CHAPTER 4: The Supreme Alpha

Xavier's POV

The ballroom had gone from celebration to chaos in under a minute, and I was still standing exactly where Maya had left me, trying to make sense of what had just happened in front of every pack elder who mattered.

"Who was that?" Priya's voice had lost its earlier sweetness, gone tight and sharp instead. "Xavier. Who was that man?"

I didn't answer right away, because I was still watching the terrace doors where he'd been standing, running through every face I knew, every Alpha I'd ever been introduced to, coming up with nothing that matched.

Then one of the elders — old Beta Marcus, who'd served three Alphas before me and forgotten more pack history than I'd ever learn — went pale beside me.

"Xavier." His voice had dropped to something like reverence. "Do you understand who that was?"

"Clearly not," I snapped.

"That was Damon Ashford."

The name landed in my chest like a physical blow.

I'd heard that name my entire life the way you hear about weather systems too large to argue with. Supreme Alpha. The single most powerful wolf in the territory, holding authority over every pack including my own, a man whose audience I'd been formally requesting for three years without so much as a reply.

"That's impossible," I said, though even as I said it, some part of me already knew it wasn't. "He never attends events like this. He hasn't been seen at a pack function in years."

"He was here tonight," Marcus said quietly. "And your former fiancée just kissed him in front of the entire Black Fang leadership."

I turned back toward the terrace, but he was already gone.

Every Alpha in the room who'd witnessed it had gone quiet in a very particular way — not the earlier gossip-hungry silence, but something closer to fear. I understood it immediately, because I felt it too. Whatever had just happened between Maya and Damon Ashford wasn't a spectacle anymore. It was a problem. A very large one, and it had my name attached to it.

"Xavier." Priya's hand tightened on my arm. "What does this mean?"

I didn't answer her, because I honestly didn't know, and for the first time all night, I wasn't sure the win I'd just claimed in front of the whole pack was actually a win at all.

***

Maya's POV

I cried the entire drive home, and then again once I got there, curled up on the same couch where I'd watched my entire future dissolve into a livestream a few hours earlier.

By the time the tears finally stopped, it was almost two in the morning, and the full weight of what I'd done had settled into my chest like a stone.

I'd kissed a complete stranger. In front of Xavier. In front of Priya. In front of three hundred pack members who would spend the next week talking about nothing else.

It hadn't been about him at all, not really. I didn't even know his name. I'd needed an escape, a way to walk out of that ballroom with even a scrap of dignity intact, and I'd used a stranger's mouth to do it without a single thought for what it might cost him.

Except it hadn't felt like nothing, had it?

I pressed my fingers lightly against my own lips, remembering the way his whole body had gone rigid, the gold flooding into his eyes, the sound he'd made low in his throat like something had been unlocked against his will. I didn't understand what that meant. I didn't have a wolf, hadn't ever felt anything like a mate bond in my entire life, and yet something about that single kiss had felt less like an act and more like a collision I hadn't seen coming.

I told myself it didn't matter. Whoever he was, I'd probably never see him again, and even if I did, I owed him an apology at best, not whatever my traitorous mind kept circling back to at two in the morning.

I fell asleep still fully dressed on top of my covers, exhausted in a way that went bone-deep, and didn't dream about anything at all.

***

I woke to the sound of car doors.

Several of them, in quick succession, followed by a low murmur of voices outside that was distinctly too coordinated to be regular street noise. I dragged myself upright, disoriented, the previous night crashing back into me all at once — the livestream, the ballroom, the kiss — and stumbled toward my window still half-convinced I was dreaming.

I wasn't.

Three black SUVs, polished to a mirror shine, were parked directly outside my building, taking up space that technically belonged to at least four different apartments. A small crowd of neighbors had already gathered on the sidewalk, several of them holding up phones, a couple of kids from the building next door practically vibrating with excitement at whatever they thought they were about to witness.

My stomach dropped.

I didn't know who I expected to step out of that convoy. I hadn't let myself think that far ahead. But some instinct, some quiet certainty settling low in my chest, told me exactly whose morning I was about to become a part of, long before the driver's door of the lead SUV opened at all.