes. Those blue eyes that were identical to his father’s, and now that I’d felt the mate bond, looking into them felt like staring into a funhouse mirror. “But right now? I’m not ready.”

Albert nodded slowly. His jaw was working the way it did when he was trying not to cry. Another thing he’d gotten from his father. That refusal to crack in public.

“I’m sorry, Ann,” he said. And for the first time tonight, it sounded like he meant it. Not the panicked apology of someone caught. Just a boy who understood he’d broken something that mattered.

“I know you are.”

He pushed off the doorframe and reached for my suitcase. “Let me carry this down for you. It’s the least I can do.”

I almost said no. Almost told him I could carry my own bag. But something in his face stopped me. He needed to do this. Needed to feel like he was helping instead of being the reason I was leaving.

“Okay.”

We walked down the stairs together. Side by side, the way we’d walked through this house a thousand times. Past the kitchen where we’d eaten cereal on Saturday mornings. Past the living room where we’d watched terrible movies with the pack. Through the front door into the evening air.