All Chapters of The Alpha Betrayed Mate: Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

5 Years Ago. Clay came for me just before the sun climbed high enough to bleach the mist from the valley. I knew the sound of his footsteps, steady and certain, the way a man walks when he believes the world is already arranged in his favour. By the time he reached my door, I was no longer there. I had excused myself when I saw Selene approaching, too. I felt they planned it and did not want to be caught unprepared. Selene received him. I lingered in the corridor, pressed against the cold stone wall, my breath shallow as I listened. The Council chamber lay just beyond the archway, its doors ajar. I had meant to enter with my head high, to walk beside Clay as his chosen mate, as the woman whose name alre

5 Years Ago.The night of the ritual arrived, and everyone was expectant, including those who had objected to the marriage.The moon hung impossibly full above Silvercrest, so bright it painted the forest in pale fire. It was not merely watching us. It was waiting.I stood barefoot at the heart of the sacred clearing, the cold earth pressed into my soles, the ancient runes carved into the stones glowing faintly beneath my feet. The air tasted different here. Older and charged with a power that made my wolf stir restlessly beneath my skin, pacing, alert, reverent.This place had witnessed the birth of Alphas, the fall of tyrants, and the binding of souls meant to alter the course of packs. Tonight, it would witness me.Clay stood opposite me, stripped of his armour, clad only in ritual black. His broad shoulders were rigid, his jaw set, but I could feel the tremor beneath his control. His wolf was close to the surface, pressing, testing, sensing the Goddess the same way mine did.Betwe

The forest had always known me before I knew myself.When the walls of Silvercrest began to feel like a cage and every corridor echoed with whispers I could not outrun, I came here. Beyond the sentry paths, beyond the reach of council eyes and pack laws, the forest opened its arms without judgment. The moon hung low, caught between the branches like a secret it had not yet decided to keep.I walked until my legs burned, and my thoughts tangled into something sharp and unkind.I should not have come alone.I knew that.But solitude was the only thing that still felt like mine.