Betrayed by My Fated Mate

I kept my eyes shut when the morning light came through the curtains.

Not because I couldn't see it. I could. Every dust particle floating in those pale gold beams, every crack in the plaster ceiling above me, every detail of the room I'd spent five years navigating by touch alone—I could see all of it now, sharp and clear and almost unbearably real.

But Travis didn't know that.

And I needed him to keep not knowing.

My wolf snarled at the back of my skull, low and vicious. *Kill him. He touched us. He lied to us. Tear his throat out.*

I pressed my nails into my palm under the blanket. *Not yet,* I told her. *Not until we know everything.*

She didn't like that answer. She'd been raging since the moment my sight came back last night, since the moment I'd seen Travis's face above mine and understood what had been done to me. Five years. Five years of darkness, and someone had used that darkness as a weapon.

I needed to know who had built it. All of it. Every brick.

The door opened. I went still, softening my breathing into the slow rhythm of sleep.

His footsteps were quiet. Careful. He moved like he was afraid of waking me, which almost made me laugh. Almost.

I felt him sit in the chair beside the bed—not on the bed, just beside it. Like he was keeping his distance. Like he felt guilty.

Good.

"Melody." His voice was low. That same voice I'd mistaken for Colt's a hundred times in the dark. Now that I could think clearly, now that the shock had settled into something colder and sharper, I couldn't understand how I'd ever confused them. Travis's voice was rougher. Quieter. It didn't have Colt's easy arrogance in it.

I let my eyes flutter open, unfocused, aimed slightly past his shoulder the way I'd trained myself to look for years.

"Travis?" I made my voice small. Confused.

"Yeah." A pause. "I brought you breakfast."

I heard the soft clink of a tray being set on the nightstand. My wolf caught the scent—eggs, toast, something warm. He'd actually cooked.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

I watched him through my lashes as he stood and moved toward the window. He kept his back to me, his shoulders tense, his hands loose at his sides. He was holding something back. I could see it in the rigid line of his spine.

Good. Let him hold it back. Let him choke on it.

I ate slowly, listening to the sounds of the estate waking up around us, and I planned.

---

I waited until I heard his shower running before I moved.

Three minutes. That's all I gave myself.

I crossed the room in silence, my wolf lending me a grace I'd never had before—fluid, soundless, nothing like the careful shuffle I'd performed for five years. I slipped out the side door and into the cool morning air.

Colt's scent hit me almost immediately. That expensive woody cologne, layered over something I'd never noticed before—something lazy and self-satisfied, like a wolf who'd never been hungry a day in his life.

I followed it.

The Alpha's estate sat at the northern edge of pack territory, all stone and glass and deliberate grandeur. I kept to the tree line, moving through the shadows with my wolf's eyes cutting through the early morning dimness like it was nothing. Like I'd always been able to do this.

I heard them before I saw them. Laughter. A woman's voice, bright and sharp.

*Brittany.*

I crouched behind the hedgerow beneath the east-facing terrace and pressed my phone to record.

"—honestly, the look on her face when you shoved her at Travis." Brittany's laugh was the same as I remembered from school. That high, artificial sound. "I would have paid to see it up close."

"She didn't even fight it." Colt's voice, amused. Careless. "Just stood there with her mouth open. Pathetic."

"Five years of waiting for you to come home." Brittany made a soft, mocking sound. "And you spent them in my bed."

"Best five years of my life."

My jaw ached. I realized I was grinding my teeth.

"She actually believed you were the one in exile?" Brittany asked.

"Every single day." Colt's voice dropped into something that might have been pride. "Blind and wolfless and completely mine to manage. Travis did all the suffering. I just reaped the benefits."

I got every word.

---

The archives were in the lower level of the Castillo estate's east wing, behind a door that required a guard rotation and a key code.

It took me eleven minutes to get inside.

My wolf guided me past the two guards with an ease that felt almost insulting—like the pack's security had been built to stop the Melody they thought I was. The weak one. The blind one.

Not this.

The files were meticulously organized. Antonio Castillo was nothing if not thorough.

I found Colt's incident report first. The rogue attack, five years ago. The original account, before it was rewritten. I read Colt's name where it should have been. His negligence. His cowardice. The cover-up.

Then I found Travis's exile records.

Five years of documented brutality. Locations logged. Injuries noted in clinical, detached language—lacerations, silver exposure, starvation protocols. Someone had been keeping track of exactly how much damage was done to him.

I stood in the dark archive with the files in my hands and felt something shift inside me.

Not softness. Not forgiveness.

Just a new, colder kind of fury, with a sharper edge than before.

I photographed every page.

I had everything I needed. Almost.