The Alpha Who Chose Wrong Chapter 04
The east training center was empty when I arrived.
That should have warned me.
Odette waited at the top of the observation stairs. She
wore a pale dress instead of training clothes.
“Where is everyone?”
“Camera maintenance.”
My stomach tightened.
“You planned this.”
“I planned my whole life,” she said. “Then you opened your legs and thought a mate bond made you special.”
“Evander came to me.”
Her claws extended.
“He was promised to me.”
“A promise isn’t a bond.”
She struck me across the face.
Four burning lines opened beneath my eye.
My wolf roared.
I caught Odette’s wrist before she could hit me again.
Her eyes widened.
I had never been that fast.
“Let go,” she hissed.
“Stay away from me.”
I pushed her hand aside.
Odette looked over my shoulder.
Then she smiled.
She threw herself backward.
Her body struck the stairs and rolled to the landing below.
The side door opened at once.
My mother entered with two security officers.
Odette screamed.
Blood ran from her forehead. Her wrist bent at the
wrong angle.
“Nerys pushed me!”
“No. She jumped.”
My mother ran to her.
“Why would your sister throw herself down a staircase?”
“Because she knew you were waiting.”
The guards looked at the dead camera above us.
My mother had scheduled the maintenance.
I understood too late.
Evander arrived ten minutes later.
He found Odette crying on a stretcher and me held between two guards.
“She attacked me,” Odette whispered. “She said if I
couldn’t become Luna, she would.”
“She’s lying.”
Evander looked at the claw marks on my face.
“How did you get those?”
“She hit me first.”
“I defended myself,” Odette said. “Then she pushed me.”
“The cameras will show it.”
My mother shook her head.
“They were offline. Nerys knew.”
Evander’s scent changed.
Trust disappeared from it.
He ordered everyone out except me.
For one hopeful second, I thought he wanted to hear
the truth without Odette crying between us.
“Why did you meet her here?” he asked.
“She knew about us. She threatened to tell the board I seduced you.”
“You should have come to me.”
“I tried to end this last night. You stood outside my
door and asked me to wait again.”
His jaw tightened.
“Did you touch her?”
“I stopped her from clawing me. I pushed her hand away. She threw herself down those stairs.”
“And your mother happened to enter at that exact second?”
“Because they planned it together.”
Evander walked to the dead camera.
“You are accusing the head of pack health
administration and my Luna candidate of staging an attack.”
“I am asking my mate to know me better than they do.”
His wolf reached for me through the bond.
Evander forced him back.
“The board is already asking why I hid our bond. If I
defend you without proof, they will think you control me.”
“So this is still about how you look.”
“It is about whether I can hold this pack together.”
“No. It is about whether holding it is worth what you do to me.”
He did not answer.
That was when I knew what he would choose in the ballroom.
“Evander,” I said. “You know me.”
His eyes moved to Odette’s broken wrist.
“I thought I did.”
The leadership board called an emergency meeting that night.
They made me stand in the center of the same ballroom where the mate bond had found us.
Odette sat beside Evander with her arm in a cast.
My mother described me as unstable, jealous, and obsessed with taking my sister’s place.
“Tell them,” I said to Evander.
His shoulders locked.
“Tell them why I would believe I had a claim on you.”
Whispers spread through the room.
Odette began to cry.
Evander stood.
“The bond identified Nerys as my fated mate.”
The board erupted in shocked whispers.
“And you hid it?” someone asked.
“Because a bond does not make her fit to lead. Tonight proved that.”
I stared at him.
“You know what happened between us.”
“I know I mistook the bond for proof of character.”
Pain tore through my chest before he even spoke the formal words.
“I, Evander Rook, Alpha of Ironwood, reject Nerys Vale
as my mate.”
The bond tore.
I fell to my knees.
My wolf screamed behind her locked door.
Evander took one step toward me.
Odette caught his hand.
He stopped.
“Take her to the clinic,” he ordered. “Keep her under observation until she is stable.”
Stable.
As if I were sick.
As if he had not just broken me in front of the whole pack.
The guards lifted me.
Evander would not look at my face.