All Chapters of The Alpha's Choice : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

POV: SelinaThe drive back to my apartment was quiet. Jason had fallen asleep almost immediately after we settled him in the backseat, his head resting against the window, chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of someone finally at peace after too much chaos. I sat beside him, one hand resting on his arm, watching the city blur past the glass.Edmond drove, he didn’t say a word, neither did I. But every few minutes, his eyes would find mine in the rearview mirror, and something unbearable would pass between us, the kind of thing that didn’t need words, the kind of thing that hurt worse because of it.“He may be your husband, Alexia, but I own his heart.” I had said it, and I had meant every syllable. But somewhere between that grand exit and this suffocating silence, the weight of what those words actually meant had crashed down on me. He was married, not almost, not in some vague, complicated way that left room for interpretation. He had signed the papers. Alexia’s ring was s

POV: EdmondThree weeks.Twenty-three days, to be exact. I had counted every single one of them like a man serving a sentence, which was exactly what this was, a fucking sentence. It’s a cage dressed up in expensive furniture and a woman who smiled too wide at dinner and called me ‘darling’ in front of staff who didn’t care either way.Alexia had redecorated the east wing guest room. That was where she slept, because that was the only room in this house I had made available to her. She had complained once, loudly, dramatically, with tears that dried suspiciously fast the moment she realized I wasn’t watching. I had stood in the doorway of the master bedroom, looked at her, and said with complete calm,“You wanted a husband just to be a wife, didn’t you?Well, congratulations wifey, you got a last name, you are a wife to a total stranger. Don’t push it, don’t make me take my anger out on you. Enjoy your title and status while it lasts.” I told her, shutting the door in her face. She h

POV: EdmondSaturday was supposed to be simple. I had a full morning of calls scheduled, a lunch with the board that had been rearranged three times and could not reasonably be rearranged a fourth, and an afternoon that belonged entirely to the stack of contracts sitting on my desk judging me quietly every time I walked past.I knew Selina went to the farmer's market on Saturdays.Not the large one downtown that everyone knew about. The smaller one on Whitfield Street, three blocks from her building, the one that set up between the old library and the dry cleaner with the faded yellow sign.She had mentioned it once, months ago, in a conversation that had no reason to stick in my memory as firmly as it had. She had said the tomatoes there were the only ones worth buying in this city, and she had said it with the particular conviction she reserved for things she considered non-negotiable.I had cancelled the lunch with the board by nine-thirty. I told Marcus it was a conflict. He had l

POV: SelinaThe leather of the backseat was cool against my back as she settled her weight onto my lap. Her skirt had ridden up, I noticed this the way I notice weather, immediate and total, and the bare skin of her thighs pressed against the fabric of my trousers."Eddie," she breathed, and her voice had lost its composure, the careful architecture of it crumbling. "Someone could see.""The windows are tinted.""That's not..."I kissed her again before she could finish. Harder this time. Her mouth opened under mine and the sound she made, half relief, half hunger, travelled down my spine and settled low.Her fingers found their way into my hair, gripping, pulling just enough to register as pleasure with an edge. The car had grown warm, or we had, and the windows were beginning to fog in slow circles from the edges inward."I've been losing my mind," I said against her mouth. "Every day. Every single day without you.""Me too." The words came out fractured. "I thought it would get eas

POV: SelinaI didn’t sleep well that night.I lay on my back staring at the ceiling with the restlessness of someone whose body was tired but whose mind had decided sleep was an optional activity, replaying the afternoon in the specific cruel way that memories do when they know they have you cornered.The way he had crouched beside me on the pavement without hesitation. The way he had reorganized the bags like he had been carrying my groceries his entire life.The way he had argued, completely sincerely, for nearly four minutes about why one shop’s tomatoes were categorically superior to another shop’s tomatoes, like this was important information, like this was a hill worth dying on.The way he had laughed when I told him he was being ridiculous.I hadn’t heard him laugh in weeks. I hadn’t realized how much I had been carrying the absence of that sound until it came back and something in me exhaled for the first time since everything fell apart.I turned onto my side and pressed my f