I Accidentally Married The Billionaire Alpha

Elara's pov 

I worked the fabric free and removed the sweater folded between two pairs of jeans.

Three years ago, Derek had wrapped it around my shoulders after I had arrived at his house shivering because Mother had locked me outside. He had kissed my forehead and promised that one day I would never have to go back to her.

“Elara?” Mother called from downstairs. “If you are sulking in that room again, I have no patience for it.”

“I’m going to sleep early.” I pushed the bag beneath my bed and tried to keep my voice steady.

“Then do something useful before you sleep and iron Vivienne’s cream dress. She needs it tomorrow.”

“I’ll do it in the morning.”

“You will do it tonight.”

Her footsteps moved away before I could answer.

At twenty-two, I had become very good at hearing the difference between an order and an invitation to be punished. I waited until the house went quiet, pulled the bag out again, and left the cream dress hanging exactly where it was.

Derek had told me to come at eleven. We would drive beyond Voss territory before sunrise, marry somewhere Mother could not interfere, and begin again.

I had believed every word. By the time I reached Derek’s building, my palms were damp around the strap of my bag. His downstairs door was unlocked.

“Derek?” I called after stepping inside. No answer came from the sitting room.

Then I heard a woman laugh upstairs. I knew that laugh. I had spent twenty-one years listening to Vivienne use it whenever a man complimented her, whenever Mother bought her something we could not afford, whenever she had managed to make me look foolish without appearing cruel.

My bag slipped from my shoulder and landed beside the stairs. I climbed without picking it up.

“Derek, stop,” Vivienne said from behind his bedroom door, although the laughter in her voice asked for the opposite.

My hand stayed on the handle long enough for me to understand that I still had a choice. Then the door opened beneath my hand.

Vivienne was in his bed. The sheet covered her chest. Derek was beside her, bare from the waist up, and the first thing he did was reach for his trousers instead of saying my name.

“Elara.” Vivienne gathered the sheet around herself. “You’re early.”

“I’m exactly on time.”

Derek dragged his trousers on. “You shouldn’t have come in without knocking.”

I looked at him because surely there had to be more than that. “We were leaving tonight.”

“I know what I said.”

“You told me to pack everything I wanted to keep.”

His gaze dropped toward the doorway, where my bag waited downstairs like an obedient little fool.

Vivienne tucked her hair behind one ear. “Maybe you should let him explain before you make this uglier.”

“I haven’t said a word to you.”

“You never have to. You stand there with that wounded face and make everyone else feel guilty for having a life.”

“Vivienne, enough,” Derek said.

She settled against his pillow as though she belonged there.

I turned back to him. “How long?”

“Elara, this isn’t how I wanted you to find out.”

“How long, Derek?”

“A few weeks.”

Vivienne gave a soft laugh. “Three months.”

He shot her a warning look.

“You were still planning this morning,” I said. “You sent me a message telling me not to lose my nerve.”

“I was trying to figure out how to tell you.”

“You could have started with the truth.”

Derek rubbed a hand over his face. “What future did you think we were going to have? I kept telling myself love would be enough, and maybe when we were sixteen it sounded noble, but we aren’t children anymore.”

I had heard Mother use that same tone when she discussed me with men twice my age. As if the problem was a sum I had failed to solve.

“What does Vivienne have that makes your future so much better?”

“You know what she has.”

I did, but I asked him anyway. “My wolf?”

“Vivienne has a strong silver wolf and connections through your mother. I’m trying to move up in my pack. People already talk about you, Elara. They ask why I’m with a woman who can’t even transform.”

“So you slept with my sister because people talk.”

“I fell for her because she understands the life I’m trying to build.”

Vivienne’s satisfaction was almost gentle. She had wanted this moment long before she wanted Derek.

I nodded once and walked out.

“Elara, wait.” Derek followed me to the top of the stairs. “I don’t want you going home alone like this.”

“I managed twenty-two years before you decided I was defective. I can manage the walk.”

“I never called you defective.”

“You found prettier words.” I picked up my bag and left before he could give me another one.

Rain had started by the time I reached our street. The sweater in my bag felt heavier with every step, and when I reached the rubbish bins outside our house, I pulled it free and pushed it into the nearest one.

The front door opened before I touched the handle.  

Mother stood beneath the porch light in a silk robe, irritation already arranged across her face. “Where have you been?”

“I went to see Derek.”

“At this hour? Have you completely lost whatever little sense you had?”

“I’m tired, Mother.”

“You can sleep after you listen to me. Gerald Whitmore finally agreed to my terms.”

I stopped on the threshold. She had been trying to sell me to Gerald for almost a month. He was wealthy, widowed twice, and old enough to remember Mother as a girl.

“I told you I wasn’t marrying him.”

“You have told me many foolish things. Tomorrow morning, you will go to the courthouse, and this time you will not embarrass me.”

I looked past her toward the staircase. Vivienne’s cream dress hung over the banister, waiting for me to iron it.

Mother snapped her fingers. “Are you listening?”

“What time?”

Her irritation faltered. “Nine.”

“Where?”

“I’ll give you the address in the morning. Gerald is offering enough to clear most of what your father left behind, so I expect you to behave with some gratitude.”

I should have fought. I had fought every other time, sometimes quietly and sometimes until she threatened to put me out.

Tonight, I could not find the part of myself that still believed refusal would save me.

“Fine,” I said, meeting my mother’s eyes. “I’ll marry him tomorrow.”