All Chapters of Dumped By The Alpha, I Married His Stepbrother: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The next morning, I spent an hour in front of the mirror covering the slap mark on my left cheek with layers of foundation. My hands were wrapped in thin flesh-colored bandages, the cuts from the porcelain was still throbbing. I pressed my fabric down past my wrists, and made sure everything was hidden, and then sat for a long moment looking at my own reflection.From the courtyard three floors below, I could already hear the celebration building. Music filtering up through the windows, champagne glasses clinking, the warm rumble of voices as pack members arrived in their finest clothes and greeted each other like they were gathered for the happiest occasion in recent memory. The three-year vow renewal of Alpha Caleb and his Luna. A celebration of enduring love. A symbol of pack unity and strength.The bedroom door swung open and Chloe came in bouncing.She was my best friend. She had been since we were seven years old, which meant she had been in my life longer than almost anyone. Sh

"Miss?" A voice very close to my ear. Deep and deliberate. "Can you hear me? Can you squeeze my hand at all?"Voices pulled me up from somewhere far below. My body felt completely foreign and heavy.I tried to move my fingers, but nothing responded.Another voice from farther off came, flat and brisk: "Don't waste your energy, Marcus. Her brain activity has been barely registering for months. Change the IV bag and let's get to room 406."Months.The word struck something in me like a match striking flint.My eyes opened.I saw a white ceiling, cold fluorescent light, and a steady, rhythmic beeping somewhere to my left. The doctor standing beside the bed went completely still the moment our eyes connected. He stared at me for exactly two seconds. Then his clipboard hit the tile floor and he turned and ran out of the room."She's awake! Get the chief of surgery, room 402 is awake!"I swallowed. My throat was dry as chalk. My arms were heavy with tubes and wires, and when I tried to lift

Morning came in through a gap in the blinds, thin and gray, and I lay there for a long time before I let myself move, memorizing the ceiling the same way I had memorized my own face the night before. Somewhere down the hall, a cart wheel squeaked against tile. Somewhere closer, my own heartbeat filled the silence like something trying to talk me out of what I'd already agreed to.Corinne came in a little after seven, clipboard in hand, her expression giving away nothing."You slept?""Some.""Good. You'll want whatever rest you got. This will take most of the day."Two orderlies wheeled a gurney in behind her, and my stomach dropped the way it had the moment the anesthesiologist first counted me down the night before, except this time there was no anesthesia yet, just the slow, deliberate approach of something irreversible."Once we begin," Corinne said, checking the line already in my arm, "there's no pausing halfway through to ask if you've changed your mind. I need you certain.""I

"You're calling him now?"Lucien already had the phone against his ear, his back to me, his shoulders set in a way I hadn't seen since the morning he first offered me his hand."Answer, old man." His voice was low. Controlled. "I know you're awake."I sat frozen in the wheelchair, the laptop screen still glowing between us, the transfer to his father's account burning itself into my memory. Four years. Long before Caleb had ever looked twice in my direction.The line connected. I couldn't hear the other side, only Lucien's face changing as he listened, hardening by degrees."I have a record in front of me," he said. "A transfer to your personal account. Six months before Caleb married Elena Kingsley."Silence."Don't tell me you don't remember it. I'm looking at the routing number right now."I gripped the arms of the wheelchair."Then explain it to me," Lucien said. "Because right now it looks like you funded the exact scheme that got her parents killed."Whatever answer came through

"What did he find."Lucien's voice was low, controlled, the same tone he used right before something in him went cold and immovable.Alaric didn't answer immediately. He glanced once more toward the dark glass, then back at his son, choosing his words the way a man chooses footing on ice."According to my source, Caleb had Victoria's background quietly reviewed after the wedding," Alaric said. "Standard precaution for any new Luna. He expected to find nothing more than family history he already knew.""And instead.""Instead he found gaps. Records that don't line up with the timeline she gave him. A stretch of eighteen months, several years back, where there's almost no trace of her at all. No pack registry entries. No medical records. Nothing."I sat frozen behind the glass, my mind racing back through every memory I had of Victoria during that period, searching for anything that might explain an eighteen month gap I'd never once noticed."What was she doing during that time," Lucien