He Loved Her, I Tore Up Our Contract

Moonlight spilled through the window and pooled on the yellowed paper before me. I sat on the floor of the study with an old document spread across my knees,the mate contract I had signed, with my own hand, five years before. The edges had begun to fray, but the ink was as crisp as the night it had been laid down. It was the contract that bound me to Alpha Kael. It set out our rights, our obligations, and,our term. Three years. The contract said it plainly. After three years, should either party wish to end the bond, all that was needed was to file a request, and the council of elders would grant it. But five years had passed. My fingertips drifted across the signatures at the bottom. There was my name,and there, beside it, his. Alpha Kael's strokes were sharp and brutal, as though carved into the page with a blade, every line bleeding the kind of arrogance only a man certain of his own supremacy could possess. I still remembered the night I had signed it. I had just turned twenty-three. Less than five years had passed since my Coming of Age. My grandfather had been a celebrated warrior of the pack, fallen in a battle waged to drive back the enemies who pressed at our northern border. To shore up our family's standing afterward, my father had gone to Alpha Kael's house and offered a marriage alliance. And I… I had agreed of my own free will. From the day I awakened, at eighteen, my wolf Anly had whispered the truth to me: in this lifetime, I would have only one mate. A single name had thundered through my mind in her low, reverent growl. Kael. Alpha Kael. The youngest, most powerful Alpha the Silverfang Pack had ever produced. He had eyes the color of polished silver and hair black as spilled ink, and when he smiled, every she-wolf in the pack lost what was left of her senses. But his heart belonged to someone else. Mira. Mira,the woman the wolf world had named its undisputed beauty. Hair like flowing moonlight, emerald eyes that could bring even the strongest Alpha to his knees. She was Alpha Kael's first love. The fated mate his eighteen-year-old self had recognized the day his wolf came alive. And then she had left,gone north, far beyond our borders, to chase another, stronger Alpha. I had told myself, after she was gone, that he would slowly come to accept the hand fate had dealt him. I was a fool. In five years, Alpha Kael never marked me. In our world, the mating mark is a sacred covenant,a fusion of soul to soul. But to Alpha Kael, I was only ornament. A placeholder propped up to silence the gossip of the pack. Whenever Mira's name brushed against his ear, he dropped me without a second's thought. On the night of the Blood Moon, I sat alone in the empty mate's quarters, waiting for a man who never came. In the smoking ruins of the battlefield, I searched the haze for his silhouette,and found him instead carrying a wounded Mira through the wreckage at full sprint. At my grandfather's funeral, I knelt before the bier and wept. He… he received a phone call, never offered me a single word of comfort, and disappeared into the rain-soaked night. I knew exactly who had been on the other end of that call. "She's back." The day my three-year contract expired, I sat by the window and watched the moon rise. By the laws of our kind, I had every right to file for dissolution. The council would have approved it. I could have walked away from Silverfang Pack and started over somewhere no one knew my name. I didn't. I quietly signed a new contract instead, extending the term by another two years. I told myself, Wait a little longer. Maybe he'll see what I'm worth. Maybe he would. "Looking at that contract again?" Alpha Kael's voice came from the doorway, low and indifferent. I lifted my head. He stood there in the entrance to the study, still wearing the black combat leathers he hadn't yet taken time to change out of,just back from somewhere, clearly. The moon traced the long, hard line of him, and his face wore no expression at all. Those silver eyes glinted coldly in the dark. I knew what he was waiting for. Mira had returned. Three minutes earlier, the message had reached me from the pack: Mira had broken her engagement. Her former mate had fallen in battle three months ago, and she,she had chosen to come home to Silverfang Pack. Home, to Alpha Kael. "Alpha Kael." I rose, folded the contract carefully, and slid it back into the drawer. My voice came out steady. So steady it scarcely sounded like mine. "I've been waiting for you." His brow drew together. He had never liked the way I addressed him. Five years ago, on the night we sealed the contract, he had told me I might use his given name in private,that there was no need for the formal title between us. But the things that came after had taught me to keep my distance. "The Blood Moon ceremony begins shortly." He stepped into the room. As he passed me, the air carried a scent on his clothes that did not belong to me. Mira's scent. Jasmine threaded through with the cold mineral bite of the northern snows,Mira's signature, and hers alone. In the chamber of my mind, my wolf Anly let out a soft, broken whimper. My face betrayed nothing. "As you wish, Alpha Kael." I walked around him toward the door. "Wait." His voice cut suddenly behind me, threaded with something I could not name. I stopped, but I did not turn. "Five years ago, on this very night…" He paused, choosing his words. "Why didn't you leave?" My fingers tightened, just slightly. Five years ago, on this very night, we had signed the mate contract. By Alpha Kael's original design, the contract was nothing more than a stalling tactic,a way to buy time until Mira changed her mind. After three years, he would have set me free. But I had not waited three years. I had regretted it within twenty-four hours of signing. I had wanted to leave, to take my name back from the page. That night I stood outside the door of the mate's quarters until dawn, watching the light in Alpha Kael's window burn and then go dark, and I never found the courage to push that door open. So I told myself: Maybe a little longer. That little longer became five years. "I forgot." I said it softly. Then I pushed the door open and stepped out into the corridor. The moonlight washed over my face. I did not look back at the man behind me. I only thought, Perhaps tonight I can finally end this for good.