The Alpha Who Chose Wrong Chapter 08
Three black SUVS stopped outside Northlake Medical Center on a Monday morning.
I knew who had arrived before the doors opened.
My wolf pressed forward, but she did not call him mate.
Not anymore.
Evander stepped onto the wet pavement.
He looked thinner, with dark circles beneath his eyes.
He still wore the black coat I remembered, but the
Alpha certainty around him had cracked.
Soren met him at the clinic entrance.
“You crossed into my territory without an
appointment.”
“I came for Nerys.”
“She isn’t property left in another pack.”
Evander’s eyes flashed.
“I know.”
That answer surprised both of us.
I stepped outside before their wolves turned the
parking lot into a battlefield.
“Ten minutes,” I told Evander.
We walked beneath the covered ambulance bay.
His guards stayed by the cars. Soren remained close
enough to hear if I called.
Evander studied my face as if trying to memorize
everything six months had changed.
“You shifted.”
“You saw the video.”
“You were beautiful.”
“Don’t.”
He swallowed.
“The cameras recorded everything. Odette staged the fall. Your mother had drugged you since childhood. I
removed them both from their positions.”
“Good.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“Did you expect me to thank you for learning the truth
after I left?”
“No.”
Rain struck the metal roof above us.
“I should have believed you,” he said. “At the party. At the training center. In the clinic.”
“Every time you gave me the truth, I chose the version that protected my power.”
I had imagined his apology during my first weeks in Seattle.
In those dreams, hearing it healed something.
It did not.
“Come home,” he said.
The Alpha command rolled beneath the words out of old habit.
My wolf rose with a snarl.
I did not bend.
Soren took one step closer.
Evander’s face changed.
“I’m sorry. That was wrong.”
“Ironwood isn’t my home.”
“Then I will make it one. The board knows you are my
fated mate. I will name you Luna before the entire pack.”
“I never marked Odette,” he added quickly. “I never
slept with her. I delayed every ceremony because my
wolf refused.”
“Do you think that makes the nights with me less cruel?”
“No.”
“You made me hide while you let the pack prepare her
crown. Whether you touched her or not, you chose her every damn morning.”
Evander flinched.
“I told the board everything. The bond. The affair. The attack. I admitted that I hid the truth to protect my
position.”
“That was necessary to clear my name. It was not a love confession.”
“I know.”
He sounded as if he was learning the difference while he spoke.
“You still think the title is what I wanted.”
“You asked me to choose you.”
“I wanted the man I loved to stop being ashamed of me.
You cannot repair that by giving me the job you once
said I was unfit to hold.”
He reached into his coat and removed the Ironwood Luna crest.
Odette’s necklace.
“This was always yours.”
I did not take it.
“No. It belongs to whoever chooses that life. I don’t.”
Pain tightened his face.
“Is there someone else?”
His gaze shifted toward Soren.
“This isn’t about another Alpha.”
“Then give me one chance.”
“I will step down if that is what it takes.”
“Don’t hand me another life–changing decision and call it devotion. Ironwood needs an Alpha willing to
repair what he broke. Do it because it is right, not because you hope I’ll reward you.”
For the first time since he arrived, Evander stopped trying to bargain.
“I gave you three.”
I counted them for him.
“The ballroom. The stairs. The clinic.”
Each word made him look smaller.
“You rejected me every time before you said the formal words.”
Evander lowered his head.
An Alpha bowing to a wolf outside his pack should have felt like victory.
It only felt sad.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“Respect the life I built without you.”
I returned to the clinic.
He stayed beneath the ambulance bay until the rain stopped.
Then his cars left Northlake territory.