Second-Chance Mate:The Alpha Who Took What My Mate Threw Away

Chapter 3

By the time I locked the shop and trudged up the narrow back stair to my apartment, my legs felt like they were full of sand.

I shut the door, flipped the deadbolt, and leaned my forehead against the peeling wood for a second. The quiet pressed in—no engines, no voices, just the hum of the old fridge and rain ticking against the tiny window over the sink.

Safe.

The word should have settled me. It didn’t.

I dropped my keys in the dented metal bowl, toed off my boots, and caught a glimpse of myself in the microwave door. Grease on my cheek. Smear of someone else’s blood on my sleeve. Eyes too wide.

“You look like hell,” I told my reflection.

It didn’t argue.

I stripped out of my overalls and T-shirt, tossed them straight into the washer, then turned the shower on as hot as the pipes could manage. Steam filled the cramped bathroom. I stepped under the spray and let it pound against my skull.

Oil, sweat, and the last cling of wild pine washed off my skin, swirling down the drain.

Nyra didn’t.

She sat just behind my eyes, watchful, annoyingly awake.

You should have run, she said.

“From what?” I muttered. “Cars? Council? Or the seven-foot wall of Alpha you seem obsessed with?”

Heat fogged the mirror. My laugh sounded thin.

He smelled like home, she said, faintly smug.

I braced my hands on the tile. “We don’t have a home.”

We could.

I shut the water off so hard the pipes rattled.

Eight years of this, I reminded myself while I dragged on a clean T-shirt and soft, worn pajama pants. Eight years of no howling, no shifting, no bond. Just oil changes and brake jobs and Netflix. I’d built this life with my own two human hands.

All it took was one Alpha and two Council badges, and suddenly my carefully dead wolf was sitting up and commenting on my taste in men.

I stalked into the living room-kitchen hybrid, flopped onto the sagging couch, and grabbed the remote. Nightly news flickered on, talking heads mouthing words I didn’t hear. I muted them and curled my fingers around the chipped mug on the coffee table instead.

Cold coffee. Perfect.

My mind kept replaying the way the tall Council man had looked at me—like I was a puzzle piece he’d misplaced. The way the shorter one had counted exits. The way Caleb had stepped half a breath closer when the questions cut too clean.

I didn’t owe that man anything.

But he’d smelled the same kind of wrong they were hunting, and he hadn’t flinched from it.

“You’re not my problem,” I told the empty room. “None of you are.”

Nyra made a doubtful sound.

Sleep didn’t come easy. It stalked me, then slipped away every time I closed my eyes. I lay on my back staring at the water stain on the ceiling, listening to the building settle and the rain soften to a mist.

When dreams finally dragged me under, they came hard.

White light, too bright. Cold metal under my spine. Straps cutting into my wrists.

She’s unstable, someone said. For everyone’s safety.

I tried to move. My body didn’t listen. My bones were lava, my skin too tight, something inside me pounding, pounding, pounding to get out.

Don’t hold her down, a voice wailed. Please—

Hands pressed on my shoulders. Needles bit my arm. My vision fractured around a circle of faces: Alpha Garrick with his pinched mouth, Helena looking away, Damon’s eyes huge and stunned—

Say something, I begged him without words.

He didn’t.

The pain rose, white and total. Something inside me ripped and went silent.

I woke up choking.

My hand flew to my chest, nails digging through the thin cotton. The room was dark, the only light a smear of orange from the streetlamp. My heart galloped; sweat cooled on my skin.

For a moment I wasn’t sure if I was sixteen again, strapped to a table, or twenty-four on a cheap mattress over my own garage.

“Maia,” Nyra whispered, clear as if she sat at the edge of the bed.

I sucked in a breath. “You’re loud tonight.”

You smelled him, she said simply.

I rolled onto my side, staring at the faint shadow of the SUV’s headlights that still seemed burned onto the back of my eyelids. “So did you.”

He’s strong. His wolf called me.

“Great. Go date him, then,” I muttered. “I’m out.”

She huffed, a warm brush of disapproval. That’s not how it works.

“I know exactly how it works.” I flipped the pillow, pressed my cheek to the cool side. “He’s an Alpha. Alphas mean packs. Packs mean the Council sticking their pretty badges into everyone’s business.”

They mean not being alone, she said softly.

The quiet after that settled heavier than the rain. I stared at the ceiling again. The ache in my chest wasn’t just old terror; it was something like grief for a life I’d wanted once and then torn out of myself to survive.

“Being alone kept us alive,” I said.

For eight years, Nyra reminded me. And then tonight, you couldn’t even pick up a wrench without shaking.

That hit a little too close.

I threw an arm over my eyes. “He’ll be gone by tomorrow. Council will sniff around, not find what they want, and leave. We go back to oil and coffee and ignoring the moon. End of story.”

Nyra didn’t answer.

Eventually, exhaustion dragged me under again. This time, sleep was thinner, full of engine noise and dark eyes and the faint scrape of claws on glass.

Downstairs, through concrete and steel, my shop held a black SUV that smelled like wet pine and trouble.

And no matter how many times I told myself otherwise, some stupid, stubborn part of me knew that whatever I’d been calling a life was already, quietly, changing.