Alpha's substitute Lover

After that day, I didn't go back to the set.

Alpha Lucian found Vanessa a new assistant and stuck me in his company as his personal one.

"From now on, you're with me."

He toyed with a fountain pen, glancing up at me, his voice easing up a bit.

"That day on set, Lilith was stirring crap between you and Vanessa on purpose. I made some calls-nobody's hiring her for gigs anymore."

I just stared blankly, not saying a word, and his face hardened.

"Don't push it, Luna Ashvale," he warned.

Was I the one pushing it?

Lilith was just pissed about losing her role and took a couple cheap shots at Vanessa.

We both knew who the real problem was.

But because I'd pissed him off that day, he didn't care that I was drenched and shivering. He dragged things out in that car, messing with me for ages.

I'd been running a low-grade fever ever since.

Popping meds left me groggy, too wiped to argue.

I just dipped my head. "Got it."

That evening, after Vanessa wrapped, I drove Alpha Lucian to meet her for dinner.

The second she saw me, her voice was like frost. "Alpha Lucian, I'm not here to fight, so don't bring something that'll ruin my mood."

Alpha Lucian glanced at me. "Wait in the car."

I nodded and walked off.

My phone pinged with an email from the grad school professor.

"Luna Ashvale, your acceptance letter's been mailed. When can you start? I reviewed your résumé and secured you the max scholarship. I'm thrilled to mentor a student as talented and driven as you."

I cupped my hands in the air, like I could catch the pieces of that letter Alpha Lucian had ripped up and thrown away.

That night, Alpha Lucian didn't come home.

He texted me: "Dropping Vanessa off. Don't wait up."

"Staying over at her place?" I typed back.

His reply was blunt. "Luna Ashvale, that's none of your business."

I drove out to the cemetery in the suburbs.

Grandma's been buried there for over two years.

The photo on her headstone was taken when she was on her deathbed.

She was so sick back then.

All the money she'd scrimped and saved, all the cash I'd swallowed my pride to borrow from teachers and classmates-it still wasn't enough. We were three hundred grand short.

To Alpha Lucian, that was pocket change, the cost of a night of drinks with his buddies or a designer bag for some fling.

To me, it was an impossible gap.

After her surgery, Grandma held my hand, telling me over and over: just because that money was nothing to Alpha Lucian didn't mean we could treat it lightly.

So for three years, I did everything he asked, no matter how ridiculous.

"But am I supposed to keep wasting the rest of my life here? My dreams, my ambitions?"

The cemetery was dead quiet, just the wind and crickets.

Grandma's face on the headstone stared back, silent.

She'd never answer me again.