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Home / The Alpha Chose My Best Friend, I Abandoned Him / Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

All Chapters of The Alpha Chose My Best Friend, I Abandoned Him: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

14 Chapters

Chapter 1

The year I got Clara away from the mate who beat her, I paid for the treatment to break their mark myself, bought the Bayview apartment, and funded a high-end clothing boutique for her.Damian did not like her back then. He said Clara was twenty-nine and still could not get through a single full moon night alone, and that sooner or later she would drag me down. It was the first time I ever fought with my own fated mate over someone else."She saved my life when we were kids," I told Damian. "As long as she needs me, I'll take care of her."Six months later I wrapped up the European roadshow and came back to Seattle early. I did not tell Damian, and I did not tell Clara. I wanted to surprise them.By the time the driver dropped me at Clara's Closet, the store had closed for the night. Only the back room was still lit. Damian's black SUV was parked outside the staff entrance, and the Blackpine wolf's head on his license plate stood out in the rain like a mark.I assumed he had come by ag

Chapter 2

The next morning I moved the other ninety-eight dresses and their receipts into a rented storage unit and took only the ninety-ninth with me to the Bayview apartment.The apartment was in my name. After Clara got away from the mate who beat her, she was afraid to live alone, so I paid for it outright and paid again to have it renovated. She said the sound of the bay calmed her, so I gave her the master bedroom. I never spent a single night there.Now Damian's shoes were in the entryway. A matching pair of toothbrushes sat by the sink. On the nightstand stood a photo of the two of them kissing by the water. A date was written on the back: April ninth. That was the day Damian told me he had to take one of Blackpine's elders to the hospital and might not be able to video call.Clara stood in the living room in a loose white dress. When she saw the gift box in my hand, her arm went to her stomach without thinking."Evelyn, what are you doing here?""Seeing when the apartment I bought turne

Chapter 3

The next morning I went to Blackpine Group anyway.My badge failed at the lobby turnstile. The receptionist would not look at me and said only that the notice had just come down from the CEO's office. I asked her to call the head of administration and stood in the lobby for ten minutes. In the end a security guard brought out a cardboard box holding my personal things, my spare shoes, and five years of awards.My office had already gone to Damian's cousin. Every project permission was frozen and my old team had been broken up. A few longtime employees stepped out of the elevator, saw the box, and stopped where they were."Ms. Hart, what happens to the annual project?""Follow whatever the company has arranged now."I was not going to make them pick a side that morning. Damian was waiting for me to walk out with something so he could cast me as an ex who had stolen company assets.My phone rang. Damian told me to come up to the top-floor conference room.He sat behind the desk I had onc

Chapter 4

Seraphina's private plane landed in Seattle the next afternoon.She did not come herself. She sent her younger brother Rowan, two lawyers, and a doctor who knew old wolfsbane injuries.Rowan was quieter than I expected. He read the agreement through and did not open with a promise to fix it. He asked whether there were emails, cameras, or witnesses from the day I signed. "You can sue over how this signature was obtained," he said, "but litigation takes time. The fastest route is to pay the penalty first so you're free to work immediately, then use the evidence to claw it back.""I'll pay the penalty back.""Seraphina says that money becomes your equity stake in the new company. You're not taking charity. You're coming in with projects and with skill."I looked up at him. He did not offer pity for the state I was in and he did not tell me everything would be fine. He just laid out every risk in plain terms. It was the first time in days that I could breathe.For the next three days I st

Chapter 5

A week before the full moon mating ceremony, my adoptive mother Margaret called.Her voice was full of joy. "Clara finally told us. She's pregnant, and she's holding a mating ceremony with an Alpha heir who's willing to take responsibility. She says his name stays a secret until the day. Evelyn, you have to come. Your blessing is the one she wants most."I held the phone and did not answer right away. Margaret still had no idea who the man was."By the way, when are you and Damian holding yours?" she asked, laughing. "Thomas has been going on about it for months. He says he's walking you up there himself.""Soon," I said. Whatever was between us, it would be settled soon enough. "Did Clara tell you his name?""She wants to surprise us at the ceremony. That girl has been through so much, and now she finally has a family of her own."I closed my eyes. The Reids had saved me and had genuinely treated me as their daughter. They did not know the truth, and the shame was not theirs to carry

Chapter 6

"Because he is."I answered calmly.Margaret swayed and Thomas caught her. Clara gathered up her skirt and ran down from the stage."Mom, it isn't what you think. Evelyn and Damian ended it a long time ago. They just never made it public. We didn't betray her.""Ended it a long time ago?" Margaret looked at me with the last of her hope in her voice.I did not preserve anyone's dignity. "Before I left for Europe, he was still planning our mating ceremony with me. On the day of Clara's prenatal appointment, he was still calling me his future Luna." I put the message back up on the screen.Clara's hands went to her stomach. "I know I was wrong, but I'm pregnant. Mom, I only wanted this baby to have a real family."Damian pulled free of the security officers and went to stand beside her. "Mrs. Reid, all of this is on me. I fell for Clara first, and I made the decision to choose her." He wanted to look like an Alpha shouldering everything, and yet he never denied a single piece of evidence.

Chapter 7

The day after the ceremony, I went to Silverbank to sign.Before the contract was even open, a letter from Blackpine's lawyers arrived. Damian had frozen every project file I had run and had put the word out across the industry that if I took a single employee, client, or idea with me, Blackpine would sue for trade secret violation.Seraphina tossed the letter on the table. "He's finally remembered you were more than a fated mate.""He always knew," I said. "That's exactly why he won't let go."That afternoon I went back to Blackpine to hand over my work.The whole floor was unnaturally quiet. My old team sat at their desks and not one of them had a project file open. Damian came into the conference room with three lawyers. In a single day his face had gone gaunt, and his collar could not cover the claw marks down the side of his neck."Everything you produced in the last five years belongs to Blackpine," he said. "The team signed NDAs and the client contracts are in the company's name

Chapter 8

Before I left Seattle, I made one last trip to the Reid house.Margaret had aged overnight. She held my hand and said she was willing to make Clara move out, that she could stop seeing her for good."There's no need," I said. "She's your own daughter. You can go on loving her. I'm just not carrying the consequences for her anymore."I kept the retirement account I had set up for them and told them that taking care of them was my choice, not proof that I owed Clara anything. Thomas apologized. He said that all these years they had only seen how capable I was and assumed I did not need protecting. "We always thought Clara was the fragile one, that it wouldn't cost you much to give a little more," he said. "But every time you gave in, we were cutting something off you and handing it to her."I did not comfort him. They needed to hold on to that guilt, or the next time they would ask me again to be the reasonable one.Then I sent Clara formal notice. I withdrew the supplier guarantees, the

Chapter 9

A week after I left Seattle, Damian lost control on the first full moon.When Blackpine's doctor called, I was at the new company going over an office lease."Mr. Cross's wolf is refusing sedatives. He's looking for your scent.""We ended the bond.""That's exactly why it's this bad. Could you come back for one night?"I looked at the lease on the table. "No."There was a silence on the other end. "If he hurts someone—""That's a problem for his doctor, his family, and his current mate."I still sent over the standard treatment protocol I had used, with none of my scent and nothing personal in it. That was help for members of the pack who had done nothing wrong, not a mate's duty carried on.I only learned later that Clara demanded Damian complete the mark that same night. After the public ceremony collapsed, she still was not officially Luna. She was afraid he would change his mind, and afraid everyone would see her as a stopgap who could never replace me.Damian agreed. He put a mate

Chapter 10

Silverbank Brand Company's first project was rebidding for the Aston Group's North American annual launch.Damian bid too. Blackpine came in below cost and told suppliers it had worked with for years that signing with Silverbank meant losing Blackpine's business permanently.The first to pull out was a lighting company we had worked with for eight years. The owner called to apologize and said he had forty employees and could not take the risk of losing Blackpine's standing orders. I did not ask him to pick a side out of sentiment. I had the team rerun the budget. Within two days we had contacted twenty-seven new suppliers and found three smaller ones willing to carry part of the risk with us.People questioned whether smaller vendors could guarantee quality, so I broke every technical stage into separate tests and invited the client to watch the results in person. We did not trade on Seraphina's name for loyalty. We built the first partnership on clear contracts, money up front, and a

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