The Alpha Who Chose Wrong Chapter 07
EVANDER POV
The silence where Nerys used to live inside me became
its own kind of pain.
I could no longer feel when she was afraid.
I could not tell when she slept, cried, or thought of me.
The rejected bond gave me exactly what I had claimed to want.
Control.
I hated it.
Odette’s Luna ceremony never happened.
I delayed it after her surgery. Then I delayed it again
because of a border dispute.
The board accepted both explanations.
Odette did not.
“You promised me,” she said one night in my office.
“I promised the pack a stable Luna.”
“I am stable.”
I looked at the woman who had watched her sister fall
to the ballroom floor and smiled.
For the first time, I wondered how much of her I had refused to see.
The answer came the next morning.
Our security director placed a recovered video on my desk.
“The training center cameras were taken offline locally,” he said. “But the new system uploads a
backup before shutdown. Lenora didn’t know.”
The screen showed the observation stairs.
Odette hit Nerys.
Nerys caught her wrist and pushed it away.
Then Odette looked toward the side door and threw
herself backward.
I watched it three times.
On the fourth, I saw Nerys’s face when the guards entered.
She had known no one would believe her.
She had been right.
“There’s more,” the security director said.
Northlake had requested Nerys’s childhood medical
history after her first shift. Toxicology found years of
wolf suppressant stored in her tissue.
The refill authorizations carried Lenora Vale’s digital signature.
I went to the Vale house with six guards.
Lenora tried to deny it until I placed the records in front of her.
Then she sat down.
“Nerys tested as dominant before she was five,” she
said. “More dominant than Odette.”
“So you drugged a child.”
“The pack needed one clear Luna candidate. Odette
wanted it. Nerys was soft. She would have wasted her gift.”
My wolf slammed against my skin.
The windows shook with my growl.
“You told her she was defective.”
“It kept her obedient.”
Odette stood in the doorway.
“Don’t blame Mom for everything.”
“You knew?”
She lifted her chin.
“I knew enough. Nerys always took what belonged to
me without trying. Dad’s guilt. Your attention. Then the mate bond.”
“I was never yours.”
Her face twisted.
“You would have been if she stayed in her place.”
“The fake attack?”
“She was going to tell the board you fucked her. What
was I supposed to do?”
I remembered Nerys standing in the ballroom.
Tell them why I would believe I had a claim on you.
I had told the truth about the bond and still made her sound insane.
I had protected my title, the board, and the woman who framed her.
I had protected everything except my mate.
Lenora lost her position that day.
Pack investigators seized every medical file she had controlled.
Odette was removed as Luna candidate and placed under guard until the board finished its case.
Punishing them did not undo what I had done.
I went to Nerys’s old room.
The green dress from the foundation dinner hung
behind the door. A row of white pills lay hidden beneath the mattress.
On her desk sat the medical school brochure I had
given her when she was seventeen.
She had circled emergency care in blue ink.
My phone rang.
The security director had found a public Northlake rescue report.
I watched a dark silver wolf tear open a crashed shuttle
and carry two children and their driver up a ravine.
Nerys had never been weak.
She had been drugged, isolated, and taught to doubt every strong part of herself.
Then I used her fear as proof that she could not lead.
I called her.
She did not answer.
I called again.
By the twenty–third call, the number stopped connecting.
She had blocked me.
I booked a flight to Seattle anyway.