The Alpha's Regret

The champagne tasted like victory.

I stood in the corner of the Bellworth Gallery, watching Seattle's elite drift between my paintings like well-dressed ghosts. They clinked glasses, murmured appreciatively, and occasionally glanced at the small cards beside each piece that listed prices most of them wouldn't blink at.

Six figures. My art was selling for six figures.

Five years ago, I couldn't have imagined this moment. Five years ago, I was a broken girl sobbing into her pillow, wondering if the pain in her chest would ever stop. Now I was Wren Mercer, rising star of the Pacific Northwest art scene, dressed in a sleek black dress that cost more than my first apartment's rent.

"You're brooding again."

I turned to find Vera at my elbow, her dark curls piled artfully on her head, a knowing smirk on her crimson lips. My best friend had a sixth sense for catching me in moments of unwanted introspection.

"I'm not brooding," I said. "I'm observing. There's a difference."

"Uh-huh." She sipped her champagne, unconvinced. "You have that look. The one that says you're about to spiral into some deep, dark corner of your psyche and I'll have to drag you out with wine and trashy reality TV."

I couldn't help but smile. Vera Santos had been my lifeline since I'd arrived in Seattle, shattered and desperate to become someone new. She didn't know the full story—couldn't know, not without knowing what I really was—but she'd never pushed. She just... stayed.

"I'm fine," I said. "Really. This is everything I wanted."

It wasn't a lie. Not entirely. This *was* everything I'd worked for. Every late night in my cramped studio, every rejection letter, every moment I'd poured my heartbreak onto canvas until it transformed into something beautiful—it had all led here.

So why did I feel so hollow?

"Ms. Mercer?"

I turned to find a gallery assistant approaching, tablet in hand. "The collector from New York is asking about *Shattered Moon*. He's very interested in a private commission."

I nodded, slipping into professional mode. "I'll be right there."

Vera squeezed my arm. "Go. Schmooze. Make obscene amounts of money. I'll guard the champagne."

The collector was a silver-haired man with kind eyes and a wedding ring that probably cost more than my car. He wanted a companion piece to *Shattered Moon*—my largest work, a canvas dominated by a fractured lunar surface bleeding crimson into darkness below.

I didn't tell him what it represented. I never did. Let them see beauty in the wreckage. Let them find their own meaning in the chaos I'd expelled from my soul.

We were mid-negotiation when I saw it through the gallery's floor-to-ceiling windows.

A motorcycle.

Black, sleek, chrome catching the streetlights as it rumbled past. The rider was just a silhouette, leather-clad and anonymous, but my heart slammed against my ribs like it was trying to escape.

*It's not him. It's never him. He's a thousand miles away.*

"Ms. Mercer? Are you alright?"

I blinked, forcing my attention back to the collector. My hands were trembling. I pressed them flat against my thighs, willing the shake away.

"I'm fine," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "Where were we?"

But for the rest of the night, I couldn't shake the feeling. That prickle at the back of my neck. That phantom ache in my chest that I'd spent five years learning to ignore.

The bond.

It was still there, buried deep, a splinter I couldn't remove no matter how hard I tried. Most days I could pretend it didn't exist. Most days I was Wren Mercer, successful artist, independent woman, master of her own destiny.

But some nights—nights like this, when the moon hung heavy and full outside the window—I remembered.

I remembered being twenty-one, dizzy with hope, feeling that golden thread snap into place between us.

I remembered his face. The horror in his steel-gray eyes.

I remembered the words that broke me.

*"You're like a sister to me, Wren. You'll only ever be a sister."*

By the time I got home, my mask was cracking. I kicked off my heels, poured myself a glass of wine I didn't really want, and stood before the one painting I'd never sell.

It hung in my bedroom, hidden from gallery owners and collectors and everyone who thought they knew me. A portrait I'd painted in those first agonizing months, when I couldn't stop seeing his face no matter how hard I tried.

Skyler Voss.

Dark hair. Steel eyes. That jaw sharp enough to cut glass. I'd captured him perfectly—the arrogance, the intensity, the hint of something softer he only showed when he thought no one was watching.

I hated that painting. I hated that I couldn't destroy it.

My phone buzzed on the counter. Mom. I let it go to voicemail, like I always did. The guilt was a familiar weight, but not heavy enough to make me answer. Not heavy enough to risk hearing about home, about the pack, about *him*.

I finished my wine, showered off the gallery's lingering perfume, and crawled into bed.

Sleep came slowly, and when it did,I dreamed of forests and moonlight and a black wolf howling at a blood-red sky.