He Rose to Beta on My Money—Then Rejected Me

The custom silk tie felt heavy in my hands, its deep burgundy fabric catching the afternoon light streaming through The Fix's grimy windows. I'd spent three hours yesterday at the upscale boutique in downtown Seattle, carefully selecting the perfect shade to match Luke's eyes when he smiled—the same warm amber that had captivated me ten years ago when he was just a struggling nobody with big dreams and empty pockets.

Today was supposed to be our celebration. Luke had finally made it. Beta of the Silver Moon Pack, one of the most prestigious positions in the Pacific Northwest. All those years of scrimping, of turning down every luxury for myself, of working sixteen-hour days to fund his education at the Alpha Academy—it had all been worth it. We were finally going to have the life we'd dreamed of.

The metallic screech of the shop's roll-up door being yanked open made me jump. But instead of Luke's familiar, excited voice calling my name, there was only silence. Cold, uncomfortable silence.

Noonday sun blazed through the opening, creating harsh silhouettes against the dim interior of my repair shop. Two figures stood backlit in the doorway, and something about their posture—the way they held themselves apart from each other yet together—made my stomach clench with sudden dread.

As my eyes adjusted, the celebratory words I'd been rehearsing died in my throat.

Luke stood there in an impeccably tailored Italian suit that probably cost more than my monthly rent. The fabric moved like liquid mercury across his broad shoulders, and his hair was styled with the kind of precision that screamed expensive salon. But it wasn't his transformation from the scrappy young man I'd fallen in love with that made my world tilt sideways.

It was the woman on his arm.

She was everything I wasn't—young, probably barely twenty-five, with the kind of porcelain skin that had never seen a day of manual labor. Her honey-blonde hair was swept into an elegant chignon, and her makeup was applied with professional perfection. The cream-colored dress she wore probably cost more than I made in six months, and it did nothing to hide the gentle swell of her belly.

Pregnant. She was pregnant.

The colorful confetti cannon I'd prepared slipped from my numb fingers, hitting the concrete floor with a hollow plastic thud that echoed through the suddenly suffocating space.

"Luke?" My voice came out as barely a whisper.

His eyes—those warm amber eyes I'd been thinking about just moments before—flickered with something I'd never seen in them before. Guilt, maybe. Or was it annoyance? The expression was gone so quickly I might have imagined it, replaced by a cold, businesslike mask that made him look like a stranger.

"Jane." He said my name like it left a bad taste in his mouth. "We need to talk."

The pregnant woman beside him wrinkled her nose delicately, pressing a manicured hand to her face. "God, what is that smell? Motor oil? Luke, this place is disgusting." Her voice had the crisp, entitled tone of someone who'd never wanted for anything in her life.

She turned to study me with calculating blue eyes, and I felt like a specimen under a microscope. Her gaze swept over my oil-stained coveralls, my work-roughened hands, my hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. When her lips curved into a smile, it was sharp enough to cut glass.

"So this is your... charitable tenant?" She emphasized the words like they were something dirty. Her hand moved to rest protectively over her rounded stomach, a gesture that seemed designed to remind me of everything I wasn't, everything I'd never be to Luke.

The words hit me like a physical blow. Charitable tenant. Ten years of love, of sacrifice, of building a life together, reduced to a business transaction.

"Luke, what's going on?" I took a step forward, the expensive tie still clutched in my fist. "Who is this?"

But even as I asked, I already knew. The way she looked at him, possessive and triumphant. The way he positioned himself slightly in front of her, protective. The ring on her finger that caught the light—a massive diamond that probably cost more than my entire shop.

"This is Bianca," Luke said, his voice flat and formal. "My fiancée."

The world seemed to tilt sideways. Fiancée. The word echoed in my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull like a ricocheting bullet. But we were supposed to get married. We'd talked about it just last week on the phone. He'd promised me that once he got settled in his new position, we'd finally have the wedding we'd always planned.

"But Luke, we—" I started to say, taking another step toward him.

"Here." He cut me off, pulling a folded check from his jacket pocket and holding it out to me like I was a beggar on the street. "This should cover the next few months. After that, you'll need to find other arrangements."

I stared at the check, my vision blurring slightly. Three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars for ten years of my life. For every penny I'd scraped together to pay his tuition. For every meal I'd skipped so he could eat at fancy restaurants with his classmates. For every dream I'd deferred so his could come true.

The number was an insult so profound it took my breath away.

"Luke, please, just talk to me," I whispered, reaching out toward him. "Last week you said—"

The moment my fingers were about to brush his sleeve, everything changed.

Luke's eyes flashed from warm amber to the cold, predatory gold of his wolf, and power rolled off him in waves that made my knees buckle. This wasn't the Luke I knew—this was a Beta, a high-ranking werewolf asserting his dominance over someone he now considered beneath him.

"I, Luke Morrison of the Silver Moon Pack, reject you, Jane Miller, as my mate and companion." The formal rejection words hit me like physical blows, each syllable carefully enunciated and dripping with finality. "I sever all bonds between us, romantic, financial, and personal. You are nothing to me."

The mate bond—that invisible thread that had connected us for a decade—snapped like a rubber band stretched too far. The pain was immediate and excruciating, a crushing weight in my chest that made it impossible to breathe. I stumbled backward, my hand pressed to my heart as if I could somehow hold the pieces together.

This was rejection in its most brutal, ritualistic form. Not just a breakup, but a complete severing that would be recognized by every werewolf who heard it. I was being cast out, discarded like trash.

"No!" The voice came from behind me, young and furious.

Carl, my twenty-two-year-old mechanic, burst out from behind the lifted hood of the Chevy he'd been working on. His face was flushed with rage, his hands still covered in grease from the engine work. He'd been with me for three years, had watched me sacrifice everything for Luke, had seen me cry over bills I couldn't pay because I'd sent every spare dollar to fund Luke's dreams.

"You piece of shit!" Carl snarled, stepping between me and Luke. "After everything she did for you? She worked herself half to death to pay for your fancy school, and this is how you repay her?"

Luke's expression didn't change, but I felt the temperature in the room drop. The casual dismissal in his eyes when he looked at Carl was terrifying—like he was looking at an insect that had dared to speak.

"You should teach your employees to show proper respect," Luke said quietly, his voice carrying the kind of authority that made lesser wolves submit.

But Carl had never been one to back down from a fight, especially when someone he cared about was being hurt.

"Respect?" Carl laughed bitterly. "You want to talk about respect? You ungrateful—"

Luke moved faster than human eyes could follow. One moment Carl was standing defiantly in front of me, and the next he was flying through the air like he weighed nothing. The supernatural strength of a Beta werewolf sent him crashing into the tool rack with a sickening crunch of metal and bone.

Tools scattered everywhere—wrenches, screwdrivers, and socket sets clattering to the concrete floor in a cacophony of destruction. Carl hit the ground hard and curled into a ball, groaning in pain as blood began to pool beneath him.

"Carl!" I screamed, rushing toward him, but Luke's voice stopped me cold.

"Don't." The single word carried enough power to freeze me in place. "He brought that on himself."

Bianca's laughter rang out behind him, high and delighted, like she was watching her favorite entertainment. The sound made my skin crawl.