After My Mate Sheltered His First Love, I Left

The drive to my parents' estate took forty minutes, but I don't remember any of it.

I must have navigated the turns, must have stopped at the traffic lights, must have shifted gears—but my mind was somewhere else entirely, running calculations in the cold, quiet space where my grief should have been.

Vera was silent. Not absent—never absent—but waiting. Watchful.

The gates opened before I reached them. My father's security had already been alerted. By the time I pulled into the circular drive, my cousin was bursting through the front door like she'd been shot from a cannon, her dark hair flying behind her, her face flushed with fury.

"I'm going to kill him," she announced before I'd even cut the engine. "I'm going to shift and rip his throat out and leave his corpse for the crows—"

"Emma." I climbed out of the car, and she stopped mid-rant, her eyes scanning my face with the kind of sharp, assessing attention that came from growing up in the same Alpha household. "I need Dad's financial auditors. Now."

She blinked. "What?"

"The pack ledgers." I closed the car door with deliberate precision, feeling the satisfying click of the latch. "I still have my Beta-mate credentials. I can access Black Moon's treasury records. I need someone who knows how to read them properly."

Emma's expression shifted from rage to something sharper, more focused. "You think he took more than what he admitted?"

"I know he did."

I walked past her into the house, into the familiar cool dimness of the entrance hall with its polished floors and the scent of my mother's preferred cedar sachets. My father emerged from his study before I'd made it three steps, his Alpha presence filling the space with that particular quality of absolute authority that never needed to announce itself.

He took one look at my face and said, "Office. Now."

Twenty minutes later, I was seated at the massive oak desk in my father's private office with my laptop open and two of his most trusted financial auditors flanking me like sentries. Emma had claimed the leather chair in the corner, her legs tucked beneath her, watching with the intensity of a wolf guarding a kill.

My fingers moved across the keyboard with mechanical precision, entering credentials, navigating security protocols, pulling up spreadsheets that should have been routine pack accounting.

They weren't routine.

"There." Marcus Chen, the senior auditor, leaned forward and tapped the screen. "That's a flagged transaction. Large withdrawal, coded as 'emergency infrastructure repair.' But look at the date—"

"Three days after Juliana showed up the first time," I finished. My voice sounded distant to my own ears. "Six months ago."

"And there." Linda Okonkwo, the junior auditor, had pulled up a parallel spreadsheet on her tablet. "Another one. 'Security system upgrade.' But your pack house doesn't have a new security system, does it?"

"No."

I clicked through to the next month. And the next. And the next.

The pattern emerged like a body surfacing from deep water—slow, inevitable, obscene.

Collin had been stealing from Black Moon Pack's treasury for six months. Not just the emergency fund he'd admitted to in his panic. Not just enough to cover rent or groceries or whatever story he'd told himself to justify it.

He had systematically, methodically embezzled enough money to fund a small war.

"Jesus," Emma breathed from her corner. "That's—how much is that?"

Marcus's fingers flew across his calculator. His face had gone very still in that particular way that meant the number was bad.

"Conservative estimate?" He looked up at me, and I saw something like respect in his expression. "Quarter million. Possibly more, depending on what else we find when we dig deeper."

The room went silent.

I stared at the spreadsheet, at the neat columns of numbers that represented Collin's betrayal rendered in precise, undeniable data. Each withdrawal carefully coded. Each theft meticulously disguised as legitimate pack business.

He hadn't just been weak. He hadn't just made a mistake.

He had planned this.

"Gambling debts," I said quietly. "Juliana's gambling debts. That's where it went."

Linda nodded slowly. "The withdrawal amounts and timing suggest regular payments to multiple creditors. This wasn't a one-time bailout. This was—"

"Ongoing support," I finished. "He was keeping her afloat. For months."

Vera stirred inside me, and her voice was cold as winter stone.

*Now we have him.*

I pulled out my phone with steady hands and scrolled through my contacts until I found the name I needed. The name I'd been avoiding for years, ever since I'd chosen Collin and felt the weight of a different Alpha's disappointed silence.

Zavier Riley.

Alpha of Silverfang Pack.

Juliana's ex-mate.

I typed out a message with careful precision: *We need to talk. It's about Juliana Armstrong. And it's urgent.*

I hit send before I could second-guess myself.

Emma was staring at me with something like awe. "You're going to take him down."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes," I said simply. "I am."

My phone buzzed thirty seconds later.

The reply was brief, direct, and carried the unmistakable authority of an Alpha who didn't waste words:

*My territory. Tomorrow. 10 AM.*