Blood And Silver Rise of the Alpha's Rejected Mate novel Chapter 3

Chapter 3

DANE

Hearing that, I relaxed.

Ann hated Evelyn—the woman who’d saved my life. The one I truly loved.

She’d never try to leave me. It would mean letting Evelyn win. As soft as Ann pretended to be, there was steel in her. I knew it.

She didn’t want me to cut the ribbon. She was just desperate for attention, like she always was.

I’d teach her not to pull this sh*t with me.

Besides, in that moment, being free didn’t sound all that bad.

“You’re going to regret this. Without me, you have no connection to wolves at all. Remember that.” I gave her a casual smile.

Then I sliced the ribbon with my claws. It fell in two neat pieces on the ground.

There was a sound like flames snapping, a burst of heat. The threads of magic in the ribbon flickered out.

Then Ann was gone from my mind. For a second, I felt blank. Like the deepest part of me was torn away. I fought not to stagger. My stomach lurched. I swallowed down bile.

Still reeling, I took out my black card and threw it at her.

“Consider that payment for your…services.” I smirked, covering how unsteady I was. “Now clean yourself up. I’m going to find Evelyn. I think I need the company of a woman who knows how to please me.”

That would show her for trying to bait me.

I turned and left the room.

As I closed the door, I heard a muffled sob. It was the most heartbroken sound I’d ever heard.

I froze. I wondered if I was wrong about everything.

Was Ann a victim of her family?

Did she truly love me?

No. It couldn’t be.

This was bullsh*t.

Ann was a liar. Her family were thieves.

Let her cry. She would never actually leave. She’d stay around, begging me to f*ck her again.

Her tears wouldn’t bring back my family or my packmates. Or undo all the damage and trauma her pack had caused.

My wolf growled and paced beneath my skin. My wolf…liked my wife. He craved her.

But my wolf was all passion and instinct, and I had to rely on my human side to be objective. Which meant shaking off these feelings and walking away.

Time to find the woman I actually owed my life to: Evelyn Barclay.

*****

ANN

The pain in my heart was so terrible, I thought I was going to die.

I curled into the couch and sobbed in huge, heaving gasps for hours. Until I was spent and couldn’t cry anymore.

I wished there was someone for me to call. A friend. My family.

But I had no friends, and my family was a pit of poisonous snakes. They hated me for refusing to spy on Dane for them. For choosing him, every single time.

In ways that he would never know.

I stood on shaking legs.

Instead of dwelling on the unbearable pain in both my body and soul, I picked up the torn ribbon and his credit card.

Quietly, I left the office above the club and got a cab back to the penthouse I had tried to call home.

That was another one of Dane’s punishments. He made me live in the city, away from the land and the woods. Away from the wild places.

Even though I didn’t have a wolf anymore, taking me away from the wild nearly gutted me.

Which was exactly what he wanted, because he thought I was one of the people who had gutted him and his pack three years ago.

I never even thought about the morning after pill I left on the couch at the club. I didn’t think about pregnancy at all.