To Love the Alpha Who Wears My Mate’s Heart Chapter 09
The video cut off.
Julia collapsed to the floor, cursing me for breaking my word.
That thirty million wasn’t Ryan buying out my pack. It was the price they’d paid for Matthew’s heart.
And all those years she’d had me watched? This was why.
Reporters swarmed Julia, cameras closing in, demanding
answers about what she’d done. She covered her face with
her hands, screaming for her guards.
“I’m Julia! You can’t do this to me! The Silver Moon Pack’s
legal team will destroy you!”
“Murder? That bastard doesn’t even deserve the word!
Matthew agreed to the transplant himself! I never
murdered anyone!”
No one was listening anymore. Her crimes were already all
over the internet. People were calling for justice,
demanding she pay for what she’d done to Matthew.
Across the crowd, my eyes met Ryan’s. He stood frozen,
one hand pressed to his aching chest.
He stared at me with dawning understanding,
I loved his brother.
Tears rolled down his face. He caught one, brought it to his lips.
Bitter. His tears were bitter now too.
A broken laugh escaped him. “Amelia… I actually fell for you.”
He pushed through the crowd, reaching for me one last time.
Then the sirens cut through the air.
eyes
Ryan stopped in his tracks. His found mine across the
distance, a final look.
He and Julia were cuffed and hauled off to Pack Security.
Julia fought every step. She couldn’t let go of her
power, couldn’t let some bastard’s son bring her down. She didn’t
want to die.
When they were gone, the cameras turned on me.
Mia tore the veil from her head and draped it over mine,
shielding me as she pulled me out of the ceremony. Just
like she’d pulled me out of that bathroom years ago.
And online, she fought back against every accusation,
every insult thrown my way.
On the anniversary of Matthew’s death, Julia was
sentenced to death, and execution carried out
immediately, Ryan got life in prison,
I heard that not long after he went in, his heart condition
came back.
He spent his nights screaming my name. His cellmates
couldn’t sleep, so they beat him bloody. Eventually, they
had to rush him to the hospital. No one knew if he’d make it.
Mia told me all this while I was fixing my broken recorder.
“Amelia,” she asked, “what’s in there? The thing you play
every night while you sleep.”
“I recorded his heartbeat.”
Mia went quiet.
She wondered if she should have saved me back then. If
she hadn’t, I never would have met Matthew. I’d have just
suffered through high school, three years of pain. Better
than a lifetime of living in memories.
I handed Mia the keys to my house. Asked her to look after
it for me.
Our home.
“Mia,” I said. “Thank you. You sacrificed so much for my
plan.”
She smiled at me. “You saved me too, didn’t you? Anyone
who’d throw me aside isn’t worth my love. And he took
something that didn’t belong to him. You helped me get
my revenge too.”
That night, Mia held me close and told me everything.
About coming home to a family that looked down on her.
About saving Ryan, and everything they’d been through
together. About why she walked away from his weak,
wavering love.
I listened in silence. Ryan’s face kept drifting through my mind.
Even a man like him could be afraid of losing someone.
So why did he have to kill my brother?
I deleted his photos from my phone, one by one. Only kept
the ones I’d stolen of Matthew.
Mia was quiet for a long moment. Then she asked why I
never told anyone the story of me and Matthew.
I thought about it for a while.
“The butter steak he made was terrible.”
Mia burst out laughing. “That’s not even a story.”
I laughed too:
Our whole story was in the meals we shared. Everything
else–the rest of it–he took with him into the grave.
Selfish bastard.
What am I supposed to use to show the world how much I loved you?