3: I must get her back

Alpha Dorian's POV

"Cryssara, wait."

She does not stop. The lawyer already waits at the door. Her adoptive mother sits pale and silent, her hands twisting in her lap as though wringing out some private grief. Seraphina stands there with her tears glistening. Then the room tilts under me.

Before I can follow her, the elders summon me to the small room. Three of them sit behind the old table, with their faces deepened by wrinkles. the weight of decades pressing down on their expressions. The lawyer has already spoken to them. One elder fixes me with flat, merciless eyes, the kind that have watched a hundred foolish Alphas make the same mistake and choke on the consequences.

"If you want that money, do not accept her rejection," he says, each word a nail driven into the silence.

I stood there, with my hands clenched at my sides, my pulse hammering against my ribs. I never say sorry. I only count what I stand to lose, running the numbers like a man balancing a ledger instead of a marriage.

"I refuse the rejection. At all costs." The words tear out of me.

They nodded, satisfied, as though I have simply confirmed something they already knew about my character. That is enough for them.

I walk out into the empty hallway and stop by the window, letting the old pictures claw their way back to the surface.

She was a shy omega the first day I saw her, serving soup in the kitchen. She is thin-armed, quiet-voiced, barely meeting anyone's eyes. I was a hungry young Alpha with nothing in my stomach and less in my heart, the kind of empty that makes a man grab at anything warm. She slid her own bread onto my plate without asking, her eyes downcast, saying nothing, as if feeding me were the most natural thing in the world.

That small kindness struck something in me, some buried nerve I hadn't known was still alive. She believed in me when no one else bothered. It felt good. It made me feel owed, like the world had finally given me something for free, a debt I never once considered repaying.

Then Seraphina arrived, and everything shattered.

She has a strong wolf. Most beautiful. Most confident wolf in the entire pack. Everything Cryssara was not, she became in sharp, blazing contrast... fighting, leading, commanding every room she entered, making every male's head turn.

Countless males wanted her, and I had to beg for her attention, grovel in ways that shamed me even as I craved more of it. That struggle made her feel like a prize I had won, a trophy to prove I was more than the hungry boy with empty pockets.

I kept our affair buried in secrecy—late meetings, whispered promises, lies stacked upon lies, each one easier to tell than the last. I never imagined Cryssara would discover the truth. Why would she? She stayed quiet, cooked meals, wrote reports, hid herself away in her small room while I burned for someone else, never once questioning why I came to her reeking of another woman's perfume.

If she leaves, the inheritance slips through my fingers. The free labor that keeps the pack house running vanishes with her. My standing with the elders crumbles to dust. My easy, comfortable life collapses, and for the first time in years, fear claws its way up my throat, tightening like a fist.

I whispered it to myself, almost desperate. "I must get her back."

The door opened. Seraphina slips inside, and shuts the door behind her, smiling as though she has already claimed victory, her confidence was an insult on its own.

"You better do it," she says, her voice silky with menace, "or the inheritance money will be gone for good."

I whirl on her, my fury rising fast, hot enough to scorch. "Get out!"

She laughs almost mocking, the sound scraping against my nerves. "Oh, so now you're mad at me? Don't worry. She'll be back soon. She has nowhere else to go."

I close the distance between us until there is barely a breath separating our faces, my voice dropping dangerously low, every word measured and cold. "You do not speak about her till I say so."

She tilts her head, utterly unbothered by my anger, and lets her gaze rake over me with open contempt. "You were the one who chose me. You said I was better than her, and you've never met a wolf like me. Remember?"

"Leave," I snarl, the word scraping raw from my throat.

She does not budge, taking a step closer instead, close enough that her scent claws at my restraint, as if daring me to strike her. "The elders want their money. The pack needs the work she does. You need your easy life. Beg if you must, she always crawls back once you soften your voice."

My jaw clenches so hard it aches, the tension spreading up into my temples, every muscle screaming for release I refuse to give. "I said get out!"

This time she opens the door herself, still smiling, savoring every second of my helplessness as though it were a meal she intended to enjoy slowly. "I'll be waiting," she murmurs almost tenderly, almost cruelly. "Don't take too long."

The door slams behind her, the sound ringing through the empty room. I remain in the small room, counting again—the money, the labor, the name, the life. All of it balanced on her shoulders, all of it taken for granted.

She cooks for forty wolves every single day. She keeps the store's books in order. She writes every report I never read. I never thanked her once. I never thought I needed to. She belongs to me, or so I believed, with the kind of certainty that only now reveals itself as foolishness, a lie I told myself so often it felt like truth.

A guard came in, breathless, his face flushed red with urgency, his chest heaving like he had run the length of the territory.

"Alpha," he gasped, fighting for air between words, "she is leaving. She got into the lawyer's car with the rogue Alpha."