After My Alpha Chose My Best Friend Over Me

The basement smelled like mildew and shame.

I'd been down here for seven days. Seven days of scrubbing floors I used to walk across in heels. Seven days of sleeping on a cot that squeaked every time I breathed. Seven days of pretending I didn't hear the laughter upstairs, the music, the life that went on without me.

My knees ached from kneeling. My hands were raw from bleach.

I was on the third floor, polishing the marble in the hallway outside the Alpha's private quarters, when I heard her heels clicking toward me.

Millie.

I kept my head down, scrubbing harder.

"Oh, Naomi," she said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "You missed a spot."

I looked up just in time to see her tip her wine glass. Red liquid splashed across the white marble, spreading like blood.

"Oops," she said, smiling. "Better clean that up before it stains."

I grabbed my rag. My hands shook.

"You know," Millie continued, examining her nails, "your father would be so proud. His daughter, the pup killer, scrubbing floors. Really living up to the family name."

The rag stilled in my hand.

"What did you say?"

"Oh, come on. Everyone knows what you did. Stealing from the pack. Dealing with rogues. How many pups died because of the resources you stole, Naomi? How many families did you destroy?"

I wanted to scream that I'd taken the fall for Reed. That I'd sacrificed everything. That the only pup who died was mine, alone in a cell while she was probably warming his bed.

But I said nothing. I just scrubbed.

Millie's laugh echoed down the hallway as she walked away.

That night, I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about my sketchbooks—the ones I'd filled in prison, the ones that had kept me sane. I'd asked about them when I arrived, but no one knew where my belongings had gone.

I needed to see them. To hold something that was mine.

I slipped out of the basement and moved through the Pack House like a ghost. I checked the storage rooms, the archives, anywhere they might have put a criminal's possessions.

Nothing.

Then I smelled smoke.

I followed it to the garden, to the fire pit behind the rose bushes. Orange flames licked at the night sky.

And there was Millie, feeding pages into the fire.

My pages.

My sketches.

Three years of architectural drawings, of dreams, of the only beauty I'd been able to create in that hell—all of it curling into ash.

"No," I whispered.

Millie turned, her face glowing in the firelight. "Oh good, you're here. I wanted you to see this."

She held up my last sketchbook, the one with my father's name inscribed on the cover. The one he'd given me for my sixteenth birthday.

"This one's my favorite," she said, and tossed it into the flames.

Something inside me snapped.

Not broke. Snapped. Like a rope pulled too tight, finally giving way.

I turned and walked back to the basement. I packed my few belongings into a pillowcase—a change of clothes, a bar of soap, thirty-seven dollars. And hidden beneath a loose floorboard where I'd stashed it, my father's Gamma badge. The only thing of his I had left.

I waited until midnight, until the storm rolled in and the Pack House filled with noise and celebration for some Alpha ceremony I didn't care about.

Then I crawled into the drainage pipe.

I'd designed this system five years ago, back when Reed's father wanted to expand the gardens. I knew every tunnel, every outlet. I knew this one led straight past the border patrols.

The pipe was tight and dark and smelled like rot, but I crawled.

I emerged a quarter mile from the border, rain hammering down, thunder shaking the ground.

I ran.

Behind me, someone shouted. Patrol. They'd seen me.

I ran faster, my lungs burning, my legs screaming. The border was close. So close.

The river appeared through the trees—swollen and raging, churning with debris.

Footsteps pounded behind me. Voices yelling for me to stop.

I reached the bank and looked back. Three warriors, shifting mid-run, their wolves massive and fast.

I looked at the river. At the certain death waiting in those black waters.

Then I jumped.

The cold hit me like a fist. The current grabbed me, dragged me under, spun me until I didn't know which way was up. My lungs burned. My limbs went numb.

I broke the surface once, gasped for air, then went under again.

When I finally washed up on the opposite bank, I couldn't move. Couldn't think. The world was gray and spinning.

Then I smelled it.

Pine. Rain. Raw power.

A massive black wolf stood over me, its eyes glowing amber in the darkness.

I should have been afraid. Should have run.

But when it nudged me with its nose, something sparked. Electricity shot through my body, warm and alive and so intense I gasped.

My hand reached up, touched its fur.

The spark became lightning.

"Mate," I whispered.

Then the world went black.

When consciousness flickered back for just a moment, I felt warmth. Fabric against my skin. Arms lifting me.

And that scent, stronger now, wrapping around me like a promise.

Pine. Rain. Power.

Home.