All Chapters of One Mate Was Never Enough : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

POV: ChloeThe summons buzzed through my desk intercom. Tristan's clipped, professional voice asked me to bring the quarterly reports to his office. Nothing out of the ordinary for a Tuesday at Blackwood Industries. Except...Ethan had left the building twenty minutes ago. And Tristan never handled quarterly reports himself. I gathered the folders anyway, smoothing my skirt before standing. Tristan's office door was cracked open."Come in, Chloe." He spoke before I even knocked, his voice curling around my name. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. He wasn't at his desk. Instead, he stood near the far wall, the one bordering my office, with his palm pressed flat against the surface.His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, tie hanging loose. The posture screamed casual, but the tension in his rigid shoulders sucked the oxygen right out of the room."The reports," I said, holding up the folders. My voice sounded much steadier than I felt."Set them on the desk." I did as to

POV: Chloe That name hit me like a bucket of ice water. My hands, still reaching out for him, dropped limply to my sides.“Why are you doing this?” My voice cracked. “Tris, why are you punishing me like this?”His jaw ticked. For a split second, an old, festering wound flickered in his eyes.“You’re the one punishing me,” he countered quietly. “You’ve been punishing me for... For...”A sob tore from my throat. I couldn’t even say the words out loud.“You’ve become a complete stranger. This...” I gestured wildly at the glass wall, at him, at the toxic air suffocating us. “This isn’t the Tristan I knew. He was warm. Kind. He would never...”“Don’t.” The command sliced through the room like a blade. Tristan’s face went dead pale. His hands balled into fists, and his voice dropped to a lethal whisper. “He died, Chloe. That bright, sunny wolf you loved died that night. And do you know exactly who killed him?”My lungs seized. He didn’t have to say the name out loud. The unspoken answer hu

POV: Chloe The gift bag appeared on my desk on a Wednesday morning like it owned the place.No note, no sender name. Just cream tissue paper folded back with deliberate elegance, revealing fabric that caught the light in a way that made my breath stop.It’s a limited edition designer dress in the exact shade of dusty rose I had once lingered over in a magazine and immediately closed because wanting things like that felt irresponsible.I lifted it out with both hands and just stood there. It was my exact size, my perfect size.Of course it was...He had measured every inch of me himself, masking it as work while his hands wandered around my body. That sleek bastard, this has been his plan,this is why he’d taken my measurements.I set the dress down and looked up, instinctively, before I could stop myself. I looked toward the glass wall at the exact direction where he’d shown me his one way glass. I couldn't see him. I never could, from my side. The entire point of one-way glass was t

POV: Chloe Tristan's frown was immediate, a slight, sharp crease between his brows, the expression of a man unaccustomed to being refused small things by the one person he wanted them from most.He reached again…This time his hand closed over mine before I could move, fingers lacing through with a firm grip, as if demanding my submission.He drew me in against his side with the quiet authority of someone who had already decided this argument was finished."Behave," he said, low and even, when I shifted my weight trying to put space between us. I let out a breath that was more or less a laugh, except it wasn't funny. "Forgive me, Alpha," I said, keeping my voice sweet and level and pointed as a blade, "I would hate to accidentally offend you or one of your lovers at an important event like this."“I would hate to cross another one of your mistresses tonight,” I said in a sarcastic tone.The sound he made, a soft exhale, almost a chuckle, warm and completely undeserved, made me want

POV: Chloe His breathing was still ragged. But it was slowing. I sat on the edge of the bed and covered his hand with mine, and I talked, about nothing, about the banquet, about a ridiculous thing Marcus had said at the office last week I felt the tension in him gradually, painfully, begin to release. Behind me, I was distantly aware of Tristan doing something I'd never done before and couldn't fully process.It was a shift, partial and controlled, the Alpha wolf surfacing to press its authority against Ethan's unstable one. The room felt different when he did it. It felt denser, like weather before lightning.When I turned briefly to look, I understood why the nurse had backed against the wall. Two wolves. Two enormous, beautiful, devastatingly powerful wolves, one silver-grey and barely leashed, one black and massive and controlled.Both were present in the room in a way that transcended the men standing there. Tristan's wolf was bigger, ilder. The difference between them was the