The Alpha’s Christmas Luck

The elevator crawled toward the penthouse like it was savoring my dread. Mirrored walls. Gold trim. Instrumental Christmas music piped in at an offensively gentle volume. Have yourself a merry little Christmas... December ruins my life. Not poetically. Not metaphorically. Documented. Color-coded. Calendar-invited disasters. December 18th — my parents' divorce finalized December 22nd — the college rejection letter December 24th — Daniel proposing to someone else in a restaurant strung with fairy lights. And tonight? Christmas Eve again. But this one was supposed to be different. Mark had promised. He'd stood in my kitchen six nights ago, sleeves rolled up, fingers warm around my waist. "Let me fix this," he'd said against my temple. "Come to the party. Let's reset. No more distance. No more weird energy. Just us." Just us. I'd believed him. Not fully. Not blindly. But enough to buy a new dress. Enough to curl my hair instead of knotting it up like armor. Enough to hope. The elevator chimed. The doors slid open into light so bright it felt curated. Mariah Carey replaced the elevator music. Champagne laughter spilled through the air. This scent hit me first—real pine, not grocery-store spray. Something smoky underneath. Expensive. Intentional. "Welcome!" A woman from Mark's office—blonde, glassy smile, perfect teeth—beamed at me. "You made it!" "Against my better judgment," I said lightly. She laughed like I'd complimented her. I stepped inside. The apartment wasn't decorated. It was staged. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the skyline, snow drifting past in soft spirals. The city glittered like it had dressed up for someone richer than me. A twelve-foot tree stood near the glass, drenched in gold ribbon and crystal ornaments heavy enough to bruise if they fell. A champagne tower shimmered on the marble island. And there I was, clutching a bottle of supermarket merlot with a discount sticker I hadn't peeled off. I set it carefully beside the bottles that cost more than my electricity bill. "Love your coat," another coworker said, her tone skating politely over judgment. "Very... vintage." "It's wool," I replied. "From a*****e that still believes in fluorescent lighting." She blinked. Then laughed. Too loudly. I slipped the coat off anyway. The air inside was warm—almost too warm. My skin prickled beneath the thin fabric of the emerald dress I'd chosen because Mark once said green made my eyes look dangerous. He hasn't looked at me in weeks. I scanned the room automatically. Where is he? Mark's laugh usually carried—smooth, controlled, engineered to make investors lean in closer. I knew the sound intimately. I'd once fallen asleep to it vibrating against my shoulder. Tonight, I couldn't find it. "It's beautiful, right?" someone said behind me. "Overcompensating is always beautiful," I murmured. They didn't hear me. Or pretended not to. I moved deeper into the party. Heels sinking into cream carpeting that probably required its own insurance policy. Conversations flowed too easily. Too bright. When I approached one circle, voices lowered half a notch. Eyes flicked to each other. Then to me. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just... wrong. I grabbed a champagne flute from a passing tray and swallowed half in one breath. It tasted like apples and money. Mark had been distant for a month. Longer, if I'm honest. Canceled dinners. Phone face-down on tables. "Late meetings." A new cologne I didn't buy him—something darker, heavier. It lingered on his jackets now. I caught that scent faintly in the air tonight. Not from him. From the hallway. My stomach tightened. "Has anyone seen Mark?" I asked a guy from accounting. He hesitated. Just a flicker. "Yeah, he's around." "Around where?" "Uh—he stepped away." "Stepped," I repeated. "Like... physically stepped? Or metaphorically stepped out of our relationship?" He gave a nervous laugh. "Bedroom, maybe? I don't know." Bedroom. The word landed softly. Too softly. I nodded once. "Makes sense. It is his party." No one stopped me when I turned toward the hallway. That was the loudest thing of all. The music dulled as I moved away from the living room. The air shifted—cooler. Thicker. The hallway lights were dimmer, gold sconces casting long shadows across pristine white walls. Framed photos lined the corridor. Paris. Barcelona. He couldn't pronounce croissant. Once, he'd pulled me down this same hallway laughing, tipsy off cheap prosecco before he could afford the real thing. We'd tripped over each other into that bedroom at the end. I'd thought— Stop. My heels pressed into the carpet as if it might swallow the sound of me. Three steps from the door. Half-closed. Lights spilling through the crack. Laughter. A woman's laughter. Low. Intimate. Comfortable. My heart didn't race. It went very, very quiet. But my fingers trembled. Just once. A small betrayal of their own. Please. Just once. Please don't let this be another December I survive instead of live. The bedroom door stood there—familiar wood grain, brushed silver handle. I knew the exact weight of that handle in my palm. Knew the shape of the room beyond it. The window view. The bed. My future had lived in that room. I stepped closer. And that's when I felt it. A strange warmth slid across the back of my neck. Not from the heater. Not from embarrassment. Something deeper. Heavier. Like being watched. I glanced down the hallway. Empty. But the air felt charged. Alive. Inside the bedroom, sheets rustled. Mark's voice—low, coaxing. "Relax." A soft giggle answered him. My throat tightened. The music from the living room floated faintly down the hall. Baby, all I want for Christmas is you... Of course. I moved the final inch toward the door, breath shallow, hand hovering just shy of the wood. Inside, a woman whispered—amused, sharp, intimate: "Does she suspect anything?" The words went straight through me. I didn't think. I pushed the door open. It swung inward with a quiet, traitorous smoothness. The master bedroom was dim—only the bedside lamps throwing amber pools across rumpled sheets. Christmas lights blinked through the curtains, red-white-red-white, like a pulse trying to pretend it was festive instead of fatal. Mark was propped against the headboard. Shirtless. Tiffany from marketing straddled his lap like she'd been born there. For half a second, none of us moved. The air held its breath. Then Tiffany turned, slow and calm, as if she'd been waiting for the curtain to rise. "Oh," she said softly. "There she is." Mark's face emptied of color. "Elena—" I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. Gently. Because if I didn't move gently, I might start shaking. My fingers went numb anyway. The handle felt far away, like it belonged to someone else's hand. Red. White. Red. White. I took in details the way you do when your brain is trying to save you by becoming a camera. His belt on the floor. Her heels near the dresser. My side of the bed untouched. Of course. "Well," I said, and my voice came out level enough to scare me, "you did step away." Mark shifted, pushing Tiffany off him. She slid from his lap with a small huff, adjusting the strap of her dress like I'd interrupted a meeting. "It's not—" he started. "It's not what?" I asked. "Not real? Not happening? Not in the bedroom you told me would be ours?" His jaw tightened. "Lower your voice." I laughed once—thin, humorless. "Are you worried someone will hear? Or are you worried they'll finally see you?" Tiffany crossed her legs on the edge of the bed, unbothered, glossy lips still curved. "Devastation feels dramatic." I looked at her—really looked. Perfect hair. Perfect calm. The kind of woman who never asked permission to take up space. "You don't get to grade my pain," I said. Mark stood, dragging a hand through his hair like that gesture could scrub the moment clean. "Elena, stop. Let's just talk." "Talk," I echoed. "We've been talking for weeks. About your late nights. Your phone that suddenly sleeps face-down. Your meetings that need cologne I didn't buy." His eyes flashed. "It just happened, okay?" It just happened. Like weather. Like gravity. Like he slipped and fell into her. "Did your clothes just happen to fall off too?" I asked. He flinched, then hardened—because cheaters always do that part. The pivot from guilt to offense. "You've been impossible lately," he snapped. "Everything with you is negative. Every holiday, every plan—it's like you're waiting for something to go wrong." I stared at him. "So you decided to make sure you were right." "That's not—" "It is," I cut in, and the words were too sharp to be polite. "You invited me here." "I was going to tell you." "When?" I asked, quietly now. "After dessert? After midnight? After you kissed me in front of your friends and told everyone we're fine?" Silence. Tiffany sighed like I was wasting her time. "Mark, this is exhausting." She looked at me, eyes cool. "You're not exactly... festive," she said, gesturing vaguely at the room, at the tree lights bleeding through the curtains, at the whole staged illusion. "You really thought he'd stay with someone who treats Christmas like a funeral?" Something inside my chest didn't explode. It split. Clean. Soundless. I turned to Mark because—stupidly—some part of me still expected him to defend me. To say, No. Don't talk about her like that. Mark didn't. He just stood there, shoulders tense, mouth half open like he was weighing whether I was worth the trouble. That was the moment it truly happened. Not the cheating. Not the bed. That moment—when he chose silence over me. I searched his face anyway, like a reflex. Like a habit I hadn't learned to break yet. And I watched the version of him I loved blink out. The Christmas lights kept pulsing. Red. White. Red. White. My ears rang softly, as if the room had filled with invisible snow. "I've tried with you," Mark said, softer now, like softness would make it kinder. "But you drag everything down. Every year it's the same speech about December ruining your life. I can't keep compensating for that." Compensating. I tasted blood. I'd bitten the inside of my cheek without realizing it. "So this—" I gestured to the bed, to Tiffany's lipstick faint at the corner of his mouth, to the wreckage arranged like an exhibit— "is your fix?" He didn't answer. Because any answer would be a confession. My gaze drifted to the nightstand. A small velvet box sat there. My gift. I'd brought it up earlier when I arrived—left it here because I'd pictured something private later. Him finally pulling me close, finally looking at me like he used to, like the distance had been a nightmare we woke up from. I walked toward the nightstand. "Elena," Mark warned, like he had the right to warn me. I ignored him and picked up the box. It was heavier than it should've been, or maybe my hands were too cold now, even in this warm room. "I wasn't going to give this to you until midnight," I said, and my voice thinned on the last word. The box rested in my palm and, without permission, my mind flashed backward— Last Christmas, before the distance. We'd been on the floor of my tiny apartment, assembling a cheap bookshelf with the instructions upside down. Mark had laughed until he choked, then kissed a smudge of dust off my fingers like it was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted. "Our place someday," he'd said, forehead pressed to mine. "Something bigger. Something bright. We'll host. We'll make it ours." I blinked. The memory vanished. The room was still here. The bed was still here. Tiffany was still here. I opened the box. The silver watch gleamed under the lamplight. On the back, the engraving caught and held the light: To more Decembers. My stomach dropped—slow, heavy, undeniable. "You said tonight would fix us," I whispered. "You said we just needed one good December." Mark's expression shifted—guilt, irritation, calculation—like he was cycling through options to see which one saved him. "I meant that at the time." At the time. I closed the box. Then I threw it. Not at his face. At his chest. It hit with a dull thud and fell to the floor, skidding across hardwood until it stopped near Tiffany's heels like a punchline. "Keep it," I said. "So you're never late to your next mistake." "Elena, wait—" But I was already moving. I turned, yanked the door open, and stepped into the hallway like the air out there might be cleaner. "You're overreacting," Mark called after me, his voice sharpened by panic. "You're making this into some December curse thing—" I stopped and looked back once. Tiffany had already settled against the pillows, calm as a queen reclaiming her throne. Mark stood beside the bed, bare-chested, exposed in a way he didn't seem to understand. The man who promised me "more Decembers" looked like someone I'd met at a bar and misread in bad lighting. "No," I said softly. "You're right." Mark's face tightened with relief for a heartbeat—because he thought that meant I was folding. Then I finished, "It's not a curse." His relief faltered. "It's a pattern," I said. "And I'm done participating." I walked away. Down the hallway. Past Paris and Barcelona. Past the gold sconces. Past the room where I'd once thought my future lived. When I re-entered the party, the music hit me like a shove— All I want for Christmas is you... Conversations stalled. Eyes followed. No one spoke. No one asked if I was okay. Good. I didn't stop for my coat. Didn't stop for my dignity. I headed straight for the elevator, tree lights fracturing in the polished walls, my reflection multiplying into a dozen versions of a woman learning, all at once, how to stop hoping. The elevator doors opened. I stepped inside. Behind me, faintly— "Elena!" The doors closed. The descent felt too fast and not fast enough. The lobby was marble and cold and indifferent. I walked out into the night wearing nothing but a thin dress and fury. The building door slammed behind me. And the snow began to fall harder. This time, I didn't look back.